YouTube star and media personality Shane Dawson announced Tuesday on social media that he’d proposed to his boyfriend, fellow YouTuber Ryland Adams.
“HE SAID YES!!!!!! :,))))),” Dawson tweeted, alongside a series of aww-worthy pictures.
But some people are skeptical about the timing.
Two days after Dawson tweeted a defensive and disturbingly graphic message announcing that he had not performed any illicit acts on his cat Cheeto, the 30-year-old internet superstar and bestselling author changed his tone:
“THIS IS THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE AHHHHHHHHH!!!! THANK U GUYS FOR ALL THE LOVE MY HEART IS LITERALLY GONNA EXPLODE,” he wrote.
Some signs were already pointing out to an insta-perfect engagement. Earlier in the day, Dawson announced the couple was celebrating three years together. and posted a selfie wearing the shirt from their first date: “Happy Thickaversary!”
But in a series of eight tweets just days before, an apologetic and angry Dawson wanted to clarify a story about a cat that had resurfaced online.
The controversy involved an episode of “Shane And Friends” from Sept. 11, 2015 where Dawson claimed that his “first sexual experience” had been with a cat when he was 19. The episode is no longer on SoundCloud’s Shane and Friends page, but Twitter user @magician_dragon found the audio on Google Play Music and posted it for the world to hear.
That was “based on a dumb and awful sketch idea,” he said this week. But when an “opportunity came up” to use that idea for a “funny moment” in his podcast, Dawson said he had to go for it.
It’s unclear if the kitty he was referring was Cheeto, who currently has more than a million followers on an Instagram page shared with fellow furry friends Uno and Honey.
In a video entitled “Shane Dawson Pulls a Kevin Spacey – Deflection Card Activated,” YouTube user Memology 101 speculates that the engagement announcement could be just a way for the YouTuber to shine the scandal spotlight away from him. He compared it to a 2017 scandal, when the former House of Cards star announced he was gay, amid a furor over sex allegations against him. He was then accused of using his outing as as excuse.
“He is playing the Kevin Spacey defense: In which he can’t be accused of harassment, because he is gay,” he writes on a video. “Well played Shane, well played.”
The Daily News has reached out to Dawson’s reps for comment.
