by Shane Dawson
From that point on it only got crazier. Over the next seven years I would be stopped for pictures while I was peeing in a urinal, while I was vomiting outside of a theme park roller coaster, even while on the side of the road after I got into a car accident. But I would also learn how to handle it all surprisingly well. Nowadays, I never take it for granted, and I know that if it wasn’t for people watching my videos I wouldn’t be able to do any of the amazing things I’ve been able to do in the last several years.
The most insane situation was the first VidCon in 2010. For those who don’t know, VidCon is a convention for YouTubers to come together and meet their audiences. It now has over thirty thousand guests every year, but back in 2010 attendance was only a tenth of that. I was invited as a special guest and couldn’t wait to meet the people who had been supporting me. I put on my ugliest vest, which I thought was fashion-forward, and headed to the convention center. During the drive over, I got a call from one of the people working at VidCon, who sounded like he was in crisis mode.
VidCon Worker: Shane?! WHERE ARE YOU??
Shane: On my way. What’s going on?
VidCon Worker: Did you tweet that you were on your way??
Shane: Yes. Is that ok?
VidCon Worker: NO! There’s a riot at the front door!
Shane: A riot? Come on, it can’t be that bad.
I heard a scream in the background and I’m pretty sure I heard “I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!” but I could have been mistaken.
Shane: Oh my God!
VidCon Worker: When you get here we have three security guards. Text me when you are out front and we will assign them to you.
Three security guards?? I’m a YouTuber, not Obama! I make dumb videos on the internet and teach kids about sex. Why was I getting treated like a famous person? It made no sense to me and I was super uncomfortable. I guess I never felt worth that kind of attention; I still don’t. But enough of my self-hatred, let’s get back to the story. So I pulled up to the entrance and saw a crowd of over a thousand kids freaking out and knocking each other over. Some of them were holding signs with my name on them and others were wearing shirts with my face on them. Seeing my face plastered on a bunch of underage girls’ chests was definitely not something I ever thought would happen. Just like I never expected my actual face would ever be on an of-age girl’s chest in my life. I had a lot of emotions flowing through me, and I had an instant panic attack. As I stepped out of the car I was surrounded by teenagers. Three bodyguards walked up and took me by the arms. They escorted me through the crowd, and to say I looked like a douchebag is an understatement. I was a YouTuber surrounded by bodyguards. It doesn’t get any douchier than that.
Luckily I was led to an area in the convention center where I got to do a meet-and-greet with the fans, and I met every single one of them. I stood there for eight hours hugging, taking selfies, signing mothers’ boobs, and just having conversations with them about what was going on in their lives. It was amazing. It was at that moment that I didn’t want to be invisible anymore. I felt like I was really making a difference in these kids’ lives, and because of my videos some of them were able to have a happy escape. It was a magical day, and I will never forget it.
Which leads me back to the shitty Mexican restaurant on a Saturday night not so long ago. As I was leaving, my body decided that I needed to release all that questionable meat, and I needed to release it NOW. I ran to the bathroom, but it was locked, so I stood and waited while GRIPPING my LOUD stomach. A family at a nearby table made eye contact and each had that same familiar “just saw a leprechaun” face. I prayed that they wouldn’t come up to me, because at any moment my stomach was going to make butt gravy and I did NOT want them to smell what I was cooking. But it was too late; the leprechaun had been spotted. The family ran up to me and surrounded me by the bathroom. It was a mom holding a baby, two twelve-year-old kids, and a grandma. They were all speaking at once and asking for a shit-ton of selfies. I took pictures with the baby and the mama, the baby mama, and just the baby. At one point I’m pretty sure I was sitting on the grandma’s lap while she was in her wheelchair. It got weird.
Then the bathroom door opened, so I politely told them good-bye, but to them “good-bye” meant “Let’s go in the bathroom and watch him poop!” They all crowded into the small bathroom with me and started asking for advice on how to get popular on Instagram and if I’m friends with PewDiePie. I was trying to answer all their questions, but I had some of my own “PewDiePie” to make, so I tried my hardest to hint that I was ready for them to leave. Then a waitress walked in. I was relieved because I thought for sure she was going to tell them to get out and possibly give me some kind of free taco gift card. Instead she screamed . . .
Waitress: HEY! DO SHANANAY!
I now was in a single-person bathroom with an entire family and half the crew of the restaurant. Yet, I was still grateful and enjoyed how excited they were, until one of the twelve-year-olds hit me with a truth bomb.
Twelve-Year-Old: I thought you would be hotter in person. You’re kinda ugly. LOL.
I don’t know what was more offensive, the fact that she called me ugly or the fact that she used “LOL” in her everyday language. Either way, I wanted to be invisible. It was the first time since I was young that I had that feeling of wishing I could dissolve into the background. It’s like she reached into my bean-filled body and ripped out my soul with her hand and crushed it. I went home after that and lay in bed for a good few hours and cried. I cried hard. I hadn’t cried like that since Taco Bell came up with that Dorito taco thing. Except there was no happiness in my tears, just heartache. I considered taking a break from YouTube. The thought of going out in public and possibly seeing a fan made my heart shrivel up. What if they thought I was ugly too? What if every fan that has ever met me went back home and told their friends, “OMG, I had no idea Shane Dawson was DEFORMED! LOL!!”
