existed in a curious celebrity middle-ground, where despite being mobbed by thousands of adoring fans, the
traditional media pretty much completely ignored him. But all that changed on 10 May, when fellow
YouTuber and former friend Tati Westbrook uploaded a 43-minute video which can broadly be described as
a character assassination of Charles, kickstarting what would become one of the most talked-about,
consequential feuds in influencer history.
The making of James Charles
To understand the monumental cultural impact of the dispute, we must go back to 5 September 2016, when
a relatively unknown 17-year-old James Charles Dickinson, who had built up a modest following by filming
make-up tutorials on YouTube for under a year, tweeted his senior yearbook picture. He explained that he’d
had the photos retaken with his ringlight “so my highlight would be poppin” because he loves “being
extra”.
The photo went viral and racked up more than 33,000 retweets and 84,000 likes on Twitter within just a
day, including a retweet from then 20-year-old actor and singer Zendaya. By the following month he’d
amassed more than 440,000 Instagram followers and was announced as the first male ambassador for US
make-up brand CoverGirl. It was widely acknowledged as a pivotal moment for LGBT+ inclusivity and the
beauty industry abandoning the gender stereotyping which it had been propagating for decades.
Such was the impact of Charles’s story that he was invited on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk to the
LGBT+ icon about his story. He appeared in a full face of make-up, discussing his sudden rise to internet
fame, coming out as gay aged 12, becoming interested in make-up and growing up on social media. Born in
1999, he was only five years old when Facebook was founded, seven when Twitter launched, and 11 when
the first version of Instagram was released.
The first tweet: a month later Charles had
gained hundreds of thousands of
followers (James Charles/Twitter)His viral fame became emblematic of a generation of creators and celebrities whose careers took off on
social media. Musician Billie Eilish, who was born in 2001, has achieved worldwide fame after the huge
success of her single “Ocean Eyes”, which she posted on SoundCloud. Fellow singer Lil Nas X broke
records this year when, aged 19, his song “Old Town Road” became the longest-running hip-hop track on
the Billboard Hot 100 after going viral on the video-sharing app TikTok. YouTuber Tana Mongeau found
herself on real-life billboards all over LA this year after landing an MTV reality show based on the run-up to
her 21st birthday. But Charles’s sudden fame landed him in a wholly different world.
The top tier of beauty YouTubers is a place of fame, wealth and tremendous influence, punctuated by
collaborations with the likes of Kim Kardashian, partnerships with behemoths of the make-up industry and
incestuous, cliquey friendship groups that result in feuds and dramas that are all closely covered by
commentary channels on YouTube, which are watched by millions.