Book Review: I Hate Myselfie by Shane Dawson

I Hate Myselfie by Shane Dawson is a collection of essays by Shane Dawson. For those who don’t know, Shane Dawson is a YouTuber who makes sketch comedy videos, challenge videos, and collabs about candy. Lots of candy. And food. There’s a lot of food on his channel. In fact, if he could date food, he probably would. Maybe. He also has a podcast called Shane and Friends which is delightfully funny. This book is a collection of short, funny and awkward stories from various times in his life. Some I knew about from watching his videos and listening to his podcast, and others were new to me. But all of them were entertaining and funny.

I feel like I should have reviewed this closer to the date when it was released, because in my mind that’s what all the serious reviewers do (I know, I’m probably imagining this), but I was still in university when this came out and didn’t get around to buying it until recently. Plus, I like to review things willy-nilly. Meaning, whatever book I just finished reading, I’ll review, and I don’t really plan reviews around release dates unless I get asked to (look at me pretending like I’ve been doing this for a long time, or that people actually ask me for reviews).

This is the first memoir type book that I’ve read willingly. Believe it or not, I actually have a section on my bookshelf for memoirs, but most of them are from school. Some of them I actually enjoyed reading (although they got quite dark and depressing at times) and others I just pretended to read and might have bluffed my way through a question or two on the exam. But this book is the first one I’ve actually gone out and bought of my own free will.

So, three paragraphs in and you still don’t really know what I thought of the book…well let’s get to it, shall we? I enjoyed this book. This book was funny. This book was a bit shocking. This book made me wonder how the hell Shane didn’t die when he ate 250 packets of fake sugar a day. It also made me want to drink a gallon of water after reading that story. It also lets the reader further into the life of Shane Dawson. He’s generally pretty open about his life on the internet, but because it’s a book it allows for time for Shane to fully explain stories and give them the length they need. It also allows the reader to fully sit with them and become immersed, rather than just hearing about it. They get to visualize it in their heads. That being said most of the stories are fairly short and it is a pretty quick read, but it is a different experience from the podcast or his videos.

Shane also put artwork that his fans did at the beginning of each essay, which I found to be incredibly sweet. A lot of people get the impression that he’s a jerk, or that he’s racist, but he seems to genuinely care about his audience, and be thankful for them. Either that or he has the coldest heart ever and is extremely good at faking it. But I think it’s the former. Shane Dawson has inspired me in a lot of ways. For a while I thought about being a YouTuber but decided I didn’t really want to go that route. But just seeing how he worked hard for what he wanted in life, and seeing him go after his dreams, it helped inspire me to go after mine. Plus all the times he’s messed up. That may sound bad, but knowing that he’s not perfect and still manages to be successful is nice. A lot of times we get pictures of people who are successful and we think that they’re perfect and have zero problems, but in reality they’re people too. They have bad days too. I bet they even procrastinate sometimes.

Ultimately, this was a nice book to read. I would recommend this book if you’d like something funny, or if you’d like to know a bit more about Shane Dawson.