I called my girlfriend, Lisa, and she calmed me down and talked me off the ledge.
Lisa: I know it hurts but just remember that’s one person. There are millions of people who love you and if they saw you in public they would be so happy that they wouldn’t even notice how ugly you are.
Shane: Gee . . . Thanks.
Lisa: I’m kidding. You aren’t ugly. You’re the sweetest, most beautiful guy in the world and there are so many people out there who agree with me. That girl was young and probably so nervous that she just blurted out something stupid. Please don’t let it affect you.
Shane: I know. It’s just hard.
Lisa: Remember all the kids you met at VidCon?
Shane: Ya.
Lisa: Did any of them call you ugly?
Shane: No . . . I guess not.
Lisa: Because they all love you so much. You are like a friend to them, or a creepy but loving older brother, and if you stopped making videos it would break their hearts. They would feel worse than you are feeling right now. Remember that.
And I did. The next day I woke up, showered, tried to make myself look less ugly, and filmed a video. I never want to go back to being invisible even if it means having to deal with the occasional person saying something rude to me. It’s worth it. But you know what’s not worth it? Eating at a Mexican restaurant that has a “C” rating on the window. Trust me. NOT WORTH IT.
HOW TO SURVIVE A HORROR MOVIE
ABOUT THE ARTIST
America Valencia took a drafting class in ninth grade and has been hooked ever since. She went on to study art and architectural design at the Art Institute of California. She is twenty-two years old and grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Reseda, but currently resides nearby in Palmdale as a landscape and pool designer for CLD Designs.
When I was a kid I would run around my house with a knife and pretend to murder my family. I know this sounds like something you might hear in a recording of a serial killer’s therapy session, but I promise i
t’s not that bad. I’ve had an obsession with horror films since I was around five years old. One day, I walked into the living room while my older brother was watching a movie called Child’s Play. It was about a kid whose doll tried to kill him, which I found perfectly plausible because of all the terrible things I forced my dolls to do. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had eventually turned on me. Ask Furby. Actually, don’t bother. I took out his batteries ages ago so he would keep his fucking mouth shut.
Anyways, my obsession with horror only grew when I saw the movie Scream a few years later. From the first scene, when Drew Barrymore gets hacked into pieces and hung on a tree in front of her parents’ house, I was addicted. There’s something so satisfying about watching a fictional character getting ripped to pieces and splattered all over the walls. I’m sure this says something about me as a person and my mental state, but whatever. I like what I like, and what I like is the sound of a knife scraping bone beneath the skin. Sue me!
Every time my friends would come over I would force them to play “the Scream game.” Basically it was me chasing them with a knife and them having to defend themselves with whatever household items were around. The only rules were that we couldn’t actually hurt each other and whoever was the killer couldn’t take off the mask, because if you took off the mask then it was just a kid running around trying to stab his friends, and even we knew that was too creepy.
Around age twelve I made my first short film, and it was more disturbing than any scary movie you’ve ever seen. It was basically me naked in a bathtub full of ketchup choking to death on my own ketchup blood. I’m not sure what the plot was, but it definitely had a twist ending. And by “twist ending” I mean it actually wasn’t filmed by a creepy uncle in a dark basement.
I think the reason I became so obsessed with watching people die in movies is because it was a way for me to feel in control. I had very little control over my life as a kid and there was so much chaos and turmoil around me. My parents were always fighting and we had a lot of financial struggles. Watching horror films was a way for me to escape that and watch people who had even shittier lives than me. And to have a shittier life meant you had to be getting butchered by a seven-foot-tall monster with knives for fingers.
Another attempt at control was to hold in my poop. I would hold it in for days. So much so that when I burped people would ask, “Who farted?”
Either way, my dream was to one day star in my own horror film in which I could run around and get chased by an underpaid actor wearing a mask holding a rubber knife. That day finally came on my twenty-third birthday.
One of my good friends Michael Gallagher called me up and said he was directing a horror film called Smiley and he wanted me to be in it. Before he could even describe the plot I was already a thousand percent in. I could already picture myself covered in blood screaming for my life. I could also picture how many memes of me getting killed were going to be made by my haters. I was PUMPED! He sent me the script and it was a movie about a girl who gets stalked online by a killer who wears a mask with a smiley face carved into it. Not only did I have an epic death scene but I also got to play the killer! TWIST ENDING! This time without homemade child pornography! SCORE!
I showed up to the first rehearsal and met a couple of the other actors. It was the first time I had really acted in something other than YouTube sketches, so I was pretty nervous. I had stalked all of them on IMDb the night before and was immediately intimidated by what I found. They had all been in movies and TV shows, and some had been acting since they were kids. Which meant that while I was running around chasing my friends with a knife in some shitty house in Long Beach, they were on some set in Hollywood eating craft service and trying to divorce their parents! They had the life we normal people only dream about. Most of them were actually really nice.
