stressful”, he gives people he likes a “sister shoutout”).
Westbrook’s video (which has since been deleted) was ostensibly triggered by Charles accepting a
sponsorship from vitamin supplement brand Sugar Bear Hair (SBH), which many – including Westbrook –
saw as a betrayal of their friendship given the company is the main competitor to her supplement business
Halo Beauty.
Officials did not plan for an event in
Birmingham, when fans brought the city to
standstill (James Charles/Twitter)Her response was, by most measures, brutal. It detailed how much she and her husband had done for
Charles, acting as parents to the teenager, offering business and personal advice, helping him gain
popularity and sponsorships, taking him under their wing. She discredited his story that he had to take the
partnership with SBH because the brand had saved him from being mobbed at Coachella, and criticised him
for promoting supplements to a young audience. She also made allegations of sexual misconduct, claiming
Charles systematically tried to “convince straight men that they were gay” and was consistently
inappropriate and coercive around men who were not interested in him.
Posting the video was a risky move by Westbrook, who throughout it emphasised how much she “still
cared” about her former friend. She has since stated that she had no idea how drastic the reaction would be,
despite the loyalty of Charles’s audience, which was much larger than hers.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone could have predicted what happened next – the video received millions of
views, was on YouTube’s trending page, and subscribers started flocking away from Charles and towards
Westbrook at record-breaking speed.
Westbrook’s now-deleted ‘Bye Sister’
video detailing the allegations against ‘former
friend’ Charles (Tati/YouTube)Within a day he had lost 1 million subscribers – something that had never before occurred in the 14-year
history of YouTube – Westbrook was simultaneously gaining hundreds of thousands of subscribers at