The last star to walk this family path is also one of the platform’s first success stories. Shane Dawson, who has been active on YouTube for 12 years and whose main channel has 22.6 million subscribers, recently posted a video apologizing, among other things, for using blackface and saying the N word in his first videos.
“I regret adding to the normalization of the black face, or the normalization of saying the n word,” he says.
Shane Dawson was one of the first young people to reach YouTube. In 2008, when Dawson started making videos, he was in his 20s and the fledgling YouTube was far from the online star-making and paradigm shift giant it would become. Dawson initially started his career with comedy sketches, but found further success with documentary-style content, deep conspiracies, and interviews with other YouTube celebrities. His apology video has more than 10 million views.
In detailing his past transgressions, Dawson also makes it clear that his sudden mea culpa was inspired by the cleansing of another influential YoTube old lady, Jenna Marbles.
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