James Charles, Tati Westbrook, and Jeffree Star used to rule YouTube. Why have these gorgeous YouTubers lost video views and influence since Dramageddon 2.0?
I miss the days when beauty influencers ruled YouTube. NikkieTutorials, jaime charlesand Jeffree Star were some of the biggest creators on the platform. — with tens of millions tuning in to her channels for product shopping, makeup tutorials, and of course, the drama.
I’ll never forget ‘BYE SISTER’: the seemingly never-ending feud between jaime charles Y Tati Westbrook which started with a supplement brand endorsement that Charles posted to get into a Coachella VIP area, but soon became Avengers Endgame of beef from the Internet. Elated comments flooded the internet, but something more sinister emerged from the influencer’s discussion. When the allegations of sexual misconduct and reports of inappropriate and harmful behavior made by James Charles came to light, it was explosive, but sadly I wasn’t all that surprised. At that stage, accusations of racism, abuse, and general bullshit plagued some of YouTube’s most beloved beauty—I was getting used to it.
And then came the apologies. 2020 saw a hysterical cycle of mass apologies hit the beauty of YouTube. YouTubers would be called out for stories of racism, homophobia, and other hateful behavior, only to deliver tense content and endlessly meme apologies, ‘corrections’ and applause. She couldn’t look away. For a stratospheric moment in the news cycle, these makeup enthusiasts — Contour palettes and beauty blenders in tow: They’ve dominated the pop culture landscape (mostly) for all the wrong reasons.
It’s only been two years, but a many things have changed since Dramageddon 2.0. As we teary-eyed our way towards 2023 — big influencers neither cancelled, married either farming yaks — It’s clear that the glory days of beauty (specifically makeup) on YouTube are long gone. How did we get here?
Are you still watching?
I’m going to state the obvious: TikTok and short videos in general are king right now. Our attention spans are getting shorter, and being able to scroll through 10-second videos hits us with an instantly addictive shot of dopamine. YouTube executives are concerned about the change, too: YouTube Shorts launched in September 2020, a TikTok look-alike that recently launched a revenue sharing program designed to move creators away from TikTok and closer to YouTube.
Not make mistakes; Youtube is still thriving — the number of YouTube Premium subscribers continues to increase year on year and it’s also hard to see even TikTok successfully compete when it comes to long-form video content, try as they might. But the beautiful YouTubers who have long thrived on the platform appear to be, at least in part, collateral damage in TikTok’s rise.
Let’s take beauty from YouTube most hated creator, James Charles. He uploaded 52 videos on YouTube in 2022, averaging around 1.4 million views per video by my count. Compare that to 2021, where James uploaded 47 videos and averaged views of around 5.6 million per video. If we review 2019 — and even exclude any videos including any ‘BYE SISTER’ dramas or any videos made after that until 2020 — Charles was still averaging about 15.2 million views per video. From 15.2 million views to 1.4 million; that’s a big drop in three years.
Note that Charles’s subscriber count is also higher than it was in 2019. As of early May 2019, he had around 16 million subscribers. At the height of the drama, her undercount plummeted to around 13.5 million. As of this writing, he has 23.8 million subscribers, but far fewer average views per video. Interesting. However, Charles is doing better on TikTok: he enjoys 37 million followers.
Jeffree Star, who has worked his way through the drama ‘BYE SISTER’ like he has done almost every major scandal, announced just a month ago. that he was done with YouTube completely. What a pity! “Nobody watches it anymore,” he told fellow YouTuber Shane Dawson (look here, if you must). “It literally doesn’t make sense for me to do it anymore because nobody’s looking. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about YouTube. Not a single person is going to watch it for more enjoyment or fun, that I know of.”
However, Star can hardly blame YouTube for its decline: its history of racism and other bigoted behavior. took the spotlight (again) in 2020, and seriously allegations of sexual and physical abuse they’ve been hanging around Star for years. Post Me Too and Black Lives Matter, society’s tolerance for alleged perpetrators of violence is no longer what it used to be. Maybe we’re all collectively done with the Star shit? I know who I am.
I will say that Star’s YouTube output also mimics broader beauty influencer trends. She only posted 23 videos in 2022, less than half of Charles’ output. Other big beauty gurus also shared significantly less last year. Bethany Mota only shared 11 videos in 2022 (she struggled to get over 100,000 views despite nearly 10 million subscribers) and RCLBeauty101 only uploaded seven videos all year. Between Mota and RCLBeauty101’s 2022 production, only three of her 18 total videos were explicitly about cosmetics. And even when researching Charles’s content, the most popular videos of her in 2022 include some beauty videos, but often Charles’s best videos are videos that cheekily add to trends outside of the community (“Wear ONLY thrift store outfits for a week,” “Trying to cook VIRAL TikTok recipes”). Which brings me to my next question…
Do we still care about makeup?
Beauty YouTubers from the ’10s may be struggling to whip up their contour palettes, but interest in celebrity cosmetics isn’t waning. COTY, owner of Kylie Cosmetics, has been growing financially in recent months; selena gomez’s Rare Beauty grossed $60 million dollars in its first year alone; and Rihanna just became America youngest self-made billionaire woman not releasing music (grr), but her hugely popular makeup line, Fenty Beauty.
There’s something different about beauty (and beauty content) these days. Now more than ever, it seems like we’re more engrossed in skincare and makeup designed to showcase ‘natural’ beauty. Creator trends reflect this new discovery ‘deskinification of makeup’with skincare maestro OG Hyram dominating YouTube Y TikTok (first went viral after criticizing) Kylie Jenner’s own skincare line). Professional skin specialists like beautician. Cassandra Bankson and dermatologist Dr Muneeb Shah they’re also inescapable on social media, at least on my feed, anyway. and i must mention The Complete Entertainment Empire of Dr. Pimple Popper? Heavy outline tutorials are out; Glowing skincare and hardly any makeup. I’m sorry, James Charles.
A post-Dramageddon YouTube
The decline of beauty on YouTube has ushered in a new era of viral YouTubers. Much of the content dominating YouTube these days has to do with splurge, extremes, excess, and going big for the sake of going big, and video games. Mr. Beast is by far the biggest creator on YouTube right now, and his content is all about a big budget and bigger payoff. In individual raises, Mr. Beast promises to give away more money than most people will earn in his lifetime. (Remember when he did a real life squid game? That was a lot.)
One look at trending YouTube videos at the time of writing, and you’ve got deep-dives on super celebrities (Kim Kardashian, The Royals), loads of gaming content, YouTubers showing off their wealth in any way they can ( “I survived 50 hours in Antarctica”, “100 GIFTS IN 24 HOURS!!”, “I’m Building YouTuber’s First Theme Park From Bed“) and the Barbie trailer (<3). It seems to me that for the money that creators get from social media, YouTubers want to see that money put into a bigger and better production. If creators can't do that, head over to TikTok, where just about anything goes, no production budget required.
I have no idea where the beauty youtubers go, but I know that Review of Lady Gaga’s makeup line it’s just not going to cut it anymore. I want whatever winged eyeliner lesson you’re serving on. 60 seconds or lessplease and thank you. Still, from time to time, I can’t help but be reminded of the beauty of YouTube’s glory days and its utter chaos. What a time it was to be alive.
Source: news.google.com