And even when digging through Charles’ content, his most popular videos in 2022 include some beauty vids, but often Charles’ best performers are videos that shamelessly tack onto trends outside of the community (“Wearing ONLY Thrift Store Outfits For A Week”, “Trying To Cook VIRAL Recipes From TikTok”). Between Mota and RCLBeauty101’s 2022 output, only three of their 18 total videos were explicitly about cosmetics. Bethany Mota only shared 11 videos in 2022 (she struggled to get over 100,000 views despite having almost 10 million subscribers) and RCLBeauty101 only uploaded seven videos over the entire year. Other once-huge beauty gurus also shared significantly less last year. He only posted 23 videos in 2022, less than half of Charles’ output. I will say, Star’s output on YouTube does also mimic wider beauty influencer trends. Maybe we’re all just collectively done with Star’s bullshit? I know I am. Post Me Too and Black Lives Matter, society’s tolerance for purported perpetrators of violence isn’t what it used to be. Star can hardly blame his decline on YouTube, though: his history of racism and other bigoted behaviour took the spotlight (again) in 2020, and serious sexual and physical abuse allegations have been swirling around Star for years. Not one single person goes to watch her for enjoyment or fun anymore that I know.” “There’s literally no point for me to do it anymore because no one watches.

What a shame! “No one watches it anymore,” he told fellow scandal-ridden YouTuber, Shane Dawson ( watch here, if you must). Jeffree Star, who wormed his way into the ‘BYE SISTER’ drama like he did with pretty much any relevant scandal, announced just a month ago that he was done with YouTube entirely. Charles is fairing better on TikTok, though - he’s enjoying a cool 37 million followers. At the time of writing, he has 23.8 million subs, but far less average views per video. In the height of the drama, his sub-count plummeted to around 13.5 million. At the beginning of May 2019, he had around 16 million subscribers.

Keep in mind that Charles’ subscriber count is actually higher than it was in 2019, too. From 15.2 million views to 1.4 million that’s a huge drop-off in three years. If we revisit 2019 - and even exclude any videos including any ‘BYE SISTER’ drama or any video made after that until 2020 - Charles was still averaging roughly 15.2 million views per video. Compare that to 2021, where James uploaded 47 videos and averaged views of around 5.6 million per video. He uploaded 52 videos on YouTube in 2022, averaging around 1.4 million views per video by my count. Let’s take beauty YouTube’s most disliked creator, James Charles. But the beauty YouTubers who have long thrived on the platform seem to be, at least in part, collateral damage in TikTok’s rise. Make no mistake YouTube is still thriving - the subscriber count to YouTube Premium continues to increase year-on-year and it’s also hard to see even TikTok successfully compete with it as far as longform video content goes, much as they try. YouTube execs are also sweating about the shift: in September 2020 YouTube Shorts was launched, a TikTok lookalike that just recently released a revenue-sharing program designed to entice creators away from TikTok and over to YouTube.

Our attention spans are getting shorter, and being able to scroll through 10-second videos hits us with an instant, addictive dopamine shot. I’m gonna state the obvious: TikTok, and shortform videos in general, are king right now. How’d we get here? Are You Still Watching? As we make our way bleary-eyed into 2023 - big influencers either cancelled, married or farming yaks - it’s clear that the glory days of beauty (specifically makeup) YouTube are very much behind us. It’s only been two years, but a lot’s changed since Dramageddon 2.0.

Jame charles makeup