James Charles has lost almost 3 million followers in less than a week and I’m about to tell you why. This is the very first edition of The Tea with Sarah T – trademark pending.

This drama has taken up my entire weekend and is honestly more compelling than this season of GoT (don’t come at me, this is mostly a joke) but it’s just as confusing. There’s people coming out of nowhere with their takes and their input, and it’s hard to keep up if you didn’t start from the beginning. Well, I did start from the beginning, I’ve been here, I’m ready to rumble and I’m ready to deep dive into all of this nonsense.

Let’s take a look at our characters:

James Charles:

19 years old. Beauty and makeup Youtuber. Male. Likes boys, specifically straight boys (more on this later).

Subscribers before this: 16,572,826

He started on Youtube back in 2015 and has been actively posting makeup related content since then. He’s known for his artistic and colorful looks, and honestly, the kid knows how to use a blending brush. This blog is gunna be a lot of shit talking JC, but he can do some sick makeup looks, I will give him that.

You might remember James from his dabbling in racism in 2017. He was going to Africa and tweeted:

He was also the first male Cover Girl model, I wrote a blog way back when, literally way back when. It was on my other blog that I don’t even know the name of anymore. Today, May 13th, I don’t have a link to that blog, but future editor Sarah might be able to dig it up. Also don’t be shocked if this paragraph abruptly ends with no mention from future Sarah because editor Sarah VERY rarely actually exists. 

What’s up, it’s editor Sarah, I exist!!! I couldn’t find that blog, so sorry. Thanks for listening!

If you didn’t know James Charles for any of these things, then you might know him for his Morphe collaboration where he came out with one of the dopest pallets that quite literally can’t be kept in stock in stores. I coped one on a whim at Ulta and honestly, I’m so glad I did (even though I wish he didn’t get my money) because it’s seriously one of the most versatile pallets I’ve ever used. Enough plugging is shit. On to Tati.

Tati Westbrook:

37 years old. Beauty and Makeup Youtuber. Female. Likes men. Married to a fantastic dude, also named James. 

Subscribers before this: 5,908,733

Tati has been in the Youtube game for a MINUTE. Since 2010 to be exact. Her channel is more focused on reviews and tips and tricks than it is tutorials and makeup looks. If you’re not super into makeup youtube you probably would have never heard of her. She keeps quiet, doesn’t really get herself into any drama, and if she is in drama she stays quiet about it.

She more recently launched her own brand, Halo Beauty, which is a need to know factoid for this drama. Essentially a hair skin and nails vitamin company, but Tati runs it herself and swears by the product.

Gabriel Zamora

Beauty and Makeup Youtuber. Male. Likes men (I’m pretty sure?). Friends with James.

Subscriber Count before this: I don’t care, and neither should you

I know jack shit about Gabriel Zamora. And you don’t really need to know anything about him for this. Gabriel is the reason we all know about this piping hot tea. More on this to come.

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The Drama

The short story:

Tati called James the FUCK out for being a shitty person in a 45 minute video on her YouTube channel.

The long story:

When our boy James came onto the YouTube scene back when he was a wee little 17 year old with a man bun he reached out to Tati asking for help and cited her as his inspiration to start a YouTube channel. Thus our story begins. Fast forward to now (pre-45 minute video) James and Tati had a very mother-son relationship. Tati was quick to support and help James with his careers, with his personal life, and look after him when he moved to LA from his hometown. Tati and her husband looked over contracts, helped him monetize his videos, and helped him get new management.

Turns out this relationship was WILDLY onesided. If you watched Tati and knew who she was, you knew James Charles. You can’t say the same the other way around. Tati started her video with a lil montage of clips where she was either with James on her channel or talking about James on her channel. But Tati was never on James’ channel and he never talked about her outside of her own channel. James is a social climber and just doesn’t care about anything other than money and success, according to sources – sources being literally anything.

But Tati just kept rolling with the punches and dealing with it privately… Until she wasn’t.

So what made Tati lose her mind?

Remember her brand Halo Beauty? Well her biggest competitor is Sugar Bear Hair. Those dumb ass hair gummies that people always pose with. After a “security debacle” at Coachella, James supposedly signed a deal with Sugar Bear Hair to get security. In return for the security, James posted an Instagram story talking about the sleep aid gummies that stayed up for 24 hours.

Anyways

Tati took to her Instagram story and posted a video where she was visibly upset and complained about James, saying she felt betrayed.

James bounced back with what Buzzfeed calls an iOS Press Release, it’s literally just an all black Insta story with words… If that’s a press release than I know a whole lot of millenial girls posting press releases on the daily. Tati doesn’t say anything to the story publicly and we’re set to assume they dealt with it privately.

It’s over right? NOPEE.

End Act One.

Curtains open on Act Two

Enter: Gabriel Zamora

Gabrielle posted a get ready with me style video where he was answering fan questions and just talking shit, you know the usual. Someone asked about the James and Tati drama and he decided to POP OFF.  Now, let me tell you, it made 0 sense? He’s the kind of person who says something and then goes “you know what I mean?” or “does that make sense?” but I don’t know what you mean, and it does not make sense.

