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James Charles, a name so chilling
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that it requires a trigger warning.
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Trigger warning: James Charles.
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You can say a lot of things about
James Charles.
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Most of them are bad.
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Like, really bad.
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But objectively, he is one of the most
well-known
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influencers from the last 10 years.
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And because of how much exposure
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and business success he saw
over the years,
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James Charles is truly somebody who
could have had it all
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if only he wasn't a piece of shit.
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If you're watching this video, odds are
you've heard of James,
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or you've at least heard of his infamy.
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You may have had the petrifying
experience
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of seeing his BBL or hearing him say
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"Hi sisters!"
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This guy's digital footprint has some of the
funniest
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and grossest shit I have ever seen.
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Because as we'll get into, he is a massive
creepo, freako,
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womp womp.
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It is quite a tale.
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So allow me to take you on an Unhinged
James Charles Deepdive.
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James Charles (or James Charles
Dickinson)
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was born on May 23, 1999 in Bethlehem,
New York.
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And he is Emily Dickinson's third cousin
twice removed -
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ignore that, it was a lie, I just lied.
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In 2010, at the age of 11, he started his
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very first YouTube channel called
JaysCoding.
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This channel mostly consisted of him
covering songs like
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"Pumped Up Kicks".
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♫ "You better run, better run
faster than my bullet." ♫
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"Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood.
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♫ "Carved my name
into his leather seats." ♫
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But most notably, this "It Will Rain" cover
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where he's wearing this wolf hat.
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♫ "- morphine at my door." ♫
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And although these childhood videos are
wholesome,
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this would be the start
of a very troubling
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pattern of him
singing unprompted.
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Although my personal favorite video
that I found on JaysCoding
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was this six-second upload of just
a image of an eye.
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Like, bro really uploaded an
image to YouTube,
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and that is so of the time.
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But in 2015, he would launch his second
and main channel
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that we know today as James Charles.
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And this is where he started uploading
makeup tutorials, such as
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serpent makeup tutorial and
Snapchat Galaxy makeup tutorial.
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And as you can see, none of these look
particularly good.
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In fact, they're pretty bad,
but I assure you
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everyone's makeup looked
really bad in 2015,
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so that really means nothing I guess.
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But he was gaining a really decent
audience from posting these tutorials.
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But the inciting incident, the
catalyst that would launch
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James Charles' career happened in
September of 2016.
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And this moment would have irreversible
repercussions on society and the Internet.
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James was 17 years old at this point,
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and he had just taken his senior photos,
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which came out fugly according to him.
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And so he hired the school
photographer to come back
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and let him retake the pictures
with his ring light.
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And as you can see here, his highlight is
definitely going off,
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his brows have a good
Roblox look to them.
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However, where I draw the line is
that man bun.
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What the f**k?
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Anyways, his friend convinces
him to post these
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new glamorous pictures online
and they go extremely viral.
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Like, this picture of James
was being shared
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so much that CoverGirl noticed it.
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And that is how he became the world's
first male CoverGirl.
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Now because this was 2016, it stirred
controversy amongst conservatives.
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And, you know, of course it did
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because it's CoverGirl, not "CoverDong".
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Seriously, though, I found this
old Twitter thread
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where people are just bitching about this
like there's no tomorrow.
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A great example is this one:
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There's also this one where
a woman compares
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James being on CoverGirl to a white
person doing blackface.
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Um, nurse, she's out again!
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Anyways, outisde of these rando's making
a stink out of it,
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This opened up a lot of opportunities
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for James,
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I mean, he went on Ellen, I guess that's
not that impressive though
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As I mentioned in the JoJo Siwa video,
you could literally fart into a bucket
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and somehow make it on Ellen at this
point in time.
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And as his fame was escalating,
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he did his first ever fan meet.
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Only 50 people showed up to
to this event,
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and one of the videos that was taken there
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was turned into a meme because at
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somepoint, James just sat down
on the ground and started singing?
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♫Bring me a little water now!
Bring me little water, Sylvie!♫
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I don't know what my favorite part about
this meme is, it might be
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the snapchat caption that says f*ck it up
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which insinuates that he's doing a good
job singing right now
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or it could be the fact that he raises
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his finger up as if he's hitting those
high notes
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This was of course the very first time
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that he was turned into a meme
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but it certainly would not be the last
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This same year, James did a covergirl
promotion with Zendaya
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And oh my God, this has gotta be
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one of the most unintentionally funny
videos I've ever seen.
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So this video that they're doing
is a challenge to see what makeup
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looks they could come up with in the span
of 5 minutes
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and so they're both in a rush,
and trying to showcase these covergirl
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products along the way
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and about 30 seconds in, james gets
befuddled and just starts
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copying Zendaya? And then acts like
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everything he's doing was his idea
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"I used it on my inner corner"
"same"
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Huh??
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"I used this as a base for the blue"
"Yeah same"
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And not only this,
the end result is so bad.
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She absolutely ate him up,
I can't believe this video exists
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these two people should not exist
in the same universe.
