An Unhinged James Charles Deepdive

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 23rd, 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:

reads tweet.

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 this event,

and one of the videos that was taken there

was turned into a meme because at

some point 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**k 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's 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 collabs

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:

reads tweet.

So obviously this is very out of touch

and just kind of 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:

reads tweet.

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 this,

like, ghostly, ghoulish, 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 that was being made
to James was of this spider from-

what is this show called?

It's called Miss Spider's
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
Charles' 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

Facetune, 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 Experiment, creepypasta vibes.

Moving on, though, we have the "It"
debacle of 2018.

Now, the It debacle 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)