Shane Dawson loses 600,000 subscribers following apology video

29 June 2020, 12:34

Shane Dawson apologises for making racist YouTube videos

By Jazmin Duribe

Shane responded to the backlash surrounding his past videos in blackface and inappropriate sexual comments about children.

Shane Dawson has lost 600,000 subscribers after apologising for creating offensive videos during his 15-year career on YouTube.

Last week, the YouTuber uploaded a 20-minute apology video tilted "Taking Accountability" inspired by Jenna Marbles' video, where she quit YouTube and took accountability for the problematic content she had made in the past.

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In the video, Shane addressed wearing blackface, using racial slurs, insulting people living with disabilities, and joking about paedophilia. "I’ve done a lot of things in my past that I hate, that I wish I could make go away. I don’t know who that person is anymore," he explained.

"This video is coming from a place of just wanting to own up to my shit, wanting to own up to everything I’ve done on the internet that has hurt people – that has added to the problem, that has not been handled well. I should have been punished for things."

He added: "I should have probably lost my career at the time. There’s no amount of apologising that can take it away."

Speaking of his use of the N-word and past blackface skits, Shane said: "Blackface was something that I did a lot on my channel. And there's no excuse for it. There's literally no excuse. I made a video six years ago talking about it and I gave excuses and it was wrong… But I didn't do the work. I didn't actually look into the history of it and why it's so wrong and why people were so upset."

He continued: "I'm sorry that I added to the normalisation of blackface or the normalisation of saying the N-word. It's not a funny word. Especially for a white person to say."

Watch Shane's video here.

Taking Accountability

After Shane had apologised, even more of his old and offensive clips began being re-circulated on social media. In one, Shane appears to pretend to masturbate to a Disney poster of Willow Smith, who was 11-years-old at the time, while singing the lyrics to her 2011 hit song 'Whip My Hair'.

In his video, Shane said he "would never talk about a child in a way that is inappropriate" concerning the past paedophilic comments. However, when Willow's brother Jaden Smith and mother Jada Pinkett-Smith picked up on the clip they expressed their "disgust" on Twitter.

"To Shane Dawson ... I’m done with the excuses," Jada tweeted. Jaden then retweeted his mother and posted a string of tweets, writing: "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 As The Youth We Need To Support Creators Who Support Us And Our Morals. This Is Not Okay."

As of June 29, Shane has lost 600,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. He lost 200,000 on Sunday (June 28) alone – two days after uploading his apology video. He currently has 22.7 million followers on his main YouTube channel.

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Ending his video, Shane said he was "willing to lose everything" because of his past comments. He concluded: "At this point, realising how many people I've hurt or how many people I've inspired to say awful things or do anything awful, to finally just own up to all of this and be accountable is worth losing everything to me."