Courtesy of H3 Podcast/Instagram.
Have we finally had enough of James Charles? Earlier this month, the beauty vlogger found himself in the throes of another cancellation. It’s a situation that raises the question, why are we still entertaining this detestable influencer instead of banishing him back to the Khia Asylum for good? Many, many disgraced YouTubers before him have left the platform entirely for far more minor indiscretions. When will it finally be Charles’s turn?
The makeup artist’s most recent debacle feels incredibly low stakes compared to what he’s allegedly getting up to in minors’ DMs, yet it also seems to be the one controversy that might actually hasten his irrelevancy. Charles posted a TikTok video calling out Amber Lendof Vargas, a former Spirit Airlines employee who had messaged him asking if he could donate $1600 to her GoFundMe after the airline’s sudden shutdown. In a scathing retort, Charles told her, “You know what else would help you? Getting another job. Try that, because in the time it took you to copy and paste the same fuck-ass message to me, who you don’t follow by the way, and to one hundred other influencers and celebrities, you could’ve applied to a hundred other jobs, because you’re a lazy piece of shit and you’re entitled. Why would I ever help you?”
While many found his contempt for Vargas to be shocking, it shouldn’t be all that surprising given that Charles has lived his entire life chronically online where such cutting clapbacks and over-the-top reactions are often met with tons of views, which in turn generate tons of revenue and an influx of new followers. But in this particular case, things didn’t go according to plan and the video immediately incited enormous backlash. He has since deleted the offending clip, posting multiple, since-deleted apologies as well, culminating in the loss of millions of his now 39 million TikTok followers. Charles reached out to Vargas privately, but as for whether or not she accepts his apology, she replied in a TikTok video of her own, “Hell no.” On the bright side, the increased visibility has led to her raising almost $43,000 for her GoFundMe from sympathetic viewers.
Charles’s public image first started to crack in 2019 when fellow beauty vlogger Tati Westbrook called him out in a 43-minute, since-deleted video titled “BYE SISTER.” In addition to taking great offense at Charles’s promotion of a competitor to her supplement brand, she also accused him of using his “fame and money to try to manipulate someone’s sexuality,” which he has denied. The video lost him 1.26 million followers, the biggest recorded YouTube subscriber loss in a single day.
In 2021, a then 21-year-old Charles was accused by multiple underage boys of soliciting nude photos and sending them sexually explicit messages. He initially denied the claims, but later released a since-deleted apology video titled “Holding myself accountable,” in which he admitted to engaging in this behavior with two minors, saying “I fucked up” and “these conversations should never have happened.” Somehow, despite him confessing to it, these boys’ stories seem to have been all but forgotten and Charles’s career bounced right back. He has since landed major brand deals, expanded his makeup line, re-monetized his YouTube channel, and grown his audience to new heights.
That is until February of this year when another OG YouTuber, Ethan Klein of the H3 Podcast, paid $10,000 to put up a billboard in downtown Los Angeles calling out Charles over the allegations. The billboard was removed two days later, despite Klein confirming that both the advertising company and his lawyer had signed off on the image ahead of its installation. Its rapid takedown prompted many online to speculate that Charles’s team had worked overtime to silence his loudest detractor.
James Charles feels like the embodiment of so much currently going wrong in America. The total dearth of empathy in the face of mounting need that seems to be the hallmark of our current multi-millionaire ruling class, combined with the strange impulse to transform that struggle into content that shames. His comments to Vargas echo those of Kim Kardashian from three years ago when she instructed the masses to “Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.” As though it is simply our poor work ethic that is keeping the majority of the country trapped in increasingly extreme poverty, just as it was all those decadent avocado toasts that kept millennials from becoming homeowners. These moments seem to lay bare the true sentiment many celebrities, and by extension corporations, have towards their buying public. There is a contempt for the same people who put them in those positions of power, wealth, and fame to begin with, Charles was just stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud.
But all that to say, it seems clear that James Charles is long overdue to go figure some shit out—offline, without us.
