So there I was getting the teapot ready for Wilbur and I.
'cause you know how we like to sip some tea on this channel from time to time.
And I turn around for a couple of seconds to call Wilfur in the kitchen
and as I do that he looks at me like
"Ah, Andrei... you might want to turn around
and check up on that James Charles tea
'cause it's spilling ALL OVER THE PLACE!"
The beauty community has absolutely exploded in the last couple of weeks.
There's probably thousands of videos on this topic,
and everyone's jumping on it as soon as something new comes to light.
But Willfur and I have been watching from the shadows taking our time...
You may have seen my previous video on the topic
But that was before things blew up to the proportion that they have at this point (no kidding)
That video treated the situation very much at a surface level,
and didn't include all of the details that we know now.
This situation had been brewing for some time within the beauty community,
but it became an internet sensation
when Tati Westbrook made a 40-minute video exposing James Charles.
making him lose almost three million subscribers overnight.
His downfall was celebrated across the internet
Tati was hailed as the victorious champion,
and James's crown as the '#1 Beauty Guru' was by default inherited by Jeffree Star
Then, out of nowhere, James pulled the biggest reverse card in history,
exposing Jeffree Star who pretty much was like:
"I'm not playing this game anymore".
And everybody who had initially jumped on Tati's boat was now like:
"Uhh... maybe James wasn't that bad after all"
*Chuckles nervously in Romanian*
This whole thing has been pure insanity!
So for the purpose of encompassing the entire scope of this beef,
we're gonna take our time and tell the whole story in a multi-part series that breaks down the entire timeline,
addresses every single detail, and tells everybody's point of view.
The beauty community is so rich in drama and so fascinating to study.
It's almost hypnotizing to any outsider looking in.
It's got heroes and villains, and kings and queens, and people building up empires, and
backstabbings, empires crumbling (next thing you know there's gonna be dragons)...
It's like Game of Thrones on steroids or like I guess vitamins
*MOAR NERVOUS ROMANIAN CHUCKLES*
I've just recently started to explore it more in-depth and it honestly feels like I'm reading Dante's Inferno
Except there's a tenth circle of hell, which is the beauty community but over here on this channel
We're doing our best to research every aspect of the situation at hand and deliver it back to you in a way that's digestible (#MAILMANANDREI)
Even for somebody who doesn't know any of the people involved.
Now with that out of the way
Let's recap everything that led up to the social blade carnage of May 10th, 2019
James Charles came up on the Beauty scene as a prodigy. (why u gotta make him so cute ToT)
He was very young showing signs of ambition and intelligence beyond his years and he quickly made himself noticed his strategy whether
conscious or not was pretty basic get associated with people who are more successful,
learn from them, use their help and support to keep growing (DAYUM DATS A THICC BABY) and get more and more established and because he was so young and talented
and showed so much potential he quickly outgrew
everybody around him in
Influence and relevance and took the crown as the number one beauty guru on the platform while he was still a teenager
Now most of what we know about James Charles's origin story is from Tati's point of view
Based on the now deleted video 'Bye Sister',
But by filtering out the elements that have been disputed
I think we can get a pretty clear picture of what the truth actually is. (and a clear picture of happy green balls)
What we know for sure, based on Tati's screenshots, is that she was talking to James in November, 2016
when according to social blade he had around 300,000 subscribers, but she also mentions that they were in contact before
covergirl(/boy I guess) and cross-checking that with social blade shows that he must have had as little as
50,000 subscribers when he reached out to Tati who at this point had over 2 million.
"Umm he contacted me through
my DMS, he always told me that I was the reason that he
Wanted to get into makeup, that he was inspired to start his channel and it was just nice to hear to be honest
I was like cool like how can I help you?
I made the choice that I was gonna help him
Like a lot of people online were crapping all over him and I had his back back then."
It's also important to note that James came from a small town called Bethlehem
No, not that Bethlehem
the one in the state of New York
But this time he had moved by himself to California (omg why u gotta make him so cute O//u//O). Leaving his parents back home on the East Coast
So this friendship with Tati morphed into somewhat more of a parental dynamic. His mother wasn't with him
So Tati being almost 20 years older sort of took her under her wing and assumed the role of a de facto mother
Now, Tati's husband's name is also James
So this can get a little confusing but James Westbrook, according to Tati, happened to be a very knowledgeable
Businessman who by extension became sort of a business dad figure to James Charles
"My husband ran an agency,
He was the VP of motion pictures,
He knows the industry through and through. He has built businesses and sold them
He is so insanely intelligent.
Deals, contracts, business development. He's a master at it and anytime that James would need help
He'd be like dad. What should I do? and he'd come over and he'd be like I don't like my manager
Will you manage me and James is like no, I'm not doing that. I don't do that anymore
But your family, how can I help you?
My husband would spend hours on the phone looking over contracts getting him in a better position.
He was making $90 a video
And because of me and my husband. He was making 2,500 (Christ this kid is rolling in it) immediately from a switch being flipped
So that's just like a small sample of some of the things that we've done for James Charles."
