Front Burner - Beef, bucks and beauty on YouTube

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

An online feud between two "beauty influencers," James Charles and Tati Westbrook, has racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube this week. Maybe you've never heard of them, but plenty of people have, and, according to Washington Post internet-culture reporter Abby Ohlheiser, this world is more influential than you might think: "Whether you like it or not, the future of entertainment and the future of industries touched by robust online communities ? are being shaped and changed by what's happening right now on these platforms."

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. As I talk about it, I can feel and smell everything that I did back then. And he looks down at me, I'm looking up at him, and he says, that's my little girl. It's a 30-year-old homicide where we don't have anybody charged and convicted.

Felt like a murderer had gotten away with something. Tell me now, did you have anything to do with the murder? Someone Knows Something with David Ridgen, Season 5. Now available. Go to cbc.ca slash sks. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. A couple of weeks ago, we did an episode on Game of Thrones. We figured, hey, it's a big cultural moment. It feels like everyone is watching.

This is really the perfect show for the 2010s think piece culture. The season premiere sank to about 17 million viewers. Pretty amazing. But today, I want to talk to you about a YouTube video that's been watched more than 45 million times. Famous beauty vloggers are in the middle of a serious feud. This YouTube feud has everybody talking. It's a tale of betrayal playing out live online. Made by someone I hadn't even heard of before this week,

a beauty blogger named Tati Westbrook, who's in a beef with another beauty blogger, James Charles. There's so much going on with James Charles right now that I do not support. I don't want to be friends with you. I don't want to be associated with you. I'm so disappointed in myself that I ruined our relationship. I've got Washington Post internet culture reporter Abby Ohlheiser with me, and she's going to walk me through this mammoth online world of beauty influencers. A world that, like Westeros, is rife with heroes and villains, alliances and betrayals,

all watched by a large and fiercely loyal following. This is Frontburner. Hi, Abby. Hi there. Thanks so much for being here with us to walk us through this very new world for me. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'll do my best. So I'm hoping we can start with this video. 40 million views. That's no joke. And I have no idea who these people are. So can you tell me, who are Tati Westbrook and James Charles? So Tati Westbrook and James Charles are both what you would call beauty YouTubers. But I think also more importantly, they are famous,

even if you've never heard of them. And they're famous on YouTube among people who watch videos that have to do with makeup and beauty and fashion. Hey guys, welcome to today's video. We are going to be testing out magnetic eyeliner. Hi sisters, James Charles here and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys, I am very, very excited for today's video because... So, Tati is 37. She's been on YouTube a long time. James Charles is 19. He's newer to the scene. He started his YouTube channel a few years ago. And until very recently, he had more than 16 million

subscribers on YouTube. Wow. Help me out a little bit more. Like when you talk about being a beauty influencer or a beauty YouTuber, like what exactly does that mean? Are they just like putting on makeup in YouTube videos? So yes, beauty YouTube is about doing makeup and makeup tips and makeup reviews. A lot of people mess up by not taking their foundation all the way down on the jawline. I'm going to hold my pencil vertically to my face and I'm going to use very, very light pressure. But culturally it is so much more than that. Beauty YouTube is also about personalities. So people like Tati and James, they're not just known for being good at makeup. They're known for their personality and their reputation and

who they're friends with, who they're feuding with, whose products they're reviewing, their relationships to different companies. All of these things factor into sort of the popularity of this world. James is here to do my bridal makeup. Am I nervous? Yes. Am I going to kill it, though? Yes.

Maybe. You're going to kill it. So I want to get to these beefs and these feuds in a second. But first, who is the audience here? Who's watching all of these beauty YouTube channels? In general, the audience for this community tends to be young. There are a lot of teenagers who are watching these videos. There's a great scene in this movie that came out eighth grade last year, and it opens with the main character who is finishing eighth grade watching a beauty tutorial and trying

to do the makeup herself. Hi, guys. Welcome back to my channel. Today I'm filming a tutorial on my going out look. And I think that is actually pretty right on for the age range. Okay. Okay. pretty right on for the age range. Okay, okay. So we've got these two characters in this vast world. They've amassed this huge online following. And now I want to talk to you about this feud,

