Shane Dawson Says His ‘Career Is Over’ in Wake of Numerous Controversies

Shane Dawson is speaking out about the downturn of his career eight months after his last YouTube video, in which he apologized for past problematic behavior. The internet personality appears in a Feb. 5 video posted by fiancé Ryland Adams titled “Extreme Hoarder Room Makeover!” in which the two go to a furniture store to ogle a large red horse statue.

“I want him so much,” Dawson said. “Here’s the thing — I know that I’m weird and I know that my career is over and I know that I’m just that crazy guy who buys weird toys.” Dawson’s declaration about his career comes eight months after his June 26 apology video titled “Taking Accountability,” He apologized for doing blackface in racist videos and using the N-word earlier in his career.

“I have done a lot of things in my past that I hate, that I wish I could make go away, that I tried to make go away by deleting videos or un-tagging my Instagram things or literally doing whatever I can to pretend like those things didn’t happen,” he said in the apology video. “Because yes, I apologized for a lot of them but I’m 31, almost 32. Those apologies suck. I don’t know who that person is anymore.”

He continued that he was hoping to “own up to my s—” and wanted to “own up to everything I’ve done on the Internet that has hurt people, that has added to a problem, that has not been handled well.” Agreeing he should be “punished” for his past behavior, Dawson acknowledged “all the racism that [he] put onto the Internet” as an adult. “Now, years later, I look back at that,” he said. “When I say I hate that person, I mean it in the most intense way possible.”

During his apology video, Dawson acknowledged this was possibly the end of his career, as YouTube soon stopped allowing ads on his channel. “I’m willing to lose everything,” he said at the time. “At this point, realizing 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.”

Jada Pinkett Smith and Jaden Smith both took to Twitter to announce they did not accept Dawson’s apology after a video of the YouTuber pretending to masturbate to a poster of young Willow Smith resurfaced on Twitter. “To Shane Dawson … I’m done with the excuses,” Pinkett Smith wrote on Twitter at the time.