You know how they always say you shouldn't mix friendships with business. Well, it seems like James Westbrook
,Tati's husband, knew this by setting a boundary and refusing to be James Charles's manager, (clever boy..)
He drew a line in the sand while still being very supportive as a friend
Well,
It seems like for James Charles and Tati that line in the sand was never drawn and because of the age difference and this
Mother-son dynamic he just took and took (omg this animation though) her love and support and she gave and gave everything she had and what happened
According to Tati's narrative is that he became an entitled spoiled brat
he never went through the conventional struggles of building up a YouTube channel
like ,ahem, the rest of us peasants
In his case Tati gave him valuable advice,
She helped him with brand deals and opportunities worth
Millions and millions of dollars.
W
Which allowed him to just focus on the creative side of his craft. (AAAAAAAA why u gotta draw him so cute?!?!)
It's almost as if he played the game on easy mode. Bouncing around with superpowers leaving everybody behind walking at half speed now
I'm 27 years old and if somebody were to gave me millions of dollars like that
My moral compass would get all *DUCK SOUNDS* up, too
I mean hell give me a five-dollar Walmart coupon and you'll have to refer to me as
sssSSSSSSIR from now on
but there's a certain path of ups and downs that you need to go through in order to be able to
Handle success in a healthy way. At 27 years old,I don't think I'm ready to handle all of that
I can't imagine what it did to his ego at 17, 18 years old.
If you watch Game of Thrones you're familiar with the character of Prince Joffrey,
I'm not talking specific spoilers here for anybody who hasn't watched the show yet (phew thank goodness)
But Joffrey is a spoiled child who
Inherited a kingdom on a silver platter with nobody to keep him in check and he became one of the most evil and hateable characters ever written (HHMMM SEEMS FAMILIAR)
In a video Tati presents James almost like a Joffrey type personality
Who saw himself above the beauty community. A king who could do whatever he wanted without consequences (HHHHHHMMMMMMMMM)
He got into controversy, after
controversy, after
Controversy and was even proud of the fact that it all just raised his popularity
Now the obvious take away from Tati's 40-minute video was the sexual predatory behavior.
All the hitting on straight guys
That's what most people took and ran with to take James Charles down
But I feel like it's equally important to focus on the more subtle arguments that she made against him
"So he was popping off online about
exposing the beauty community and doing a docu-series and I was like 'No
How entitled do you have to be to think that you have it rough?
You are a 19 year old millionaire.' So after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of talk
He arrived at the decision to not do it. I was like 'it's gonna be like the downfall of your career
Don't do it, like don't
"EXPOSE" the community because you're part of the community.
Like do you think you're better than everyone 'cause you're not I also
Don't think that it's cool to publicly shame a woman who paved the way'"
This is all in reference to
Marlena Stelle
One of the OG Beauty vloggers on YouTube who has had over a decade of experience on the scene
And last years she was approached by Netflix to do a documentary from a beauty brand CEO point of view at which point
James Charles went on a Twitter rant about how Marlena was bad at making business decisions and how Netflix shouldn't listen to her
But instead they should approach him because he knows better
She tried her best to defuse the situation and even continue the conversation with him in private (please don't let him in Marlena)
but it looks like he just pushed her away and
Disregarded her attempt to make peace (this hurts to watch)
Tati then had to talk some sense into James Charles and make him
Understand that he's too young and too new in the beauty industry
That he does not in fact know better than all of these people with over a decade of experience over him (who would've guessed james)
Because he was so successful and so young
It must have felt like he was some sort of a chosen one and just like he himself has admitted since all of that success
Had gone to his head and I think by this point Tati had started to realize that the wide-eyed kid with 50,000 subscribers (NO I PREFER BABY JAMES NOW BRING HIM BACK)
She had met at first was no longer there.
That everything she had given him had enabled him to become a spoiled
Millionaire with a god complex
Tati felt like she had created a monster now
Was there perhaps some Envy in the middle of it? Did Tati feel like because she had helped him so much
He owed her more than he gave in return? Maybe, things get blurry around here, and we haven't even addressed all the predatory allegations
She made about him all the supposed It's straight guys that have come out with stories against James Charles, which ones are legitimate
Which ones are made-up or exaggerated and where does Jeffrey star fall into this equation?
There's so much more to pick apart
There's always multiple sides to a story and in this case particularly there needs to be a careful
Analysis of all sides because everything has been absolutely chaotic around here lately (its only gonna get worse trust me)
It's really interesting to analyze all of this. I think this is a historical event and we're gonna pick it all apart
So stick around for part 2 coming up in the meantime hop on over to instagram. Follow me over there
We're holding contests and challenges all the time. We're giving away. Amazon gift cards all that juicy stuff
So make sure to follow me over there to stay in the loop!
Thank you for watching and I'll see you again with part two of the James Charles saga!
*Outro Music Plays*
