YouTube's idiot problem: how Shane Dawson humanised Jake Paul and demonised himself

YouTube is currently home to what is likely the most watched documentary series in the world, baffling olds but enrapturing a significant proportion of the world’s digital natives – its first four episodes have so far generated a combined 53 million views. Its objective? To determine whether a notorious YouTube personality is in fact a sociopath.

But the series has been dogged with controversy since its inception, not only from a contingent of YouTube fans outraged by its targeting of their idol Jake Paul, the Dennis the Menace of vlogging, but by those who consider the show’s entire premise offensive – leading its creator to issue multiple apologies and last-minute edits.

The series is the brainchild of Shane Dawson, one of YouTube’s biggest success stories, who has largely dropped the clickbait comedy videos and pranks that made his name, and instead replaced them with extensive, documentary series exploring the lives and controversies of fellow YouTube stars.

First there was Tana Mongeau, a pouty lifestyle blogger and aspiring musician whose own fan convention was so disastrous that it earned comparisons to the doomed Instagram Lord of the Flies that was Fyre Festival. Then there was Jeffree Star, a makeup vlogger famed for a run of racist controversies. Both series were enormous YouTube successes, but the mere entrée to Dawson’s biggest get: an eight-part documentary promising to venture inside the dark, ghoulish mind of Jake Paul.

The enfant terrible of YouTube, Paul is arguably not quite as horrendous as his brother Logan, whose infamy went mainstream earlier this year when he filmed the dead body of a man who took his own life in Japan’s infamous “suicide forest”, but very much purveyor of his own brand of exhausting chaos.

Famed for filming Jackass-style stunts and demonstrating comedic frat-boy arrogance to his 17 million subscribers, Paul’s relationship with a clan of self-harming hangers-on known as “Team 10” is key to Dawson’s pondering as to whether he is a sociopath.

A group of teenagers who share Paul’s palatial Beverly Hills mansion in exchange for repeated humiliation, injury and willingness to have themselves be set on fire, the crew have experienced endless rotation amid accusations of bullying and physical abuse, claims echoed by Paul’s ex-girlfriend Alissa Violet, who last year posted a video accusing Paul of domestic violence.

The claims form the backbone of the series, along with interviews with psychologists and Paul’s family and friends, diving into his background all with the apparent intent to shine a light on just what makes Paul tick.

The Jake Paul series, which features episode titles including The Dark Side of Jake Paul and The Mind of Jake Paul, is compelling if staggeringly peculiar content. In it, Dawson acts like the Sherlock Holmes of internet nuisances,  speaking to an array of individuals whose own YouTube content revolves around discussing and analysing other people’s YouTube content.

It’s unintentionally meta filmmaking completely devoid of irony, played completely straight despite its inherent silliness, and operating like a surreal mash-up of Zoella and Making a Murderer, deploying the same sharp edits and sound effects of a makeup tutorial, but the gloomy intensity of a true crime serial.

It’s also sparked an unprecedented amount of controversy – unsurprising, considering the sheer numbers of young teenagers watching. There were initial concerns that Dawson may attempt to try and humanise Paul – something that many felt he previously did with Starr, who has been repeatedly caught on video hurling racial slurs. Dawson denied that humanisation was his intent.

Fans of Paul have reacted with fury at the series, emboldened by a video from Logan Paul in which he claimed that Dawson has not been honest about his familiarity with the Pauls and their family, and that the series is “extremely misleading.” To be fair, it’s difficult not to express at least some cynicism about the series, which if anything only maximises the fame and power of two of YouTube’s most polarising personalities.

But the most noteworthy elements of criticism have revolved around the show’s framing of mental illness, with discussion of personality disorders soundtracked by a horror movie score, and messaging that seems to suggest those in your life with psychological problems are potentially untrustworthy and may ultimately damage you.

Dawson apologised for his editing, saying in a Snapchat video that “If you are offended for someone who has this or thinks they have this, I am sorry, but just know my intentions were not bad.” He later tweeted that he did go overboard with the horror movie editing, and promised fans: “I apologised, changed things, added a disclaimer and apology to episode three and have done everything in my power to make people feel heard.”

When anger intensified, Dawson tweeted that he was taking a break from social media. But that seemed to last just 12 hours, Dawson returning with a sassy pledge: “For part four [of the series], I’m going full tea,” he wrote. “No censoring. No holding back. No worrying about pissed off people texting me. You guys wanted tea and I’m gonna bring the whole damn kettle. Grab on to your f------ mops.”

Episode four, released last night, saw Dawson add a disclaimer to the beginning of the installment about the dangers of self-diagnosing others, and additionally speak to Nick Crompton, a former Team 10 member, who claimed many of Paul’s “candid” prank videos were planned far in advance. An interview with Paul himself was also teased, further building anticipation for the show’s first serious meeting between the pair.

Awkwardly, Paul has emerged as the least controversial element of the series, calmly appearing in his own video and suggesting that he bonded with Dawson during its production, while being prepared to fix himself in accordance to any of the documentary’s revelations. “I knew Shane would be able to position it and make it 100 percent real without bias, and I fully trusted him to do that,” he said.

He continued, “Go into it with an open mind and open heart and watch it without any preconceived thoughts. Letting someone into your life in general to judge you and film the whole thing is not easy and not fun. There will be things I won’t like or won’t want to remember. But the only way you can get better is if you acknowledge those things and move on.”

But once the series began, Paul directly addressed his discomfort with Dawson's work in further tweets, writing to him: “You still haven’t made it clear that you’re determining whether or not I am a sociopath. The way it comes off (at least to me and my family) is that you’re already labelling me a sociopath.”

He continued, “I love Shane and am trusting him to carry out the rest of the series. I hope he can actually make it clear who I am and why I’ve done certain things and show the side of me that no one has ever seen. That’s why I agreed to do the series. The ‘sociopath’ stuff doesn’t interest me.”

While the Jake Paul expose was designed as the natural conclusion to two vastly different worlds of YouTube, one dominated by quirk, fun and emotive coming out videos and the other reflective of toxic masculinity and gentle nudges towards illegality, the series has already somewhat backfired.

So far it has been Dawson who has become the target of significant backlash, emerging as a vaguely ignorant figure putting profitability before mental health, while Paul has emerged as his more level-headed mirror image, curious if slightly miffed by where this all seems to be going. It's safe to assume that Dawson's series isn't going entirely to plan.

Four more episodes of Dawson’s series are apparently in the pipeline, at least two of which are due to feature Paul himself. The show’s release, staggered over multiple weeks, has proven surprisingly irresistible if frustrating to a generation raised on Netflix and binge-culture, with its enormous success hinting at where YouTube may be headed next in its quest for further online domination.

With Dawson’s latest teaser of things to come, reaction has been swift, hundreds of his fans sharing their anticipation for further episodes by posting GIFs of black women tearing off their wigs, or memes from five years ago (if Shane Dawson fandom tells us anything, it’s that they’re not exactly on the cutting edge of social media vernacular).

But however the series builds to its climax, Dawson’s documentaries have already enraptured millions of hungry teens, all eager to go to war on behalf of their respective vlogging idol.