James Charles is continuing to feel the backlash of his drama with Tati Westbrook, and it's not looking pretty. As campaigns to boycott Charles' channels become more and more successful, his subscriber count is plummeting at record numbers.
In the past four days alone, the once most-followed beauty YouTuber has lost his crown, and the numbers continue to get worse. So as millions lob to click that unsubscribe button, many are anticipating that this will mark the end of the James Charles reign.
Check out how bad the damage is ahead, and what Charles may be doing to get them back.
This Tati Westbrook/James Charles tea just keeps getting hotter.
After not even a week into the aftermath of what may go down as the biggest beauty YouTuber feud ever, things are getting even worse for Charles, so much so that many are thinking that Charles' career is slowly coming to a close. And for good reason.
And it's looking like in the span of just 43 minutes, Tati Westbrook single-handedly ended her former close friend.
In a detailed video that spilled every last bit of tea, Westbrook revealed a slew of not-so-becoming things that Charles has done to her, her husband, and other beauty industry fixtures during the span of their relationship. The allegations, which included sexual harassment and an immense amount of trash-talk, has brought the video to a whopping 40 million views in just four days.
The biggest hit Charles is taking right now is to his subscriber count.
Just last week, we reported that Charles' subscriber count had begun to drop, much in part to what we believed was the abundance of scandals in the past few months. However, after Westbrook's video, that number is now plummeting by the millions. Before the scandal, Charles had upwards of 16 million subscribers. Now he has 13.5 million subscribers, and that number continues to decrease exponentially.
You can watch the subscribers drop by the second.
The website Social Blade, a Google Analytics-based site that tracks the followers and subscribers of some of the biggest social media influencers, has had skyrocketing traffic in the wake of the drama. It's there that you can watch Charles' follower count drop in real time with the occasional rise from time to time.
There are even live YouTube feeds dedicated to watching their respective numbers decrease and his increase.
That's right. YouTube channels are going live with comparisons of Westbrook's and Charles' subscriber counts. As expected, Westbrook's count continues to rise, putting her at almost 4 million subbies ahead of what she had before the video, and Charles' count is more than 3 million below what he had initially.
While he's losing subscribers exponentially, people on Twitter believe that he's buying some back.
"I swear James Charles buys subscribers," said a live viewer of Social Blade. Some followers have noticed that, at sporadic times, Charles' followers will hit a mass increase. However, these spurts of followers are no match for the exorbitant amount of people who are clicking the unfollow button at more rapid rates.
His subscriber count sank lower than Jeffree Star, who now takes the crown of most-subscribed beauty channel on YouTube.
"James Charles has dropped below the number of Jeffree Star's YouTube subscribers. This makes Jeffree Star the most subscribed to Beauty Guru channel on YouTube," Pop Alarms declared on Twitter. However, Star regaining the crown is nothing to celebrate, and social media users far and wide are wishing that people would have this energy when it comes to Star's many respective controversies.
People are personally and emotionally invested in Charles' failure at this point.
"Me refreshing my phone to see James Charles lose subscribers," someone joked with a well-placed meme. And as much as we too get pleasure in the bad guys catching heat, it's quite disheartening to see people spending every waking moment of the past few days rooting for someone's demise. But hey, that's the YouTube beauty sphere for you.
Looks like Charles might hit 10 million faster than Westbrook.
At the rate at which Charles is losing subscribers and Westbrook is gaining them, it's not unlikely that Charles will regress to 10 million subscribers before Westbrook hits that milestone. Wow, how the tables have turned.
Even Gabriel Zamora is losing subscribers.
"Gabriel Zamora needs to quit involving himself w/ James Charles before he loses more subscribers than he already has," said a critic clearly fed up with Zamora sticking his nose in more drama. If you recall, Zamora's career was also put on its head months ago when he and Star began feuding. It's only within the past month or so that he's been able to rebuild, and now it's looking like that work was in vain.
