【2004 Archives】

Shane Dawson released the second episode of his Jake Paul docu-series004 Archives and ... things don't look so good.

The Dark Side of Jake Paulopens with a scene from one of Paul's vlogs. Dawson looks into how Paul treats his Team 10 roommates, showing a clip of him pranking fellow YouTuber Tessa Brooks with the "buried alive prank."

Smothering her in blankets while she sleeps and blasting siren noises, Paul wakes Tessa up by convincing her she's in the back of an ambulance with a serious injury.

It’s not the first, and definitely not the last, time that Paul has brushed off cruelty as “just a joke.”

In The Dark Side of Jake Paul, Dawson interviews YouTuber and clinical therapist Kati Morton about what defines a sociopath.

“If anybody could tell me what to look for, it would be you,” he tells her.

Describing sociopaths as a "rollercoaster," Morton explains typical characteristics that somebody with antisocial personality disorder might embody: They're charming enough to "woo your grandma" but will end up being manipulative, tend to break rules, and will act impulsively.

“If you’re around people like this, if you sense what I sense about them, it’s like a pit in your stomach,” she says. “They have no empathy.”

As she dives into sociopathic traits, the episode cuts to scenes from the Paul brothers' videos. When discussing the tendency to mimic socially acceptable behaviors instead of understanding them, Dawson cuts to the infamous Laura Lee apology video.

"If they're mimicking," Morton says. "They're honing their craft. So if they're not good at it, they won't illicit the right response."

Although the series has been widely hailed as a fascinating look into what it means to be a YouTuber, some Twitter users weren't impressed by the way Dawson has approached discussing mental illnesses. They criticized him for "demonizing" people with mental illness, and said that Morton's sweeping generalizations of people with antisocial personality disorder were unfair, since not everyone who has it is as inherently evil as she depicts them to be.

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Even Shane takes a moment to reflect on his own mental health: “The more I help people, the worse I’m getting. And this experience with Jake ... this very much feels like the breaking point to realize that, maybe it’ll be good to realize that I can’t help him.”

“I’m spiraling,” he says, realizing that what she described defines so many people in his life. “Anybody could be a sociopath. Anybody.”

In Part 3, Dawson will take a look at the Paul family and all of their fucked-up antics. Stay tuned.