YMMV / Shane Dawson

• Broken Base:
  • His coming out as bi has split the base, although not because of his identifying as bisexual. While people are more or less universally happy that he can openly admit to being who he is and some point out that bisexuals need representation, others think that his use of Black Comedy such as Blackface and so on disqualifies him from being a representative. There was also criticism that the video came off as an attempt to get attention.
  • Is Shane's content better after the end of his scripted sketch videos? Some would say he's declined and lost his trademark, but others would argue that Shane is much funnier going off without a script, and that his comedy writing is often forced and unfunny.
  • Shane has met disapproval for his very empathetic nature in regard to his support of his friend, controversial fellow creator Tana Mongeau, especially after the infamous TanaCon failure and his series about the event, where several viewers criticized his approach, perceiving bias toward his friend when some think she didn't deserve sympathy to begin with. This could also be said about the series around Jake Paul and the two documentaries about Jeffree Star.
  • Was Shane's documentary series with Jeffree Star an overly long advertisement for his make-up collaboration or a genuinely interesting insider look at how a popular make-up brand creates a product from start to finish?
  • Did Shane make a video about Eugenia Cooney because he genuinely cared about her and her recovery from an eating disorder or did he know the video would garner a lot of views and hype because she had left the platform for a long time previously and this would be her comeback?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Even people who dislike Shane himself admit that they love his boyfriend Ryland because of his role as the Only Sane Man and his relationship with Shane. Vlogs that feature Ryland and their relationship regularly gain more views than the regular ones. It's saying something that Ryland's channel grew to have more subscribers than Garrett despite Ryland having a smaller presence at the time, as well as not being invested in making YouTube videos.
• Growing the Beard: Once Shane shifted away from just being a comedy channel and into making multi-part documentary-style videos about different human experiences and connections (while still retaining his usual reaction-based humor), he received more praise and respect from greater audiences.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Many of his "Shisa" videos with Lisa Schwartz, in which general playful antagonism appears much darker after the two had officially broken up. Even moreso since by their admission they had already broken up for almost a year before they finally announced it but were pretending to still be together and making videos as a couple for their audience.
  • Shane had made a short documentary with fellow YouTube creator, Eugenia Cooney who was widely known to have had an eating disorder. At the time of the video's release, Shane had received praise for helping Eugenia back onto the platform as she seemed to be on the road to recovery. However when viewing the video deeper, some people have found that his video was done much too soon as it turned out Eugenia had only been home from a specific treatment centre for a couple of weeks beforehand.
  • His online feud with YouTube creator, Onision may be seen as this now. Onision often made videos insinuating or downright accusing Shane of being a paedophile however this was always denied. In 2020, some of Shane's older content was rediscovered and featured some inappropriate comments regarding minors.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Shane's infamously bad tweet thread about not fucking his cat was later revealed to have happened the same day he had planned to propose to Ryland.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • A lot of stuff in his "High School Drama" skit, such as Amy messily scarfing down food, Shane spitting up green slime onto the water fountain, and the bulimia scene.
  • The entirety of his "Wrecking Ball" parody.
  • Some of the comments he's made on podcasts in the past about minors could be seen as this.
• Nightmare Fuel: His "Blank Space" parody is full of this. Even though this is Played for Laughs, it's still pretty disturbing and nightmare-inducing.
• One True Threesome:
  • The reaction from people that aren't commenting on how jealous Ryland looks in "Using a "Cuddle Buddy" App" is immediately assuming that Ryland/Shane/Aladdin had a threesome.
  • Ryland/Shane/Lily/Joslyn used to be pretty popular due to the amount of foursome teasing during Shane's appearance on the Clevver channel before Shane and Ryland announced that they are dating.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Shisa" back when he was still dating Lisa, and "Shyland" now that he is dating Ryland. Both have been used by Shane directly in his videos.
• Shallow Parody: His parody of Unfriended, in which the main joke is that the kids are Too Dumb to Live because they won't just turn off Skype. It's clear that it was made before the film actually came out, because a major point, and one of the first things the viewer learns, is that Laura is manipulating the characters' computers so that they can't disconnect — and when they try to do so, as in the case of Ken, she kills them almost immediately for it. The parody also fails considering as some people pointed out, he was in an own internet based movie.

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