#James Charles and Jeffree Star can still pull millions in the first day that is so embarassing

[radredrecluse]

what the james charles Drama actually taught us

beauty guru drama?? relevant to MY blog?? 

for anyone who still cares...and isn’t mad at me for bringing this up again...but first needs the quickest rundown, this 19y/o kid’s name was on your feed at one point or another (even the fucking NY Times got him ffs) because he needed a way to upgrade to more exclusive coachella tickets so he could escape a fan mob, and in doing so, did a quick promo for a brand that happened to be a competitor of his 37y/o beauty youtube friend Tati. Tati felt so threatened by this that she pulled a whole video out of her ass making false claims about James instead of just answering his gd texts about the situation. she accused him of sexually preying on “straight” guys and tricking them which, sidenote, was actually so weird to watch because it’s such a non-issue to begin with but she clearly didn’t care enough about it in the first place if she only chose to use it for dirt. performative or not, she really chose to die on the PROTECT THE FRAGILE STRAIGHTS hill and, as you probably saw, so did the rest of the internet. suddenly livestreams of James and Tati’s subcounts were like source and sink, all the platforms were having a field day dragging this kid through the mud, Jeffree Star (33y/o) was being vicious, and some boys were coming forward for 15 minutes of fame, including a guy named Gage who’s just....

(^^from “Girls, I hear you” aka “I believe I have a newfound kinship with women so I’ll take their word from now on”)

(^^on tana mongeau defending james🙃)

moving on, this whole shitshow was a slanderous, homophobic attack that would understandably drive anyone near suicide, and it did. James dealt with all of this while he was away from his family. imo he was way too forgiving, not that he was given much of a choice, but i am SO glad he mentioned the emotional damage that closeted bi men do to gay men who are out.

aside from my issue with a 37 y/o admitting to feeling so “betrayed” by a boy almost 20 years her junior, what are some of the bigger messages here?

youtubers are people too, but they are businesspeople. their personal lives are frequently on public display, and they can publicly destroy each other, with the help of MILLIONS, at the slightest misunderstanding-turned-sob-story (i.e. tati crying on instagram over the notorious product promo) 

like i said in my first post, people know how sexual orientation works. the fluidity bullshit came to a halt the minute there was a rumor that a straight guy was being “manipulated” by a gay guy. 

Tati, a bunch of other grown ass bullies, and the rest of the internet, jumped at the opportunity to frame a gay kid as predatory and inappropriate. something tells me she really didn’t like hearing him talk about cute boys at the dinner table for all of two minutes.  

James Charles has a habit of pursuing relationship failure, willfully ignores emotional red flags, and often gets strung along. that is not something to ridicule a person for, that’s psychological self-harm.

Now for some bomb analysis from @tervacious💕

There are posts on her blog here and here if you want more bc you were in as deep as we were.

#god this starts out like a buzzfeed article #sincerest apologies fr

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What are we willing to cancel people over, anyway?

Beautube continues to be the messy hellscape that it is, but the feud that went down between two major YouTubers just goes to show that nobody is above drama. Still, James Charles has a history of problematic behavior — why did it take until now for the community to cancel him? 

YouTube's beauty community was shaken on Friday when Tati Westbrook dropped a 43-minute video exposing her longtime friend and mentee James Charles. Among other reprehensible behavior, Tati also denounced his habit of allegedly sexually harassing straight men. 

The takedown followed weeks of rumors, screenshots, and snarky reaction videos from other vloggers, so it wasn't new, but it was the catalyst that has other influencers distancing themselves from the teenage makeup guru. 

If you're unfamiliar with the wild world of beauty YouTube, here's a rundown of all the people involved. 

James Charles is a 19-year-old beauty maven who went viral in 2016 for not only wearing makeup in his senior photos, but also being extra enough to bring a ring light to emphasize his highlighter. Later that year, he became the first male spokesperson for CoverGirl. Since then, he's amassed an immense social media following — at its peak, he had 15 million subscribers on YouTube. 

Charles' nearly overnight fame reached a climax usually reserved for traditional celebrities, not influencers, when he was invited to the Met Gala earlier in May. He raised eyebrows when he called the invitation "a step forward in the right direction for influencer representation in the media" in an Instagram post.

But after his rapid ascent to stardom, Charles is now crashing back down. He's been cancelled.

So I retook my senior photos & brought my ring light with me so my highlight would be poppin. I love being extra 💀 pic.twitter.com/7Qu1yu8U2P

— James Charles (@jamescharles) September 5, 2016

SEE ALSO: Men's makeup brands are discreet — and all over Instagram

Tati Westbrook is a 37-year-old makeup YouTuber who also owns Halo Beauty, a supplement company that sells gummy vitamins for strengthening hair and nails. Her direct competitor is Sugar Bear Hair, a similar company whose products have been endorsed by a variety of influencers, including the Kardashian-Jenner clan. 