The gist of Gabriel’s rant was that he thinks Tati is in the wrong for calling James out because James isn’t “exclusive” to her and he can promote whatever he wants. And then he calls Tati out and basically tells her she needs to “sit on the internet and talk about it.”

AND SIT ON THE INTERNET AND TALK ABOUT IT SHE DID!

Enter: 45 minute Youtube video with more tea spilled than the Boston Tea Party. Colonial Americans are QUAKING.

I’m subscribed to Tati and get email notifications when she posts new videos, so I saw the email and saw that it was called Bye Sister, and I knew it was one of two things. The unlikely option was an unfortunate family accident and she lost one of her sisters, thank GOD that didn’t happen.

Instead, we said goodbye to Sister James.

*Funeral music plays in the distance*

If you don’t feel like watching the video, which I HIGHLY recommend, here’s the Sparknotes:

• She doesn’t regret posting the original Insta story calling out James
• James didn’t reach out to her personally after Coachella until the actual Sugar Bear Hair Insta story was posted a week or so later
• Tati quite literally doesn’t know Gabriel, they met through James, but they weren’t friends and she was SHOOK that he called her out
• IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT VITAMINS !!!!!!!!! The Sugar Bear Hair incident was just the breaking point
• Tati and her husband helped James go from making $90 a video to $250,000 a video, and helped him go over contracts, get management, etc.
• She never asked or received anything from their relationship, she legitimately just wanted to help James out
• James wanted to make a Shawn Dawson style docu-series calling out the beauty community and Tati talked him out of it
• She calls James out for predatorizing (is this a word?) straight guys and playing the victim when they don’t like him back – AKA he hits on straight guys and guys who don’t really know what their sexuality is and then gets MAD when they’re not gay (even going far enough to tell guys that they are in fact gay)
• James’ Mom was commenting on Instagram was upset that Tati was upset – Glad James’ mom is fighting his battles for him *aggressively rolls eyes*
• James used to say he hated Sugar Bear Hair before this
• Part of the reason James never wanted to promote Halo was because he has a younger audience and he didn’t think he was appropriate to promote vitamins to young kids – Bitch now you’re going to promote SLEEP AIDS to kids??
• She made a video about it because she didn’t want her words to be twisted and manipulated after the fact

END SCENE

Tati is so calm and poise in this video it blows me mind. I would be screaming and crying and making 0 sense. But she is dropping truth bomb after truth bomb and she looks calmer than ever.

Since Tati’s video, SEVERAL people have come out and #confirmed the fact that James hits on straight guys. In Tati’s video she mentions James hitting on a straight waiter at her birthday party, and he came out and posted a video (now deleted off his channel, but it’s the internet, it survived) explaining his story. Yeah, James is fucking gross. Even gay guys can be predatorial!!!

IT’S STILL NOT OVER PEOPLE.

James posted a video called Tati, that’s essentially just an 8 minute long  “feel bad for me” video.

While all of this was going down, James was in Australia doing $500 meet and greets and shit, so he was 12 hours ahead and didn’t post until he woke up later. He’s visibly tired in the video, and honestly looks like he still has those sleep gummies in his system because he is SLUGGISH.

James is usually bouncing off the walls with energy and talks at the speed of light, but in this video, he’s talking so slowly it’s actually painful. I put the video at 1.5 speed and it still feels slow.

In my humble opinion, it looks like he’s hiding smirks and trying not to laugh throughout this, but idk man.

He’s the sparknotes for the James video:

• he won’t explain the Sugar Bear Hair situation again because he’s already “spoken his truth”
• he should’ve been “more careful” about talking to straight boys and talking about them on his platforms.
• The best part: He starts crying and thanks his mom for being amazing and helping him and his brother out – there’s no but to that. Just a “you’re amazing, I love you”
• He says he’s sorry for hurting Tati
• THE END.

So what the fuck happens now… I’ve been patiently waiting for certain Youtubers (I’m looking at your Jeffree Star) to comment or make videos. Jeffree had tweeted this and then deleted it:

Nathan is Jeffree’s long time boyfriend. 

And Nikita Dragun, another makeup YouTuber, posted screenshots of texts from James “proving” that his deal with Sugar Bear Hair was legitimately an emergency situation. People have been dragging Nikita saying that the timelines don’t add up, and that the stories don’t line up. Essentially this made everything worse for James before it made anything better.

Since her video, Tati has not said anything other than this tweet asking her followers to chill on the James hate:

James has been losing followers and subscribers for DAYS. Buzzfeed posted this article listing everyone who’s unfollowed him on social media… Let’s just hope it stays that way, sisters!

So that’s the very, very, very long gist of it all.

Let’s check in and see what everyone’s final subscriber counts are at: 

Tati: 9,763,995 (and still growing!)

James: 13,528,079 (and still declining…)

TL;DR version: James Charles is a shitty person and always has been, Tati finally realized this and called him out.

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