because I have to be honest with you, I watched this 45-minute video while I was making dinner last night and I'm still very unclear on what this actual feud is. I know that he has a way of just getting what he wants. And so can you give me the Coles Notes version of why these two are having this very public falling out? of why these two are having this very public falling out. Maybe the best way to explain this is to just go kind of as high elevation of a view as possible first. So basically, Tati is accusing James Charles of breaking two big rules of being an online famous person. The first is don't betray your friends. And the second is don't abuse your fame and therefore your fans. Fame, power, and a fat bank account will change almost anyone. And if you don't have people

that will tell you to your face that you're doing the wrong things, you will change. And I tried to be that person for you, James. I really tried. Okay. And so how has he done that? What Tati is saying is that James Charles' behavior has convinced her that he's essentially not being a good friend to her. And the thing that seems to be the breaking point for her with that is James Charles' advertisement a little while ago for a company that rivals her company. So Tati sells these gummy vitamins that are supposed to or are advertised as products that can help your skin improve. Whether these things are effective or not is a whole other rabbit hole that we cannot get into. In the video, Tachi brings this up as an example of James Charles not really repaying her for her friendship and mentorship

over the years. Okay. And how is she saying he abused his fame? Right. So this is getting into like a little bit more fraught territory. So I'm going to do my best here. Basically, the accusation is that he pressures other people, particularly straight men into sexual relations with him, using his fame as a way to get it. You are using your fame, your power, your money to play with people's emotions. You're threatening to ruin them. You're threatening to embarrass them. And you're doing that to have them behave sexually in your favor, even if they're straight. And you know what? That's not okay. That behavior is not okay.

And that is something that she brings up for two reasons. One is sort of this like me too type language that she's using to describe this as a violation. And the second is that because Charles's audience is so young, the fact that he talks about how he pursues men and who he pursues and talks about these things so openly and so often is setting a bad example for his very, very young fan base. Everything is over-sexualized and that's the huge underlayer to this all that I finally have had enough. Okay, so we've got this 45-minute video. These guys were friends.

And then Tati Westbrook accuses James Charles of betraying her friendship by essentially hawking these rival vitamins. And then she also makes a series of like vague accusations that he's like manipulating the sexuality of possibly straight young men by like leveraging his fame. And then what happens after she drops this video? Like what's the reaction? So the reaction? So the reaction to Tati's video was huge and it was quick. Pretty much right away, James Charles started losing subscribers on YouTube. And we're not talking about thousands. We're talking about more than a million subscribers within 24 hours after that video was posted.

Sometime in that 24 hours, James Charles did post a much shorter video about eight minutes addressing Tati's accusations. What sucks the most is that I know there's nothing I can say or do to ever earn that friendship or trust back. Boys have been a topic that I've talked a lot about, and it's a topic that I wish I hadn't. And I've learned the hard way about ways that I can interact with boys that I'm interested in, and also ones that I should or shouldn't be talking to. But that apology didn't really seem to sway what was happening as far as who was emerging as the winner of this and who was emerging as the villain. I looked up the figures kind of right before sitting down with you. As of now, James Charles has lost almost 3 million subscribers in less than a week. And Tati has

gained nearly 5 million subscribers. So she has almost doubled her subscriber count as a result of calling out James Charles in the way that she did. Okay. And, you know, I also want to talk to you about his apology video. You called it in the Washington Post a classic of the genre. And there's a genre. Can you tell me about this? Yeah.

So when you're apologizing on YouTube as somebody who is famous on YouTube, there are things you do to signal that you really mean what you're saying. If you're a beauty YouTuber, that involves wearing little to no makeup. You can see that James Charles is sitting in front of a plain white background. He is not lit professionally. He might be filming it in a studio space, but it looks like this is something he's filming on his phone. This is all kind of playing into this notion that you have to signal in an apology video that what you're seeing hasn't been rehearsed, hasn't been produced, is coming from the heart and is raw.

So wait, wait, like these videos where somebody is sitting in front of this white background, they don't have any makeup, they're like have this specific tone. There are lots of videos like this? This video is definitely something I didn't think I was gonna upload. I should know better. I should be better than what I am right now.

I know we're not friends anymore, but I wanna apologize to you. Oh yeah. To the point that there are parodies of apology videos. Right. So I saw one yesterday where somebody remade James Charles's video from the perspective of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. And what sucks the most is knowing that there's nothing I can say or do that's ever going to rebuild that friendship and that trust because he is a large pile of ash now.