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James would soon also start doing colabs
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with massive YouTubers like
tana mongeau, joey graceffa, and even
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non-YouTubers like Maddie Ziegler.
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However, he would soon find himself in his
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very first controversy and that is the
"Ebola" tweet.
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On Febuary 16, 2017, James writes:
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"I can't believe we're going to Africa
today, omg what if we get Ebola?
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James we're fine we could've gotten
it at chipotle last year"`
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So obviously this is very out of touch
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and just kinda assumes that Africa
is like a diseased riddled area
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And so people were not happy about this
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And so the very same day he did his
first public apology ever.
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He wrote: "I am extremely sorry.
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Rehardless of my intentions, words have
consequences. I take full responsibility
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and will learn and do better"
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and people definitely still thought James
was racist for like, a good month
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after this.
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But the discourse got completely
overshadowed by the events of
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March 5th, 2017, which was the birth of
Flashback Mary.
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So what happened was that James was at an
event,
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and he had WAY too much powder on his face
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and so when they took this picture of him,
it caused a flashback that gave him like
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this ghostly, goulish, sinister
SCP look to him.
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And the internet was immediately obsessed
with this.
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Like, this is definitely one of the
biggest memes that has hit the internet,
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ask anyone. ask your grandma, ask your
local pastor, they know flashback Mary.
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The main comparison made to James
was of this spider from-
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what is this show called?
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Miss spiders sunny patch friends.
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Like I can't express to you how many times
I've seen this image against my will
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I wish I could permaban it from my brain.
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Something a little disappointing about
this meme though is that the
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widespread image of Flashback Mary is not
the real one, this is the real one
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and I will say, the flashback is still
really bad.
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But whoever edited this picture
just made it 70 times worse.
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An interesting artifact of the time that I
found was this Redbubble page
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that just exclusively sells Flashback Mary
furniture, such as clocks and pillows?
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I really don't understand redbubble,
people will just sell
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tych-fck-ehchk-ANYTHING there.
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Anyways though, speaking of James Charlses
foundation, he does not
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know how to match that shit.
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Like there's entire compilations
of him doing just that.
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And in this video specifically, he
describes himself as having
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warm undertones??
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"GASP that looks like it could be
such a good match for me,
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everyone is convinced that my skintone
is like, not warm."
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Girl you are PINK! You are PINK!
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I think the funniest part about all
of this though, is that he
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literally has a youtube video trying like
40 different foundation shades, and
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in the end he still chooses the wrong one.
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Side note though Another James Charles-ism
is that he chronically misuses
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face tune especially in this era.
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And to be fair, he's never hid that he
uses facetune, but it just looks so bad
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that I don't understand why he continues
to do it, like, when I see these pictures
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I get uncanny valley, russian
sleep expirament, creepy pasta vibes.
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Moving 9on though, we have the "IT"
debaucle of 2018.
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Now the IT debaucle began on December 7th
when James tweeted about
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how he was gonna go see It, and
how excited he was about it.
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But literally 5 minutes into the movie,
he started tweeting about how bad
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it was, which of course if just nutty
because how have you already decided that
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you don't like the movie and it's only
been 5 minutes.
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And like, why are you even on your phone?
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About 30 minutes later, James tweets again
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and this time he says:
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reading tweet
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Both of these tweets annoyed people for
obvious reasons.
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Like, he's just been texting the entire
movie??
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It doesn't even sound like he's been
watching it to know if it's bad!
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And so in response to all the people
questioning why he's doing this,
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he writes:
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reads tweet
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But then
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Finn Wolfhard replies to one of these
tweets and says:
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reads tweet
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Granted, at this time, I think FInn was
12 or 13 maybe.
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And so James tweets:
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reads tweet
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Which sounds like he's accepting the
end of this.
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Like this should be the end of the
conversation.
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But instead, he starts backtracking times
3,000, and he says:
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reads tweet
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For the next few hours, people on
Twitter would not leave him alone
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about why he was texting in the
movie theater.
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And so he eventually says:
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reads tweet
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And this dug his grave in even more.
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Because people were like, "what do you
mean 'everyone does it,'
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like, everyone does not do that!"
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Personally, as an AMC Stubs member,
this pains me.
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Follow me on Letterboxd so I can
feel important.
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But this caused people to start doing
polls about whether or not people
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actually texted people during movies.
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And the results were, of course,
overwhelmingly NO.
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No they do not!
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And again, this should've been the end of
the conversation, but he just keeps
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acknowledging it, and he ends up filming
an apology video in the backseat
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
of an Uber.
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(James talking:) "I want to personally
apologize to Finn and anybody else
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
involved in the making of the movie It."
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And regardless of all of this, a couple
days later, he ended up doing an
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It makeup tutorial.
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(James doing a Pennywise voice:)
"Hiya, sisters! James Charles
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here, and welcome back to my
Youtube channel!"
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Which, by the way, the first 6
seconds of this video
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changed my life for the worse, so I'm
gonna make you see this too.
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(dubstep, intense music)
99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(scream sound effect)