Last week, the beauty YouTuber community had some of its most dramatic and revealing days ever.
After Laura Lee threw some shade in former friend Jeffree Star's direction, Twitter users dug up extremely derogatory posts written by Lee, Gabriel Zamora, and Nikita Dragun from around six years ago.
After losing hundreds of thousands of followers across all social media platforms, Lee is now trying to make amends with her fans — and apparently Jeffree Star, too.
Lee uploaded a tearful apology video to YouTube for her derogatory tweets from 2012.
The derogatory tweets, some of which Lee claimed were doctored, were both racist and fatphobic.
After the screenshots surfaced, Lee posted this lengthy apology to Twitter, but knew it was not enough.
Yesterday, after having time to "process" away from social media, Lee apologized on camera.
"I'm so sorry, you guys," she sobs in the video. "I'm so sorry for diappointing you. It hurts me so bad to disappoint you who've supported me for so many years and know that I'm better than that person. I, six years ago, decided to retweet things that were so vile and hurtful. I was so stupid and ignorant, and I have no excuses here today."
"I'm only here to say that I'm so sorry and that I hope one day that you guys can see me for the woman that I am... and that I can prove to you guys that I'm not that girl."
"I'm so sorry for anyone who's been hurt through this. I feel so disappointed that I don't even like to look at myself because I can't even believe that I would retweet ugly things and things that would hurt people. I can't believe I didn't see the pain behind that kind of tweet and that kind of behavior and i'm so sorry."
She also says that in the past few days, trolls have threatened both her mother and her niece.
"I ask you guys, please, just let this be me. Let this be about me; it's not about my family. It's about me; it's not about anyone else. This is my sorry."
"[But] there's another part of this story that I don't know if you all know," Lee says — this is where Jeffree Star comes in.
"Me and Gabriel and Nikita and Manny took a picture with our middle fingers up — we were trying to mimic Kylie Jenner's birthday picture — and the picture was taken out of context, and it ended up causing pain for other people."
This, if you weren't aware, is the photo responsible for all of this happening in the first place. This photo, which many took as an indirect "screw you" to Star, is what inspired internet users to find racism receipts on all four of these YouTubers.
Why? Because they're all ex-friends of Star's, and they've all publicly brought up his well-known controversies in one way or another.
"I just want to say that I'm sorry to Jeffree for the pain we may have caused you in this. I didn't know that that picture was going to be taken out of context and that anything was going to be said to you."
"But at the end of the day, it was done — so I need to owe you an apology for this. And I know we're not friends anymore, but I want to apologize to you."
"I hope you guys just understand that I need some time now," she concluded.
"And I'm sorry."
Star didn't respond directly to his personalized section of the apology, but...
Most people gathered these tweets were meant for Lee, as they were posted shortly after her video was uploaded.
As for the rest of the internet's reaction ... well, they're not buying it.
And can you blame them? They've seen this cycle of controversy and apology too many times over to be easily forgiving.
