R6: Shane Dawson

Reflection 6

Shane Dawson makes content for YouTube and his podcast called Shane and Friends. He has been popular on YouTube since about 2008 and has accumulated 3.4 million followers on his Twitter account. He vlogs about his life and makes videos about life hacks, weird food combinations, horror topics, and anything else he and his fans will enjoy. He interviews prominent celebrities like Jillian Michaels on his podcast and has written two books about his life.

While his YouTube account exists as a way to entertain fans, his social media presence mixes video/podcast updates with a more intimate representation of himself. Alice Marwick and Danah Boyd, both social media scholars, define intimacy as "a sense of closeness and familiarity between themselves and their followers." Shane is known to go into detail about his subjective experiences in videos and books, treating his fans like a confidant. His Twitter @shanedawson is an extension of this role and he uses it to post life updates you will not learn about anywhere else. For example, he recently posted a video of Miley, a dog he owned that recently passed away. Fans can connect to Shane through grief, feeling like they got an intimate view into his life.

Shane consistently posts content that's relatable to his mostly teen - 20s audience. The authors relate this behavior to affiliation, "the process of publicly performing a connection between practitioners and fans using language, words, cultural symbols, and conventions." He is often self-deprecating in an attempt to make himself appear less as a YouTube celebrity and more like a friend. He recently posted a picture of his cat in the fridge and alludes to how he likes food even more than his pet does. Shane is known to make fat jokes about himself because he has body dysmorphia and he used to be 400 pounds. Shane periodically addresses his illness as a serious topic so his audience knows it isn't always a joke, but he finds it therapeutic to make humor of his situation. Fans feel like they can relate to Shane more when his image presents an imperfect depiction of himself and the content is funny at the same time.

He maintains an image of authenticity by making his Twitter presence appear very casual. Marwick and Boyd propose that "Tweets that are personal, controversial, or negative – in other words, that contradict the stereotype of the overly managed ‘celebrity’ account – signal greater authenticity than safely vetted publicity messages." While many celebrity accounts are managed by a PR team, YouTubers traditionally manage their own social media. However, it is still important for them to practice authenticity to seem like they are presenting their real selves and not an act. Shane posts his fair share of content updates and mostly expresses positivity, but the professionalism of that is counterbalanced by tweeting embarrassing things about himself. In the above tweet, it must be Shane himself because a social media manager wouldn't bother to post it and it reflects a personal experience he had. In this way, Shane reminds his fans every so often that the account expresses his genuine self.

Marwick, Alice, and boyd, Danah, “To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter,” Convergence May 2011 vol. 17 no. 2 139-158.

https://twitter.com/shanedawson