The Existential Horror of Tati Westbrook | Big Joel

this video is sponsored by raycon hey everybody get set to get wet because today we're gonna spill some james charles toddy westbrook tea now i know this ancient drama has been talked about to death both by the participants of the drama and by the greater online community but whatever let's just go ahead and reopen this stale can of beef i promise it's going somewhere that i find interesting so without further ado part one recap for the uninitiated in may 2019 toddy a massive makeup youtuber released a video called buy sister in an attempt to cancel james charles in another massive makeup youtuber we'll talk about the whole thing in a bit but for now let's just zoom in on the most iconic and ridiculous claim that toddy makes in this 40-minute epic that james charles is guilty of various sexual indiscretions most notably trying to trick a straight waiter into thinking he's gay oh my god you tried to trick a straight man into thinking he's gay yet again now it doesn't take long to realize that there is absolutely no substance to the allegations that toddy makes here most importantly the waiter in question named sam made a video about this subject that doesn't corroborate todd's story at all sam at the time of these events didn't know he was straight toddy just makes that up weirdly assumes the sexuality of the person serving her food you were talking in detail about things you wanted to do to the waiter and when i said james he's straight he's straight james he's strange he's straight james how did she know how how did she know how did she think she knew that sam was bi-curious at that time i was bi-curious james didn't pressure sam he flirted with him at a restaurant and then sam slid into the dms nothing non-consensual happened here sam went to james's hotel they watched a movie cuddled james asked if he could get a little kiss and sam said yes they made out for a little while and parted ways that's it the worst thing that sam had to say was that james was a bad kisser if i'm being honest he's the worst kisser i've ever kissed which you know cool cool fact bro too much tongue go on sam you know in her canceling video toddy says in this incredibly self-righteous way that other people's sexualities are not for james to crack cracking someone's sexuality is not an escape room this is [ __ ] that will follow them for the rest of their lives if someone who is very masculine and has been with women decides that they're bisexual that they want to explore that's fine like so be it but again it's just like it's not yours to take and you really have to wonder what she could possibly mean by this this make-out sesh was a choice that sam made and not because he was vulnerable or an impressionable fan he was neither of those things he barely knew who james charles was at the time of these events and at that time i really didn't know who james charles was i recognized his face but i didn't know who he was and so to safeguard this kid's sexuality it's just homophobia sexual experimentation to toddy is very serious stuff that sticks with you in a way that she never cares to explain if any dude's ever gonna make out with another dude they have to really think that [ __ ] over weigh the important options and so it's wrong for james another literal teenager at the time of these events to ever be a part of that process now does any of this mean that james charles is a perfect person well no of course not we don't know what skeletons are in his closet and we don't know him but it does mean that toddy did james very dirty here got a lot of stuff wrong and made a lot of unsubstantiated and downright strange accusations but okay now it's time for the real question on my mind why what purpose do these claims serve within this video how do we interpret them as an audience and i would argue that figuring that out is an extremely difficult and interesting thing to do part two vitamins so there's a bit of important info that i've thus far left out of this video that the reason toddy decided to cancel james when she did is because of a monetary squabble i don't think i should get too deep into this but suffice it to say charles made a short ad for a hair vitamin that wasn't toddy's hair vitamin he backed a competitor presumably damaged toddy's business to some extent and she made her video soon after and considering this there's a fairly obvious interpretation of what toddy's sexual misconduct accusations do for this video they distract from the trivial thing that toddy really cares about she felt slated by james felt that she had done so much for his career that when he turned around and backed a competitor that was a serious and grave insult when you cannot even say i'm so sorry i knew this was gonna hurt you i hate seeing you cry oh my gosh i can't believe that you're feeling this upset like i didn't think that you'd be this upset i'm not okay with that and i need to like take a time out but even she probably recognizes that this isn't meaningful to anybody but her nobody cares about vitamins right nobody's gonna shed a tear cancel somebody because they cost a multi-millionaire a little bit of market share and so we need a pretense what if james charles is a sex pest yeah that'll get the tweets going get people on her side in the end toddy was merely weaponizing social media here in order to take out a business rival for her it was really about the vitamins now to be clear i think this interpretation is pretty good at the very least it maps to the way that i experience the video i mean when i first saw bisister i immediately tweeted about how nonsensical and ridiculous it was and people legit disagreed with me do you think they would have done that if there had been no discussion of james's harmful sexuality no probably not in a very real way this two-minute clip is the video it is the only part that matters and it works to legitimize toddy's feelings of disdain for charles you're threatening to ruin them you're threatening to embarrass them and you're doing that to have them behave sexually in your favor even if they're straight if after all this claim is important i guess the other claims might be too but even if this is a good interpretation even if it resonates with our experience of the video i can't help but think that there's something more here more to what toddy says and more to how her accusations function and that is what i want to talk about now part three no more lies so i want to start off this section by asking a few questions of todd's video questions that personally confuse me and that i think are helpful to understanding this text as a whole cue number one why does toddy talk about her accusations in such a strange way like so far i've only shown toddy's most serious claims that james is a sexual predator that he coerced and tricked people into performing sexual acts really intense [ __ ] but within the context of this video these claims are buttressed with the most ridiculous [ __ ] imaginable she talks at length about how james embarrassed her with her friends by acting crude and horny and when i said james he's straight your response was doesn't matter i'm a celebrity so freaking gross and you said that in front of my family in front of my childhood friends that it's heinous that he talks about being into straight boys and how dare you laugh about it and make meme after meme and retweet and this and that and i love straight boys i love straight voice and make it a joke about how mortified she was to see him talking about sexual things with his parents talking about that at the dinner table with his parents was kind of weird him talking explicitly about sex and she says this stuff with the same intense tone she uses to talk about her more serious accusations it all leads to this feeling that toddy in this video doesn't quite understand what's wrong with the events that she's describing because you know if james actually did some of that [ __ ] actually coerced people into having sex with him that's not bad because he's into straight boys or can be lewd in public no it's bad because he's a rapist everything else is cringe at worst so why doesn't she put more emphasis on the only important part of her accusation cue number two why doesn't toddy seem to recognize how bad this definitely looks for her like let's pretend for a second that everything she says in this video is true james charles is most for sure a predator well in that case it's absolutely