Yeah. About six months ago, there was this other beauty YouTuber, Laura Lee, who went through a huge scandal when fans of a rival beauty YouTuber found her old racist tweets. And she filmed an apology video in the middle of losing about a half million subscribers. I have no excuses here today. I'm not here to give you an excuse. I have no excuses. I'm only here to say that I'm so sorry. That also sort of is a classic of the genre to the point that she at some point is very, very loudly crying as she's apologizing. She also is sort of barefaced. It's filmed very casually. The look and the framing and the presentation of the celebrity

to the audience is just as important as what they're saying. Okay. I'm also told that there are even these YouTube channels devoted to analyzing these feuds. So there's like this apology genre and then also these drama channels too. Oh, yeah. And the drama channels also play a factor in determining who's right and who's wrong here. So as soon as this starts unfolding, you get people immediately reacting to this and weighing in with their own opinions. You have people making videos and doing really kind of gossipy stories on which YouTubers are unfollowing James Charles on Instagram and which celebrities are unfollowing him and like anything that can like maybe possibly be construed

as a reaction. In today's video being part one, we're going to talk about the very public falling out between James Charles and Tati Westbrook, which occurred on the evening of April 22nd. There are also YouTubers like this guy who goes by Keemstar, who runs a channel called Drama Alert. What is up, Drama Alert Nation? Drama Alert videos get millions of views and are basically like litigations of these feuds, right? So Keemstar made a video I think a day or so ago in which he decided that canceling James Charles should be placed on hold or on pause because he wasn't convinced that the evidence sort of justified what they were seeing. But it seems like the main reason why people are mad at James Charles is because of this predator thing and there's no evidence to support it.

Not that it's available to the public. You know, these things themselves can get millions of views on the backs of the central scandal. And so is it fair for me to say there's money in this drama? Like that's also why all these people are doing this. We talked earlier about like selling vitamins. But, you know, when I was watching Tati's video last night, there were like multiple ad rolls in this thing. So, you know, at the end of the day, is this like a new frontier of professional entertainment? I feel like it's kind of a symptom of the fact that being an

online content creator as a career is both professional and personal at the same time. And it's personality based, right? So Tati Westbrook is a person. She is also a business that is worth likely millions of dollars. Wow, she's worth millions of dollars. Yeah. So I looked up both Tati and James on this site called Social Blade. I wouldn't take these as exact numbers, but they provide like pretty reliable ranges, right? So Tati, just on ad revenue from her YouTube videos, Social Blade estimates that she could make as much as $3.9 million a year. James, same time period, same source, could make as much as $6 million a year. Wow. James on same time period, same source could make as much as $6 million a year. And that's just on like the ads that you see running on the YouTube videos from Google

that doesn't take into account all the other ways that YouTubers make money and therefore all the other things that are at stake here. Right. So creators can also just set up sponsorship deals directly with companies. And they are then making more of a direct deal where that company is paying them to make a video talking about their product or something like that. So speaking of firming, I have found a secret bullet in my routine that I use twice a day, every day. I have a severe addiction to Starbucks. And I've been posting about it for a very, very long time too to try to get a brand deal.

And then beyond just like the videos they make, you know, James Charles has a makeup palette that he sells. He sells merchandise that has sort of his branding on it. He's in the middle of a tour, which again, makes him money. Today is the grand reveal of my sister collection with Morphe.

I got the opportunity to travel all around the world and open up a bunch of their new store locations. Like a YouTuber's business is more than just their ads and can very quickly, when they're as big as both of these creators are, become something that at its peak brings in millions. So like losing millions of subscribers on your YouTube channel would be bad for your business.

Gaining millions of subscribers would be good for your business. And, you know, you mentioned these makeup palettes that James Charles has. You know, I've seen videos on TikTok, which is like a new app, essentially, that I don't know how you would describe it for me. It's like Instagram and Vine on steroids. Like people are making these, you know, videos defacing his makeup palettes now. They're like throwing them in the garbage. Yeah, for sure. You know, obviously losing millions of subscribers and having people trash your makeup palette so much that it becomes this huge meme is not good for your business. But it's also very interesting in this case that I'm not sure that the fallout here has settled.

