Conspiring to Entertain

By: Cory R.

Shane Dawson’s new series, Conspiracy Theory, on his YouTube channel, has been gaining a lot of views lately. Shane has been on YouTube since 2005, the same year the platform was started. Shane lately has been uploading hour-long parts of documentaries. His latest venture is about conspiracy theories. In the series, he goes into theories such as Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza being reused, an iPhone glitch in which the person answering the phone can hear the person before they pick up, as well as a fellow video maker, own conspiracy. He also goes into A.I. voices and deep fakes of celebrities. In the first video, Shane talks about the Woolsey Fire that devastated California and how a conspiracy theory says the government started it, which at first sounds ridiculous but Shane is very good at making a person believe what he wants somebody to believe.

Which goes into my first problem, Shane says he doesn’t like being biased, but in the videos. Although his thoughts might change, such as the Chuck E. Cheese pizza one, you can still tell what he believes. The first video starts out with Shane just acting crazy and listening to his phone, but that's not the first conspiracy they dive into. The first conspiracy they talk about is deep fakes. Deep fakes is a video where somebody takes a celebrities face and put it on something else, it looks super real and for some reason, there’s a lot of Nicholas Cage ones. Shane explains them and how they could be used to start a war. He says that deep fakes can ruin lives and they can cause war. The second conspiracy they talked about was a continuation of the start of the video with Shane listening to his phone. The conspiracy they talk about is an iPhone glitch that you could hear somebody before they picked up, which was proven to be true and later fixed by Apple. Shane goes into how our phones could be listening to us which would break the law. The third conspiracy he talks about is the Woolsey Fire which took place in California in 2018. A man got a video on thermal that showed something like a laser hitting the place where the fire started. Shane goes and visits where the fire took place and just goes around the houses that were burnt. After the Woolsey Fire, Shane talks about how children’s T.V. shows might be trying to brainwash kids, which is somewhat happening. T.V. shows try to get kids to get their parents to buy toys and such.

In the second part to the series Shane focuses on his friend and fellow YouTuber Bridgett who had some trouble with her ex-husband that doesn’t really sound like a theory and probably should’ve had a video of its own, it just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the conspiracies in the video. The conspiracy that had people talking the most is that Chuck E. Cheese recycles pizza, and from Shane’s evidence it seems like they do. He shows that the pizza cuts don’t line up and that the pepperoni cuts off. It is weird and since the video was released, there has been talks that Chuck E. Cheese can take legal action against Shane, but they haven’t yet. Shane also goes to a Chuck E. Cheese’s and one of the workers apparently act weird when he asks about the pizza. The other theory they discuss isn’t really a theory but more just something interesting, programs online can now allow you to recreate your voice, sometimes it's similar, sometimes it's not. It just depends on the person and how they record their voice. The conspiracies that Shane talks about aren’t bad, but Shane is really good at making you believe what he wants you to believe which is honestly scary because he’s such a influence to people.