Tati has been "like a mother" to James, according to James himself. She took the budding star under her wing when his career was just kicking off — and he even did her wedding makeup. 

Keeping up? Good, because this is where it gets messy. 

On April 22, James posted an endorsement for Sugar Bear Hair on his Instagram story after the company supposedly helped him with a security issue during Coachella. Without naming names, Tati said she felt "lost" and "betrayed" on her Instagram story. 

"When you do so much for people in your life and they not only don't return the favor, but they just don't even see you," Tati said in her tearful video. "I feel really used." 

James publicly apologized in similarly teary Instagram story the next day, and told his followers that he "did not think about the competition."

"She has been like a mother to me since my first days in this industry," he said in his public apology, adding that he didn't accept any money for the post and that he uses Tati's vitamin brand daily. "And has given me more love, support, resources, and advice than I could ever ask for."

Fellow makeup YouTuber Gabriel Zamora — who you might remember from the YouTube apology fiasco in summer 2018 known as Dramageddon — weighed in on the situation. In a video posted on May 4, he chided Tati for her immature reaction. 

"All these videos are being made where James is being made out to be this horrible human being and I'm just confused as to what happened," Gabriel said.

In response, Tati posted a video on Friday titled "BYE SISTER," a play on James' signature vlog intro, "Hi sisters!" The lengthy video dives into why Tati felt unappreciated by James, from his hesitation to promote her brand to his reluctance to collaborate with her. She publicly severed ties with him, concluding that it was "painful to lose someone you care about, that you thought would be in your life forever, but the chapter's closed."

Since dropping the video, Tati has been rapidly gaining followers as James loses them. Twitter users and other influencers paid attention.

drama aside, i have something to say.... ❤️https://t.co/Hn20TgNSzM❤️ pic.twitter.com/vRPFCTJIEJ

— Shane Dawson (@shanedawson) May 12, 2019

Image: Twitter Screenshot/Jefree Star

As of Monday morning, James has lost more than 2.5 million subscribers in three days, according to SocialBlade. Tati, meanwhile, gained more than 2.9 million since posting the video. To put that into perspective, as vlogger Callum Markie noted, Logan Paul gained 80,000 subscribers after filming a victim of suicide in Japan. 

But the backlash isn't just over snubbing a friend — it's over a much more concerning issue. Although the majority of the video was about her personal relationship with James, it also shed light on his toxic habit of allegedly sexually harassing straight men. 

"Oh my god, you tried to trick a straight man into thinking he's gay yet again," Tati ranted in her video, recalling a phone conversation she recently had with James. "And somehow, you're the victim." 

She continued:

Tati was alluding to just one of many instances where James toyed with straight men. The receipts channel Spill laid out several examples, including his questionable relationship with model Gage Gomez. In April, Gomez posted a video calling James out for continuing to pursue him despite repeatedly turning him down. 

"[He] pushed his emotions onto me to guilt me into trying something that I didn't want to do," the model said. 

James has also publicly hit on Shawn Mendes, leaving suggestive comments on the singer's Instagram live videos and tweets. 

He later apologized in a tweet, and said he was "sorry if he [Shawn] felt sexually harassed."

After Tati's video, others came forward. Someone who claimed to be a former classmate tweeted that James allegedly sexually assaulted her friend. Singer Zara Larsson also tweeted that James repeatedly hit on her boyfriend, despite knowing that he's straight. And in a supercut of James' vlogs, a Twitter user showed the numerous times the beauty guru admitted he enjoyed pursuing heterosexual men because "it's easier than you think."

It's about time James Charles stopped getting a pass for his repeatedly toxic behavior. But why did it take a video from Tati for the internet to finally cancel him? Twitter user @Quantum_King_ questioned why Tati protected James for years, despite public knowledge that he harassed men both in person and on social media. 

Did Tati Westbrook expose a predator or did she harbour a predator until she felt under appreciated by him?

— Brokeryn Martell 🇱🇨🇯🇲 (@Quantum_King_) May 11, 2019

If James Charles would’ve promoted tati’s vitamins, do y’all think she still would’ve made that video exposing him for being trash? Let’s discuss

— femme fatale (@eliesaaab) May 12, 2019

And others pointed out how hypocritical it was for Jeffree Star, another member of the YouTube beauty community, to speak out against James despite his own problematic past. (Star has since deleted his tweet, but there is a screenshot included above.)

seeing my mutuals dragging james charles while simultaneously supporting jeffree star and it’s interesting pic.twitter.com/TJHlxo2tkv

— 𝖙 𝖉𝖆𝖜𝖌 (@tamiamakay) May 12, 2019

Is James Charles being canceled because of his actions, or because the internet loves drama? It's been nearly a year since Dramageddon tore Beautube apart, exposing multiple YouTubers for their racist tweets. 

