Are you familiar with Shane Dawson?
He started making videos during the very early days of YouTube, and he’s one of the only YouTubers who has been able to hold onto that kind of fame for all these years.
If you’re not familiar, that’s OK, because you’re probably familiar with the Smith family — you know, Will, Jada, Jaden, Willow, that whole crew.
And at the very least, you probably want to keep up with the latest gossip.
Either way, let’s get into the absolute chaos that has been happening this weekend, OK?
OK, so if you do keep up with celebrity gossip, you probably know that many famous people have been called out in the past few weeks for making racist comments in the past, right?
Reality shows like Vanderpump Rules and Teen Mom OG have even fired cast members for those kinds of comments.
Shane Dawson made tons of racist comments in his first few years on YouTube — he did blackface pretty often, he said the N-word on multiple occasions, he did skits where he played very stereotypical black characters.
Lots of people know about this because like we said, it was pretty much his bread and butter back then.
But since so many people have been interested in talking about the racist things famous people have said and done lately, more and more things about Shane have been coming to light.
Several clips have been going around Twitter, like one where he “jokes” that if Trayvon Martin had had a job, then he wouldn’t have been murdered because he wouldn’t have been out walking.
In another, he sings a song about sex with a bunch of teenagers, and when he comes to a lyric with the N-word in it, a black girl tells him that he can’t say it, and he doesn’t listen and says it anyway.
Let’s see … there’s one clip where he’s talking about helping a black woman with a video and he says “she’s black, she doesn’t know how to use a computer,” and he says that she just slaps her keyboard.
There’s also a whole story about another black woman who tried to reach out to him and explain to him why the kinds of things he’d been saying and doing were so harmful.
He got defensive, didn’t listen, and proceeded to talk on his podcast about some very graphic fantasies he’d been having of torturing and dismembering an unnamed woman who’d “called him out” about his videos.
If you think all of that sounds absolutely horrific, that’s because it is … but there’s more.
In addition to all the racist comments, Shane has also had a habit of making a whole, whole lot of pedophilia jokes.
Yeah, for real.
There’s a clip from his podcast where he talks about meeting a girl who was about five or six, and he repeatedly called her “sexy.”
He also said that he doesn’t understand why child pornography is illegal — that he doesn’t see the difference between looking up illicit images of children and looking up images related to a foot fetish.
In another clip from the podcast that’s been making the rounds, someone mentioned a four-month-old baby that passed away after being sexually assaulted and he laughed.
There’s a video of him and his girlfriend at the time talking about sex with his 12-year-old cousin — his girlfriend demonstrates how to use a sex toy while Shane asks her about whether or not she’s had her period yet.
We could sit here all day and name various examples of Shane Dawson doing and saying really horrific, inexcusable things, but you get the gist, right?
People had been talking about all of this for several days, and on Friday, Shane decided to pull a Jenna Marbles and make a video acknowledging things and taking accountability.
But where Jenna was believable and obviously very troubled by her past actions in the video, he really was not.
He denied some things, even those there’s very clear evidence of it, and he dismissed some concerns.
About all the pedophilia jokes, he said that he’d had a painful childhood and humor was his way of dealing with it, which is sad, but it also doesn’t necessarily make sense, and it definitely doesn’t excuse it.
But one thing we haven’t talked about and that we haven’t mentioned yet?
A video where he pretended to masturbate while looking at a huge poster of Willow Smith, who was 11 years old at the time.
And Willow’s family was absolutely not pleased to learn about this.
Last night, Jada Pinkett Smith tweeted “To Shane Dawson … I’m done with the excuses.”
But Jaden Smith, Willow’s big brother, had a bit more to say.
He started by tweeting a series of angry emojis, then he wrote “IM SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS.”
While it wasn’t clear whether or not that was about Shane, he tweeted this just a little while later:
“SHANE DAWSON I AM DISGUSTED BY YOU. YOU SEXUALIZING AN 11 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO HAPPENS TO BE MY SISTER!!!!!! IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM FUNNY AND NOT OKAY IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT.”
“This Man Was Also Doing Black Face On The Regular,” he added. “As The Youth We Need To Support Creators Who Support Us And Our Morals.”
“This Is Not Okay.”
And when someone else wrote “I’ll knock that white boy out fr,” he replied with “It’s bad for him right now.”
Shane has been quiet since posting his video, but at this point, it’s very clear that his apology didn’t quite cut it.
And if the Smiths are speaking out against him … well, he’s had a wildly successful career for a YouTuber, but we’re not sure it can survive this.