Right. Currently, his merch store is offline, but there's not really an indication of whether that's permanent. It seems like his tour as of now is still on. No one's canceled his makeup palette as of now, as if we're speaking. You know, if those things change, then the consequences can start cascading for him. But right now, it seems like he might be able to wait this out and avoid some of the worst of the possible consequences of being the villain in a scandal like this. And all of this has been way, way, way, way bigger than I think anyone could have ever imagined. Picking sides and the abusive memes and the language and this world operates, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, which is that, you know, a lot of young people are watching these videos. And what are they all getting from this?

Again, it depends on the creator. But I think let's talk about what James Charles represents and who might want to watch him. So we know his audience is young. We also know that he is an out LGBT celebrity who performs gender in a way that is not wholly masculine or wholly feminine. Now you're probably thinking, Sister James, what are you talking about? We've seen you do drag so many times on instagram and here on youtube instead of freaking out about me being gay and my dad is very very catholic as well so that was something that i was super super scared about the conversation was very obviously more tailored

towards please don't do this this is so dangerous there are predators out there i am so honored and proud to be part of the lgbtq community it an amazing place to be. But people who might watch a creator like James Charles, they themselves may be LGBT kids and teens who are looking for a role model, right? You know, if you live in a town where you don't have access to LGBT mentorship, and then you go online and you see this whole world of men doing makeup and men kind of openly talking about their relationships, it can be very empowering and it can really help people see that there's a world beyond whatever they're dealing with at that moment kind of in their own lives. So I don't want to undersell what somebody who does makeup tutorials can do for a kid who's watching these videos. Another great example is creators who are not white have been instrumental in getting companies to sell, for instance,

foundation shades that are adequate to work with darker non-white skin tones, right? And so, you know, somebody may be watching those videos to learn how to do makeup in a way that the mainstream beauty industry isn't teaching them. But then on the other hand, there's this sort of weird reality show, constant drama element to it that I don't think serves to be anything else than entertainment in the same way that you might watch like the worst of the reality shows to entertain yourself at the expense of somebody else. How would you respond to people who say, look, like this is just a niche subculture? Who cares about that?

Well, you know, whenever I write about YouTube as a journalist, I get a lot of people responding like, who? When I write about a creator or like, who cares about these people? Well, a lot of people care about these people. And I kind of feel like you ignore them at your own peril, right? Like, whether you like it or not, the future of entertainment and the future of a lot of these industries that are touched by robust online communities like beauty are being shaped and changed by what's happening right now on these platforms. And so, you know, this fight between James Charles and Tati, even if you've never heard of them before, is incredibly important to millions of people and is dealing with people who have an influence beyond just sort of a niche audience.

Abby, thank you so much for this conversation and for giving me a window into this world. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I hope it helped. Before we let you go today, we were wondering what people here thought about this whole YouTube beauty beef. And so one of our producers went to the Eaton Center in downtown Toronto. She said it was actually pretty easy to find people who knew exactly what she was talking about. Here's some of what they had to say. Whose side are you on?

Definitely Team Tati. She's rich and gorgeous. Stan. I am now on Tati's side after like the persuasion of my friends. I just love the drama. So you weren't originally on her side? No, I was a James Stan, but then I had to switch up because I saw how dirty he did Tati, which is sad. I just think it's funny how everyone collabed with James Charles, and after all this went out, everyone started unfollowing him, and all his friends started unfollowing him. I don't know, I supported James Charles, and after I heard all this, it made me think of him, kind of looked at him a little bit differently.

I just think everyone has a story that they don't tell. And it sadly happened to James that it came out. So like James, you need to like step it up a little bit because that's kind of shameful, like what you're starting to do now. And like, I feel like he was definitely humbler back in the days. And now he's gotten a little bit of an ego on himself. As somebody who's part of like the bi community and now he's gotten a little bit of an ego on himself. As somebody who's part of the bi community and LGBTQ community, I feel like he's definitely put a bad rep on that label in general.

So that's all for this week. Front Burner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Matt Alma, Hannah Alberga, Chris Berube, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, and Katie Toth. Our sound designer is Derek Vanderwyk. The executive producer of Front Burner is Nick McCabe-Locost. And I'm your host, Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening and see you Monday.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back.

Gay girl gone. Available now.