Somehow, James' own racist remarks weren't pulled into the whirlwind of cancellation. When he made a transphobic comment earlier in 2019 about how he wasn't "full gay" because he had been attracted to trans men, he received some backlash but got away relatively unscathed. Why is it Tati's video that's tanking his career? 

Maybe it's because the internet is willing to give a pass to its faves, until it's time to grab some popcorn and watch a feud go down. It's good that the internet is finally done with James — the face of the beauty community absolutely should not be a predator. But nobody paid attention or sought to hold him accountable until there was a friendship break up involved. 

The influencers at the center of Dramageddon have more or less recovered from 2018's Beautube culling. Gabriel Zamora continues to make videos. Nikita Dragun was just profiled in Forbes. Manny MUA is still releasing products from his makeup line, Lunar Beauty. Even Laura Lee, whose iconically terrible apology video fueled Twitter memes for weeks, seems fine according to Instagram. 

Will James Charles' cancellation last, or will the internet accept him into the fold again like it did with Jeffree Star? Despite his many controversies, Star is a multimillionaire thriving on top of a massive beauty empire.  

"A lot of most of my career over the last two years has been about me making mistakes and trying to learn and grow from them," James stated in his apology video posted Friday. "And I haven't always done the best job of that. I can admit that, but I have always tried ... I wish I could say this is the last time that I make a mistake, but it won't be." 

And as his beauty vlogger predecessors have proven, he's at least right about that. Will he stay canceled? Hopefully. Will more makeup-centered drama go down in the near future and take down more racist, transphobic predators? God, we hope so. 

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The art of the YouTube apology video

When an actor messes up, they typically have a team of managers, agents, and crisis managers to back them up with handcrafted personal statements apologizing for their actions. 

When a beauty guru messes up, they set up their tripods, get the tears going, and hit record. 

SEE ALSO: YouTube breakup videos are basically a requirement now. Here's why.

Much like break up videos, apology videos are almost a rite of passage for YouTubers. Since their content is so personal, their apologies have to be, too. As content creators' offensive internet histories get exposed, apology videos are becoming more and more common. There's almost a formula to them: You sob, you apologize for whatever you did wrong, you sob some more, beg for forgiveness from your fans, and then wrap it up with a teary thank-you. 

The most recent example of this tearsfest is Laura Lee, a beauty vlogger who was once just shy of 5 million subscribers, but lost 200,000 once she was exposed for racist tweets this month. A video she posted, simply titled "My Apology," went viral for all the wrong reasons. 

Content creator Keem mocked Lee in a video that broke down the types of apology videos that YouTubers make, from gamers apologizing for a racist comment to vloggers apologizing for filming a dead body. 

In 2012 Lee tweeted, "tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster." 

When fans of another rival beauty guru dug up the vile tweet, Lee went silent. She deactivated her Twitter account, deleted her old tweets, and then came back to Twitter with a lengthy Notes app apology. In the statement, she blamed the fact that she grew up as a "small town girl from Alabama" who lacked the "cultural education" that she has now. 

Five days later, she followed up with this apology video. 

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to you guys," she whimpers, frequently stopping mid-sentence to sob into her hands. "It hurts me so bad to disappoint you all who have supported me for many years. I know that I'm better than that person." 

The four-minute video was dragged for being (for lack of a better word) total bullshit. One commenter called it "so funny to watch bc it’s so forced." Another joked that it was "proof that youtubers shouldn't be actors."

Someone wrote fake captions over her video, and people turned her into a meme on Twitter. It even inspired parodies. 

whoever wrote the caption for laura lee’s apology is my hero pic.twitter.com/S4406OSgmV

— 𝕙𝕒𝕓𝕚𝕓𝕒 (@denimIester) August 20, 2018

Laura Lee is part of a group of beauty gurus who all apologized for their problematic pasts, but hers is the one getting criticized the most. 

But is there a "right" way to apologize? Crisis manager Eden Gillott Bowe says there may not be a one size fits all way to say "I'm sorry," but there is a basic formula that best gets the point across. Like Olivia Pope in Scandal, Gillott Bowe fixes messy situations. 

"If you know you've done something wrong, you don't want to hide it because the truth always finds a way of coming out," Gillott Bowe said over the phone. "So you just want to deal with it quickly." 

Compare Lee's apology to that of another member of the beauty guru clique that broke apart over this past week, Gabriel Zamora. 

In contrast to Lee's tears, Zamora opens the video by explaining that the version he's posting is the third version he's recorded because he was more levelheaded than in the first two. 

"I'm like, you know what? This isn't just about my emotions," he admits in the video.

Gillott Bowe recommends staying as calm as possible, like Zamora, while doing damage control. 