My first scene was with the lead girl, who played my love interest. Having to act in love with someone you just met is incredibly awkward, especially when you just scarfed down a triple-layer burrito in the backseat of your car fifteen minutes earlier and your breath smells like bean farts. Luckily we decided to save the kiss until we got on set a few days later. That gave me plenty of time to get my mouth ready. I wanted it to be perfect for her. Not because I wanted her to fall in love with me or anything but because I didn’t want her to go on Twitter afterward and say, “OMG just kissed @shanedawson and he tasted like Chipotle diarrhea!” So for the next few days I ate two packs of mints a day, wore four coatings of ultra-glossy ChapStick, and brushed my teeth in the morning and at night. That last one was the most challenging for me. Up until a year ago I didn’t even know that brushing your teeth twice a day was the social norm! My philosophy was once in the morning and that’s it! Why would you do it before bed? Who are you trying to get all fancy for? It’s sleep, not prom!
The first week of production was great. I ate mass amounts of craft service, didn’t fuck up my lines, and was even taught by a sassy extra how to twerk upside down with my feet against a wall. It was everything I had dreamed of as a kid, except for that twerking part. That wasn’t a thing back then, but if it was you better bet my ass would have been twerking all over my house naked and covered in ketchup.
Everything was going great up until the last day of the shoot. I should have known it was going to be rough considering I’d had like five rape dreams in a row the night before, and I usually only have two. I also had some serious backne going on, and I know backne doesn’t sound like a big deal but when you love popping zits as much as I do and you have a cluster of ready-to-go whiteheads chilling in an unreachable part of your back, it’s a nightmare. I used every item in my house I could find to try to pop them. At one point I had a pair of scissors taped to a Swiffer. I shoved the Swiffer between my mattress and box spring, got in a squat position, and leaned back. Unfortunately that just left me with numerous cuts and a really bloody Swiffer. Needless to say, as I walked up to the set that day I already felt off-kilter.
Since this was the first day we were shooting in a house, we had trailers set up outside. I was super pumped because I had never been inside one before. I had heard stories of actors having sex and popping painkillers, and I was excited to do the exact opposite. I was planning on falling asleep and possibly giving myself an over-the-jeans handy. What can I say, I’m a tease. But as I walked into my trailer I was stopped by a producer and was told that unfortunately there was a problem and I wouldn’t be able to stay there. My first thought was, “Who clogged the toilet?” My second thought was, “For once it wasn’t ME who clogged the toilet! Awesome!” But then as I walked away I noticed another actor walking into my trailer and closing the door.
Me: Does he know the toilet’s clogged? Should we tell him? He looks like he eats a lot of kale so I’m assuming he’s only gonna make matters worse.
Producer: The toilet isn’t clogged.
Me: Oh . . . then why am I not in there? Is this because you think I’m gonna do something nasty in there? Because I promise, it’s only above the jeans.
Producer: No, it’s because that actor requested a trailer and it was the last one left.
Me: But . . . it was mine. It had a sign with my name on it. Granted, it was spelled wrong and I’m pretty sure someone extinguished their cigarette on it, but it was still mine.
Producer: He is being kind of a diva. He said he would call his agent if he didn’t get the trailer. Would you mind doing us a solid and just letting him have it?
Me: Do I have a choice?
The producer looked at me with a “not really” look that reminded me of when I used to visit the school nurse and ask if I was in my healthy weight range. So I sucked it up and headed inside the house. He told me that there was a room where I could hang out. He pointed to a door that had a DON’T LET THE CATS OUT! sign on it. Purrfect. But I’m not a diva, so I threw my stuff down on some cats and whipped out my phone to look up this actor’s Twitter to see ho
w many followers he had. I saw that he had less than a thousand and I had a million. That gave me a good few minutes of shallow but necessary joy. I also loved that he gave his fans a pet name yet every tweet that he would send out to them had zero likes or retweets. It felt like a little gift from Jesus. Anyway, the first scene was coming up, and it was the one I had been waiting for, the big kiss. I hoped she wasn’t allergic to cats.
My friend the director walked up to me with the girl playing my love interest and let us know how it was going to go down.
Director: Ok, so you guys are going to slowly kiss and then make your way to the bed.
Love Interest: Cool.
Me: Cool.
This seemed to be going well! Just two professional actors about to make out on camera in front of a hundred fat dudes holding up lights and holding in their farts. Totally easy! Everything was going great until another actress playing the part of my love interest’s best friend walked over and grabbed her away from me. They walked to the other side of the room and looked like they were getting into some kind of intense conversation. You would have thought they were actually best friends, not just playing them in some horror movie. Me being the nosiest person in the world, I decided to walk past them and completely eavesdrop on the convo.
BFF: Don’t do anything you aren’t comfortable with.
Love Interest: What do you mean?
BFF: I’ve done plenty of love scenes before and the guy ALWAYS tries to shove his tongue down my throat. One guy even flicked my nipple.
Love Interest: What? Why?
BFF: I don’t know. I guess nipple flicking is a thing in Japan. It was a foreign movie. Anyway, the point is, don’t let him do anything to you.
