Shane Dawson

He has two older brothers named Jacob (b. 1980) and Jerid (b. 1985), and the three grew up in a low-income household headed by their single mother, Teresa.

Shane Lee Yaw (born July 19, 1988), known online as Shane Dawson, is an American YouTuber, actor, filmmaker, writer, and musician.

Shane Lee Yaw was born in Long Beach, California, on July 19, 1988.

He was educated in Lakewood, California, graduating from Lakewood High School in 2006.

He was bullied for his weight in school, and his brothers helped him during these times; he later lost 150 lb. He first became interested in making videos when he would hand in videos for school projects with his friends.

Dawson was one of the first people to rise to fame on YouTube after he began making videos in 2008 at the age of 19 and garnered over 500 million views during the next two years.

Most of Dawson's early work consisted of comedy sketches in which he would play original characters, impersonate celebrities, and make light of popular culture.

Some of these impressions later drew criticism for their offensive content, including racial stereotypes.

He has released six original songs such as "Superluv!" and numerous parodies of popular music videos.

On March 10, 2008, Dawson made his YouTube channel, called "ShaneDawsonTV".

The earliest video that remains on the channel, "Kermit the Frog and Me" was uploaded about 4 months later.

When he first began making videos, he worked at Jenny Craig along with his mother and brother, but was fired in August 2008 after he uploaded a video of himself pole dancing in the building he worked at and for showing before-and-after photos of clients, saying that "all these people gain their weight back."

The video also included clips of his co-workers reading inappropriate passages of a book by Jenny Craig spokesperson Valerie Bertinelli.

His mother, brother and about six other coworkers who appeared in the video also were fired after the company saw the video.

In September, he uploaded a video called "Fred is Dead!", which has since received over 25 million views.

During this time, Shane performed as a number of "drug-addled, often drunk, cultural stereotype characters" in his skits, including: "ghetto girl" Shanaynay, "Ned the Nerd", gangster "S-Deezy", "Barb the Lesbian", a football jock/bully (who is a closeted homosexual), the jock's insecure girlfriend (who thinks she is overweight), a "fashionably bulimic" high school girl (whose finger is her "best friend" to aid in self-induced vomiting), "Aunt Hilda" (portrayed with a thick "New York-Jewish" accent), gothic girls, "trans" characters, and "Guadalupe"/"Fruit Lupe" (a Mexican with stereotyped chola accent).

Dawson would also, in skits where he was playing himself, portray either fictional or exaggerated versions of his own "relatives" and family members.

One video sees Dawson pretending to still be an adolescent student, and the struggles of feigning "illness" to avoid attending school for a day.

The same video sees him wearing a bright-red wig, red lipstick and matching red bathrobe to portray his "mother", an alcoholic, "Southern", lazy and semi-abusive character.

When she forces Dawson to attend school, she sends him out the door by saying "Later, faggot!"

Despite Dawson's own bisexuality and homosexual marriage, these instances of gay slurs drew some criticism at the time; his actual mother (who later appears in several videos) bears no comparison to this character.

He also drew some criticism for portraying a pre-op transgender female character, who appeared in a skit about speed dating; the bulk of the character's appearances consisted of such lines as "I'm sick of this penis! Chop it off!"

and explaining "and that's how they're going to turn my penis into a clitoris."

At that point, Dawson (portraying himself) is seen turning to the side and vomiting, profusely.

In November 2009, Dawson was featured on Attack of the Show!.

He began using this channel in May 2010.

In 2010, Forbes magazine named him their 25th most famous web celebrity.

He has also appeared in the horror film Smiley (2012) and the comedy film Internet Famous (2016).

Dawson occasionally posts new videos on his channel "ShaneDawsonTV" (mainly short web films, music video parodies, film trailer parodies, and original music) and formerly posted other videos on his second channel "ShaneDawsonTV2", now called "Human Emoji" however the use of this channel has mostly been discontinued as of 2012.

His third and main YouTube channel, Shane, is where he previously posted vlogs, and now posts original content Mondays through Fridays.

In 2013, he started the podcast Shane and Friends, which ran for 140 episodes over four years.

In 2014, he directed, produced, edited, and starred in the romantic comedy film Not Cool and appeared on the accompanying docu-series The Chair.

In 2015, Dawson began discussing conspiracy theories on his YouTube channel, which led to his 2019 web series Conspiracy Series with Shane Dawson.

Dawson has released two New York Times best-selling books, I Hate Myselfie (2015) and It Gets Worse (2016), and his three YouTube channels have collectively accumulated over 4.5 billion views.

In 2017, he released his first docu-series on YouTube, in which he reconciled with his absent father.

Since 2017, he has updated only his main channel, which has over 20 million subscribers and over 4 billion views.

From 2019 to 2020, he created and appeared in the docu-series The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star, which garnered over 130 million views.

His most viewed docu-series are about Jeffree Star, Jake Paul, and Tana Mongeau.

In June 2020, YouTube indefinitely suspended monetization on all three of his channels and his books were pulled from shelves following a public backlash over numerous controversial comments he had made in the past, particularly regarding underage girls and zoophilia.

He took a hiatus and returned to YouTube on October 7, 2021.