"Try not to be too reactionary and just take a moment to think about how it's going to be perceived," she said. "If I jump out and say this, how might it be taken the wrong way?"

With that in mind, here's the backstory on all the beauty guru drama.  

Fellow vlogger and Lee and Zomara's former friend Jeffree Star — who has his own history of being horrifically racist and according to the Washington Post, once joked about "throwing battery acid on a black girl's face to lighten her skin so that her foundation matches" — was the subject of a Shane Dawson documentary series on YouTube that examined Star's life and reputation.

The last installation of the five part series discusses the public feud Star had with his ex-friend group. Star says that "people still don't really know what went on" that broke down the group, and that "there's so many versions of things that never happened out there."

In response, Zamora posted a photo of himself, Laura Lee, Manny MUA, and Nikita Dragun captioned "Bitch is bitter because without him we're doing better," referring to Star. Zamora topped it off in a now-deleted tweet that said, "Imagine stanning a racist? I could never."

That kicked off a stan-led scrape through the four YouTubers' Twitter histories, which unearthed hateful tweets from years ago. Manny MUA, Laura Lee, and Gabriel Zamora all made separate videos apologizing for their actions; Nikita Dragun addressed it on Twitter. 

But why does Star get a pass on his past actions, while Lee's getting dropped from all of her brand partnerships? Fans agreed that their apology videos made all the difference. 

The difference is they both acknowledged their mistakes years ago and have actively worked to better themselves and let it show through their actions. Laura barely made an apology, cried fake tears, and tried to blame it on everything else, like "I was raised in a small town"

— Future 👩🏻‍⚕️ (@K_Wolstenholme) August 23, 2018

They felt the same way about Zamora's apology video. Stans thought that compared to Lee's apology, it was significantly more genuine because he walked through how he would improve. Commenters lauded Zamora's apology as "a great example" and "like sitting with a friend." 

if Gabriel Zamora gaining back all the subs he lost and then some isn’t proof that all we want as viewers are real people telling the truth...i don’t know what is pic.twitter.com/Im0NNfCUKr

— spektader (@spektader) August 22, 2018

Makeup fans haven't forgiven Star entirely, though. Some wish he'd face the same consequences as Lee. 

im glad this is happening but i wish the same energy would’ve been kept for Jeffree Star and James Charles https://t.co/8okPymP00H

— deja 🏳️‍🌈 (@dejaistired) August 23, 2018

Gillott Bowe recommends that when crafting an apology, whether to a friend in private or to an entire fanbase through a public statement, you don't want to keep repeating "I'm sorry." 

"You want to be sincere," she said. "You don't want to dwell on it. Once you say you're sorry you don't want to belabor it." 

In Zamora's video, he said, "I don't want to give excuses ... it was ignorant, it was stupid." Instead of jumping to begging his subscribers not to call him racist, he asked them to take time to process his apology. He also linked two videos about the history of the N word and a lecture from author Ta-Nehisi Coates about "words that don't belong to everyone." 

Then, in typical YouTuber fashion, he moved on and exposed Lee and Manny MUA for throwing him under the bus and refusing to take accountability when their tweets were exposed.

Fed up of going on YouTube and all the videos being titled ‘my truth’, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘my apology’. I just want to watch a fucking makeup tutorial

— georgia (@georgievowles) August 23, 2018

Although that's exactly the kind of drama YouTube subscribers want to hear, Gillott Bowe probably wouldn't go for that cutthroat, spilling the tea approach. She'd rather her clients wrap up an apology by looking forward. 

"You talk about the future," she said. "The things you want to change to make sure it doesn't happen again, and then you stay positive." 

So for future YouTubers who need to make an apology — whether it's Tana Mongeau apologizing for calling her black friend a racial slur or Jenna Marbles apologizing for being an unprepared fish owner — here's the formula that Gillott Bowe endorses. 

1. Open with something positive.

Gillott Bowe recommends "easing into it" by thanking people for their support.

2. Say you're sorry and don't drag it on.

"Focus right on the apology," she said. Don't try to skirt responsibility or avoid taking accountability. It's better for all parties if you just own up to what you did wrong. 

3. End on a good note.

Gillott Bowe calls this a "compliment sandwich." You want to close the apology with something "nice and hopeful," like outlining the steps you'll take to improve.

4. Don't do it again.

She brings up a quote often misattributed to Albert Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"People have a tremendous capacity to forgive," Gillott Bowe explains, "But you don't want to keep apologizing if you're going to end up doing shitty things again anyway." 

Navigating the public sphere after a major scandal will probably be rocky for a while, but Gillott Bowe is sure that if an apology is genuine, the person at fault will be OK. 

"There are the kinds of people who are going to hate you no matter what you do," she said. "But if the people in the middle could be swayed either way, those are the people you're gearing toward."

Or, you know, you could also just try not to be racist. 

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