disgusting that she'd wait until he wronged her about vitamins to protect her community from this abusive [ __ ] she was more than happy to look over any bad thing that james charles did and the only reason she's talking about it now is because he cost her a few thousand bucks that's repulsive why doesn't she care cue number three why does she talk about vitamins so much she didn't have to talk about vitamins and how sad she was about vitamins and it absolutely sucks the air out of her other claims against him nobody cares about your nonsense pills why are you obsessed with them and what i find so interesting about these questions is that they just can't be answered if we only use the interpretation we came to in the last part of this video like if toddy was just using these big accusations to distract from the things she really cared about vitamin drama then why would she surround those accusations with guff about how embarrassing james is it seems like that would kind of defeat the point if toddy wanted people to not think about the vitamins why would she talk about the vitamins so much why would she choose to make this video so soon after the vitamin drama in the first place nobody made her do that and it only makes her points look worse and so at some point looking at this video we have to accept this isn't just about someone who wanted to harm a business rival and was willing to use lies to get there no this video is about the vitamins vitamins vitamin vitamin vitamins about toddy's weird trivial beefs with james charles and it is not in any way trying to conceal or distract from that fact rather it oozes out of every minute of the video from her performance to the way she talks about her accusations to the way she centers herself and her own pain just because the person next to you is in a full body cast doesn't mean that your broken arm doesn't hurt pain is pain it screams at us this is about todd's business and what's more that is a normal acceptable thing for it to be about and i don't know i find something really weird and unsettling about that part 4 satan part 4 satan i don't know where i first heard this i feel like it might be from penn teller's [ __ ] or something i can't find it but someone at some point probably said christians love the idea of satanists they love them because satanists agree with almost every aspect of christianity the divinity of christ the existence of a christian god the existence of hell but then they just decide at the very last minute to go the other way they believe all that stuff and they just delightfully choose this random thing to worship satan over god now i know that satanism is probably more complicated than what this non-quote describes but nonetheless it's what i think about when i think about this toddy video watching by sister the instinctive way i want to understand it is by saying that toddy is deceiving us she wanted to harm the competition and she had to pull the wool over our eyes to do it but now that i'm really thinking it over i realize that this was just the narrative i personally wanted to be true if this video functioned to obfuscate some reality then it would mean that everyone here was on the same page toddy understands the importance of her claims understands how trivial this vitamin scandal was understands she was doing a bad thing like the satanist she respects the game honors and understands the rules but just chooses to go the other way chooses to lie and sure that is duplicitous and awful but it is also comforting i mean that's just what businesses sometimes do right harm the competition concoct a phony narrative i feel like stories like that conform to our understanding of how capitalism is supposed to behave what its shadow is supposed to look like and it positions us the audience in fun exciting roles as investigators and truth seekers but that's not the story we got toddy is not our satanist and she doesn't care about our god in the wake of toddy's video james charles lost more than a million subs and toddy realized that this had all gone too far she deleted the video and said that while she still stands by everything she said it wasn't worth the drama and she regrets saying anything then in a video released extremely recently she recanted that statement and claimed that shane dawson and jeffrey star two other huge youtubers duped her into making those false accusations i made it as a result of all of the poisonous lies that were fed to me by shane dawson and jeffrey starr it wasn't really her fault in the first place looking at this we can all feel that there's something wrong here right for one thing if toddy actually believed the things she said in her video at least at first then why was she so quick to say she regretted the whole thing if james is a predator that's an important thing to say and it doesn't make sense to apologize for saying it but also why is she just now coming to the conclusion that what she did was wrong a full year later now that shane dawson is conveniently facing a lot of other heat on the internet are we really supposed to ignore that perfect timing no of course not this video is once again a shameless corporate ploy and in this moment it becomes clear that to toddy it doesn't matter if she's right or wrong with her accusations it doesn't matter where she got them from not in some malicious knowing machiavellian way but rather in the sense that she actually doesn't give a [ __ ] not enough to stand by the importance of her accusations when pressed not enough to justify costing her extremely famous co-worker a million subbies on youtube.com not enough to admit her claims were untrue until it was extremely convenient and business savvy to do so not enough to take real responsibility for what she said and her part in this rather than just shoveling the blame onto two other people at the beginning of buy sister we see a montage of all the times toddy helped out james charles on her channel reps his merch or whatever i'm the friend that's encouraging you guys to use code james for 10 off of savings this moment tells us very clearly that the thesis of this video is toddy has treated james better than james has treated toddy and one example of that is that james was sponsored by a competing vitamin company another is that he didn't rep her merch hard enough another is that he is embarrassing and like too gay and yet in other is that he is a rapist and maybe we care about some of those claims more than others maybe we want to seek justice for the important problems and ignore the trivial ones but within this video those distinctions are not relevant at all from toddy's perspective it seems there is no depth no conspiracy nothing to conceal from or distract with everything is just vitamins and considering how influential her video was maybe she's right about that i can't even hear you right now because i'm just blasting off to my favorite tunes how you might ask without any wires the answer baby is two words raycon earbuds do you have annoying neighbors a grouchy mom who pisses you right off by not letting you rock out to your favorite tunes well then i think you should get some of these these pups start at about half the price of any other wireless earbuds on the market sound just as amazing as them too their everyday e25 is their best model yet with seamless bluetooth pairing and six hours of play time personally i like using them uh to do little guided meditations and they're super great for that they sound really nice and the british man who guides me through the meditations calms me and i don't have to worry about any pesky wires so if you want to listen to prog rock non-stop like your favorite badass big joel go to the url buy raycon.com big joel and get 15 off your first purchase so that's the end of the video hope you found that illuminating i guess i don't know i don't know what i wanted you to get from that uh like comment and subscribe if you liked it give me money on patreon if you want to and now it's time for my patreon question of the video djg asks your animated media analysis videos tend to be focused on western properties do you enjoy anime have any plan to review any anime properties in the future well i don't want to roast anybody right now i don't want to take any patrons down but i've talked about a few animes on this channel and if you were a real big joel fan you'd probably know that death note uh grave of the fireflies the works of hayao miyazaki uh yeah i like anime okay that's it bye

