On 10 May 2019, a 37-year-old woman posted a 43-minute YouTube video about her former best friend, a 19-year-old boy. Tati Westbrook and James Charles are two YouTube beauty gurus – make-up artists who have significant followings on the site. In her video, Westbrook alleged that “fame, power and a fat bank account” had changed Charles, and stated that she no longer wanted to be associated with him. In the following days, Charles lost three million of his 16 million subscribers. On Reddit, there were over 88,300 comments about the saga. And after a week, Westbrook’s video had been watched 46 million times. What exactly caused the greatest scandal in YouTube’s history? A £33 bottle of hair vitamins.
You have – although you might not be aware of it – just been sipping on a cup of tea. “Tea”, which comes originally from black drag culture, is slang for gossip – to sip it is to consume drama as a bystander, to spill it is to expose someone else’s business online. Westbrook spilled the tea on Charles because he failed to promote her brand Halo Beauty – which sells hair, skin and nail vitamins – but promoted a competitor, Sugar Bear Hair, in April. She also alleged that Charles, who is gay, had acted in a predatory manner towards straight men.
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