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 a little water now!
Bring me little water, Sylvie!♫
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
and about 30 seconds in, james gets
befuddled and just starts
copying Zendaya? And then acts like
everything he's doing was his idea
"I used it on my inner corner"
"same"
Huh??
"I used this as a base for the blue"
"Yeah same"
And not only this,
the end result is so bad.
She absolutely ate him up,
I can't believe this video exists
these two people should not exist
in the same universe.
James would soon also start doing colabs
with massive YouTubers like
tana mongeau, joey graceffa, and even
non-YouTubers like Maddie Ziegler.
However, he would soon find himself in his
very first controversy and that is the
"Ebola" tweet.
On Febuary 16, 2017, James writes:
"I can't believe we're going to Africa
today, omg what if we get Ebola?
James we're fine we could've gotten
it at chipotle last year"`
So obviously this is very out of touch
and just kinda assumes that Africa
is like a diseased riddled area
And so people were not happy about this
And so the very same day he did his
first public apology ever.
He wrote: "I am extremely sorry.
Rehardless of my intentions, words have
consequences. I take full responsibility
and will learn and do better"
and people definitely still thought James
was racist for like, a good month
after this.
But the discourse got completely
overshadowed by the events of
March 5th, 2017, which was the birth of
Flashback Mary.
So what happened was that James was at an
event,
and he had WAY too much powder on his face
and so when they took this picture of him,
it caused a flashback that gave him like
this ghostly, goulish, sinister
SCP look to him.
And the internet was immediately obsessed
with this.
Like, this is definitely one of the
biggest memes that has hit the internet,
ask anyone. ask your grandma, ask your
local pastor, they know flashback Mary.
The main comparison made to James
was of this spider from-
what is this show called?
Miss spiders sunny patch friends.
Like I can't express to you how many times
I've seen this image against my will
I wish I could permaban it from my brain.
Something a little disappointing about
this meme though is that the
widespread image of Flashback Mary is not
the real one, this is the real one
and I will say, the flashback is still
really bad.
But whoever edited this picture
just made it 70 times worse.
An interesting artifact of the time that I
found was this Redbubble page
that just exclusively sells Flashback Mary
furniture, such as clocks and pillows?
I really don't understand redbubble,
people will just sell
tych-fck-ehchk-ANYTHING there.
Anyways though, speaking of James Charlses
foundation, he does not
know how to match that shit.
Like there's entire compilations
of him doing just that.
And in this video specifically, he
describes himself as having
warm undertones??
"GASP that looks like it could be
such a good match for me,
everyone is convinced that my skintone
is like, not warm."
Girl you are PINK! You are PINK!
I think the funniest part about all
of this though, is that he
literally has a youtube video trying like
40 different foundation shades, and
in the end he still chooses the wrong one.
Side note though Another James Charles-ism
is that he chronically misuses
face tune especially in this era.
And to be fair, he's never hid that he
uses facetune, but it just looks so bad
that I don't understand why he continues
to do it, like, when I see these pictures
I get uncanny valley, russian
sleep expirament, creepy pasta vibes.
Moving 9on though, we have the "IT"
debaucle of 2018.
Now the IT debaucle began on December 7th
when James tweeted about
how he was gonna go see It, and
how excited he was about it.
But literally 5 minutes into the movie,
he started tweeting about how bad
it was, which of course if just nutty
because how have you already decided that
you don't like the movie and it's only
been 5 minutes.
And like, why are you even on your phone?
About 30 minutes later, James tweets again
and this time he says:
reading tweet
Both of these tweets annoyed people for
obvious reasons.
Like, he's just been texting the entire
movie??
It doesn't even sound like he's been
watching it to know if it's bad!
And so in response to all the people
questioning why he's doing this,
he writes:
reads tweet
But then
Finn Wolfhard replies to one of these
tweets and says:
reads tweet
Granted, at this time, I think FInn was
12 or 13 maybe.
And so James tweets:
reads tweet
Which sounds like he's accepting the
end of this.
Like this should be the end of the
conversation.
But instead, he starts backtracking times
3,000, and he says:
reads tweet
For the next few hours, people on
Twitter would not leave him alone
about why he was texting in the
movie theater.
And so he eventually says:
reads tweet
And this dug his grave in even more.
Because people were like, "what do you
mean 'everyone does it,'
like, everyone does not do that!"
Personally, as an AMC Stubs member,
this pains me.
Follow me on Letterboxd so I can
feel important.
But this caused people to start doing
polls about whether or not people
actually texted people during movies.
And the results were, of course,
overwhelmingly NO.
No they do not!
And again, this should've been the end of
the conversation, but he just keeps
acknowledging it, and he ends up filming
an apology video in the backseat
of an Uber.
(James talking:) "I want to personally
apologize to Finn and anybody else
involved in the making of the movie It."
And regardless of all of this, a couple
days later, he ended up doing an
It makeup tutorial.
(James doing a Pennywise voice:)
"Hiya, sisters! James Charles
here, and welcome back to my
Youtube channel!"
Which, by the way, the first 6
seconds of this video
changed my life for the worse, so I'm
gonna make you see this too.
(dubstep, intense music)
(scream sound effect)