Channel: Big Joel

Views: 716,145

Keywords: James charles, tati, tati westbrook, big joel, vitamin scandal, makeup, video essay, existential horror

Id: frybV8r3lxA

Length: 20min 35sec (1235 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DouggieMohamJones]

Big Joel completely dismantled an argument and video I used to think was good. Once again he totally changed my perspective on an issue.

Also if you're reading this please unblock me on Twitter Joel.

[u/uniqueindividual12]

great video! i didn't care about the creators before, but I really hated how tati(a straight woman) made weird homophobic arguments against james charles "tricking straight men into thinking they're gay" and being a sexual predator and everyone just went with it. i think it just goes to show a lot of straight people who have gay friends and even support gay rights can have unchecked homophobia

edit: grammar

[u/pincheloca88]

I stay away from internet makeup drama.

[u/drinkingthesky]

I like some of Big Joel's other analyses but this one missed for me. He seems to conflate Tati's claims in her original video with the main message that was taken away by the audience (that James is a "sexual predator," despite Tati never having used those words) and doesn't acknowledge that Tati uploaded another video after her first one last year telling people discouraging the hatred James was receiving and disparaging the increase in subscribers she knew she didn't deserve. She isn't blameless in this scenario at all and I think there was an underlying "no gay" stigma that surrounded her cruelest claims about James (when I first watched the video, I immediately was like... her interpretation of that doesn't seem right). I prefer Contra's take on the scandal because she acknowledges the mob mentality response to the video as separate from Tati's original intention while conceding that the two are inextricably related.

[u/somnitek]

Gotta go to the link for me. Didn't wanna play here on the Reddit page. Just thought I'd mention this.

[u/AmyXBlue]

This is a total miss for me and I don't like it.

There is something about a dude focusing solely on the one woman involved in this drama that hits a not good spot for me. Along with that feels like he's making what happened fit his narrative that BJ already decided.

It's hard cause I've been long time into the beauty scene, makeup is one of my main hobbies, and you know I've watched so many other better videos on the situation. In terms of breadtube or breadtube adjunct, Kat Blaque and Ti/Nappyheadedjojoba have better takes. Commentary channels from As Told by Kenya and D'Angelo Wallace alao have great analysis of the situation, Amandabb too. Smokey Glow has beautifully covered the situation. And you know, Contrapoints Canceling video had a better grasp on the situation.

And from twitter, the breadtube side seems to want to focus on not acknowledging the issues with J* and Shane in this due to them being gay/bi and more evidence of Tati's homophobia but while ignoring the homophobia and transphobia presented by those 2. And my other issue is feeling like completely glossed over the racism that has also been a huge fucking issue.

Like honestly, probably the most shallow of the takes of Dramageddon 2.

[u/chopsthedruid117]

Does anyone know what songs Big Joel uses in this video near the beginning?

[u/Stalinspetrock]

inshallah i'll never watch this video or know who these people are