James Charles, a name so chilling
that it requires a trigger warning.
Trigger warning: James Charles.
You can say a lot of things about James Charles.
Most of them are bad.
Like, really bad.
But objectively, he is one of the most well-known
influencers from the last 10 years.
And because of how much exposure
and business success he saw over the years,
James Charles is truly somebody who could have had it all
if only he wasn't a piece of shit.
If you're watching this video, odds are you've heard of James,
or you've at least heard of his infamy.
You may have had the petrifying experience
of seeing his BBL or hearing him say
"Hi sisters!"
This guy's digital footprint has some of the funniest
and grossest shit I have ever seen.
Because as we'll get into, he is a massive creepo, freako,
womp womp.
It is quite a tale.
So allow me to take you on an Unhinged James Charles Deepdive.
James Charles (or James Charles Dickinson)
was born on May 23, 1999 in Bethlehem, New York.
And he is Emily Dickinson's third cousin twice removed -
ignore that, it was a lie, I just lied.
In 2010, at the age of 11, he started his
very first YouTube channel called JaysCoding.
This channel mostly consisted of him covering songs like
"Pumped Up Kicks".
♫ "You better run, better run faster than my bullet." ♫
"Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood.
♫ "Carved my name into his leather seats." ♫
But most notably, this "It Will Rain" cover
where he's wearing this wolf hat.
♫ "- morphine at my door." ♫
And although these childhood videos are wholesome,
this would be the start of a very troubling
pattern of him singing unprompted.
Although my personal favorite video that I found on JaysCoding
was this six-second upload of just a image of an eye.
Like, bro really uploaded an image to YouTube,
and that is so of the time.
But in 2015, he would launch his second and main channel
that we know today as James Charles.
And this is where he started uploading makeup tutorials, such as
serpent makeup tutorial and Snapchat Galaxy makeup tutorial.
And as you can see, none of these look particularly good.
In fact, they're pretty bad, but I assure you
everyone's makeup looked really bad in 2015,
so that really means nothing I guess.
But he was gaining a really decent audience from posting these tutorials.
But the inciting incident, the catalyst that would launch
James Charles' career happened in September of 2016.
And this moment would have irreversible repercussions on society and the Internet.
James was 17 years old at this point,
and he had just taken his senior photos,
which came out fugly according to him.
And so he hired the school photographer to come back
and let him retake the pictures with his ring light.
And as you can see here, his highlight is definitely going off,
his brows have a good Roblox look to them.
However, where I draw the line is that man bun.
What the f**k?
Anyways, his friend convinces him to post these
new glamorous pictures online and they go extremely viral.
Like, this picture of James was being shared
so much that CoverGirl noticed it.
And that is how he became the world's first male CoverGirl.
Now because this was 2016, it stirred controversy amongst conservatives.
And, you know, of course it did
because it's CoverGirl, not "CoverDong".
Seriously, though, I found this old Twitter thread
where people are just bitching about this like there's no tomorrow.
A great example is this one:
There's also this one where a woman compares
James being on CoverGirl to a white person doing blackface.
Um, nurse, she's out again!
Anyways, outisde of these rando's making a stink out of it,
This opened up a lot of opportunities
for James,
I mean, he went on Ellen, I guess that's not that impressive though
As I mentioned in the JoJo Siwa video, you could literally fart into a bucket
and somehow make it on Ellen at this point in time.
And as his fame was escalating,
he did his first ever fan meet.
Only 50 people showed up to to this event,
and one of the videos that was taken there
was turned into a meme because at
somepoint, James just sat down on the ground and started singing?
♫Bring me little (??) Bring me little♫
I don't know what my favorite part about this meme is, it might be
the snapchat caption that says f*ck it up
which insinuates that he's doing a good job singing right now
or it could be the fact that he raises
his finger up as if he's hitting those high notes
This was of course the very first time
that he was turned into a meme
but it certainly would not be the last
This same year, James did a covergirl promotion with Zendaya
And oh my God, this has gotta be
one of the most unintentionally funny videos I've ever seen.
So this video that they're doing is a challenge to see what makeup
looks they could come up with in the span of 5 minutes
and so they're both in a rush, and trying to showcase these covergirl
products along the way