James Charles Just Made Some Great Points

YouTubers James Charles and Tati Westbrook, who’ve been hashing it out in the most public and petty way imaginable, still haven’t resolved their issues. But now it looks like Charles could be in the right? What a sister scandal twist!

A brief refresher: In April, Charles posted a Coachella #ad on his Instagram Story for Sugar Bear Hair, a competing supplement company to Westbrook’s Halo Beauty brand. Since then, they’ve been picking at each other in back to back videos—Westbrook villainized Charles in her first video for his lack of loyalty, his ability to be bought, and most damning of all, his allegedly inappropriate sexual behaviors with straight men. Charles responded with an apology video. Westbrook followed up with a sort of apology of her own, but more of an explanation as to why she posted the first video. She also asked her subscribers (a number that has doubled since this went down) to leave James alone.

On Saturday, Charles dropped his own video, the 41-minute, 34-second “No More Lies.” It’s certainly something, and, as my favorite Clickhole headline reads, the worst person you know just made some good points:

If you’re invested in this big BeauTuber beef at all, I recommend you watch the entire thing. If not, well, here are the Cliff Notes:

• Charles thanks Tati Westbrook (and Jeffree Star, whose become involved in this drama for some reason) for admitting to their faults and declares that this video will be the last time he addresses this beef.
• He says that he worked with Sugar Bear Hair for last-minute, necessary security at Coachella, as he told Westbrook, and attempted to get in touch with her and her husband to apologize. They were unresponsive. He also posted videos of himself promoting her Halo Beauty products in the past, which she said he’s never done before.
• He went deep into a situation Westbrook brought up, which was that he was inappropriate with a straight male waiter named Sam in Seattle. (Sam released his own video explaining that he was bi-curious and their interactions were consensual that evening—but added that after weeks of communication, he told Charles he was actually straight, which James pushed back on.)
• He discussed the aftermath of the waiter situation, how he has been put on blast (and in many cases, has become the victim of fake stories about him being inappropriate with straight men) and has been forced to navigate newly difficult terrain in the wake of Westbrook’s video. At one point, Swedish singer Zara Larsson attacked Charles for hitting on her boyfriend when all he really did was reach out to him, learn he was straight, and drop all communication right then and there.
• Nearish the end of Charles’ video, James posted text messages from Jeffree Star, where the 33-year-old YouTuber calls him a “danger to society,” and all but threatens him with other straight guys who Star said are going to come forward with their own allegations against Charles. James says those accusations made his “head and brain, for a hot minute, [go] to a place so dark, [that] I didn’t think I was going to come back from.”

On Sunday, Jeffree Star released his own 14-minute video titled “Never Doing This Again.” He claims that all this drama sent him back to “a very dark place,” admits to sending out “brutal tweets” and “vicious text messages,” and says that he interjected himself into a situation that he never should’ve. He also repeats that he’s not going to show “voice memos and text messages,” which really seems like he’s trying to save his own ass, but that’s for you to interpret:

I’d like to say we’re near the end of all this drama, but who knows? The only thing YouTubers enjoy more than clout is prolonging their time in the gossip headline space. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say I anticipate at least one more video from Westbrook, but, also, uh, I’m tired. If there’s any justice left in this world, however, it won’t be Jeffree Star who gets the last word in.