The internet unravels Shane Dawson's dark past, cancels him 

Shane Lee Yaw, popularly known as Shane Dawson, is an American YouTuber, actor and internet personality.

Having been one of the early pioneers to capitalize on the art of making YouTube videos, his comedy sketches and impersonations catapulted him to stardom. Thus, he raked in millions of views and followers.

While he has revelled in his fair share of fame and ruled over YouTube, troublesome old clips of his recently surfaced. And they proved to be the reason behind his unceremonious downfall, as cries of Cancel Culture came calling.

Shane Dawson's distasteful comments and problematic videos invoked the ire of the entire internet community, which led to him losing more than a million subscribers during the fallout.

Remeber last year when James Charles lost subscribers by the million? Keep that same energy with Shane Dawson and ~unsubscribe~. @ Shane Dawson’s stans- please do not try to defend a racist, pedophilic person. pic.twitter.com/F7Sb2tdgd6

— anyways, tpwk ✌️//blm (@MahjubaK) June 28, 2020

Shane Dawson's fall not only rocked the online community out of its complacency, but also served as a strong indictment of abominable behaviour and the need to call it out rightfully.

Shane Dawson's fall from grace

When a YouTuber makes a living off despicable behaviour and questionable content, one can always expect the eventual fallout to be nuclear-like.

With Shane Dawson, it was only a matter of time before his troublesome past came back to haunt him mercilessly.

Cancel culture is toxic except for people that actually deserves to be canceled, especially for people that has not changed their own toxic traits like they said they have. Aka, shane dawson.

— yulie |-/ (@not_rotting) August 15, 2020

It all started when he took a shot at beauty guru James Charles, which resulted in a domino effect of catastrophic proportions for the 32-year old.

His criticism was deemed hypocritical, as several from the online community began to call him out for his own objectionable behaviour in the past.

ladies, if he- gives racists a platform- uses teen slang when pushing 50- attacks teens on twitter for making valid points- demonizes mental illness - cannot handle criticism of any formthen u should probably run its shane dawson

— jack 🧸🦩 (@jacklikesdogs) November 30, 2018

From using blackface, racial slurs and stereotyping people of colour to accusations of pedophilia, Shane Dawson found himself amid a Twitter storm which became volatile at a rapid pace.

Sensing impending doom, the YouTuber released an apology video titled 'Taking Accountability', where he appeared to apologize for his past behaviour and offensive content.

In the video, he stated:

"I've done a lot of things in my past that I hate, that I wish I could make go away. I don't know who that person is anymore. I should have been punished for things. I should have probably lost my career at the time. There's no amount of apologising that can take it away."

The internet, however, did just not buy into it.

8 years later i still make around $300 a month from that one video. Shane has literally made MILLIONS off videos normalizing vile racist attitudes about Black ppl & other POC, rape, child abuse etc & yet “i feel so awful for the racist things i did” is “accountability?”

— Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) June 28, 2020

While he hoped to swing the tide in his favour with the video, it ended up doing just the opposite, as a distasteful video of him, involving popular actress Jada Pinkett-Smith's daughter Willow Smith, emerged online. This incident proved to be the tipping point for the online community.

Willow's brother, Jaden Smith, even called out Shane Dawson for his objectionable behavior:

To Shane Dawson ... I’m done with the excuses.

— Jada Pinkett Smith (@jadapsmith) June 27, 2020

Image Credits: The Sun/Twitter

In the aftermath of his problematic clips, Target removed his books from their store, Morphe removed his beauty products, and YouTube demonetized his three channels.

The repercussions did not end there, as soon after the video giant's decision, internet personality Tati Westbrook released a 40 minute-long video. In it, she accused Shane Dawson and fellow YouTuber Jeffree Star of manipulating her and creating tension between her and James Charles.

While the YouTuber faces the repercussions for his objectionable actions, the question that several from the community are asking is: Why did it take so long for a sense of wokeness to seep into people. Why didn't they act when Shane Dawson was releasing such content to gain millions of views.

While cancel culture as a phenomenon is undoubtedly a useful tool of protest and activism, it certainly exists as a double-edged sword.

You can watch the videos below which highlight the Shane Dawson fiasco: