Shane Dawson is one of the biggest YouTubers the video streaming website has to offer with over 16 million subscribers. However, his recent docuseries, titled “The Mind of Jake Paul,” has sparked major controversy.
The docuseries’ main goal is to deduce if Jake Paul, another very successful YouTuber, is a sociopath. Dawson is doing a significant amount of research and has even talked to an actual therapist about the subject. However, social media has deemed the series offensive for the misinterpretations of the reality of sociopaths.
The term “sociopath” is considered offensive today, and the correct disorder is “antisocial personality disorder.” Logan Paul, Jake Paul’s older brother, came to the defense claiming that he is in fact on the “sociopathic spectrum” and that Dawson is “scaring the children” since a big portion of Dawson’s audience ranges from children to teenagers.
Dawson has apologized on all his social media pages and has gone back to reedit the upcoming parts of his docuseries. However, should he have had to? Even though mental health is a sensitive topic, Dawson was very careful with the way he presented the topic and even posted disclaimers for his videos. While Dawson did use jokes in his videos, he is someone who has never meant to personally offend anyone. Dawson himself suffers with mental illnesses and has stated that this series was never meant to diagnose Jake Paul. Paul himself had even posted a video saying that he knew everything Dawson had planned to do with the series before they had even started filming. However, this was not enough, and Twitter came in an angry mob to attack Dawson’s new series. This is the way of social media for recent years, to get easily offended.
Even though many were offended and degrading the new docuseries, there are still several more parts to be posted. Fans of Dawson are still loyal and excited for what is to come, and, with each video ranging between forty to fifty minutes long, there is still much more to come with “The Mind of Jake Paul.” Regardless of the controversy, Shane Dawson will continue to be known as one of the most successful YouTubers and his fans will continue to view like they have been for years.
by Davis Hicks
