On the same day that his Conspiracy makeup collection with Jeffree Star relaunched, Shane Dawson announced he was officially ‘done with the beauty world’. In a now-deleted tweet, the YouTuber took to his notes page to rant about ‘Dramageddon 2’, the beauty guru drama last year that saw Tati Westbrook try to cancel James Charles for promoting a vitamin brand that wasn’t her own.

Dawson claimed, controversially, that the beauty community is ‘negativity first, makeup second.’ This could be true, had he not aligned himself with Jeffree Star from the very beginning of his brief foray into beauty, a man known for holding the power behind the scenes. Seeing the community from Jeffree’s position, at the very top of the pyramid, Shane only sees the top creators, most of whom, just like others in different YouTube communities, have had their share of drama. A beauty guru herself, Samantha Ravndahl uploaded a video response breaking down Shane’s statement in full entitled ‘the entire beauty community isn’t toxic, you are lol‘

Positivity is everywhere in the beauty community – from rejoicing over the recent pregnancy announcements of Desi Perkins and RawBeautyKristi to Jackie Aina’s brilliant palette collaboration with Anastasia Beverly Hills. The fact that Shane Dawson in the same statement condemns the beauty community for allegedly being drama-centric and calls Jeffree Star ‘family’ defeats his entire argument. Jeffree has seen more controversy than anyone else – and it may just be the reason he named their mini palette collaboration ‘Mini Controversy’, as to push this to the top of the Google search results for ‘Jeffree Star controversy’. Both him and Shane have racist pasts; Jeffree notably said in a 2006 skit that black women should put battery acid on their faces in order to ‘lighten her skin’ enough to wear mainstream makeup brands like Mac Cosmetics. Shane up until recently still had his ‘Shanaynay’ merch up for sale on his store, based on a character he created to play on the ghetto stereotype, and has appeared in blackface several times. Shane’s hypocrisy proves the thing that black people have been telling us this entire time: he doesn’t care about people of colour, just money. YouTuber amandabb breaks down the situation perfectly here in her video ‘shane dawson is a loser‘

As Amanda says, drama channels repeatedly fail to cover Jeffree Star’s drama despite his rampant racism and constant controversies. It was recently revealed by several drama channels that they had in fact been benefitting from Jeffree Star during events like Dramageddon 2, with him texting them exclusive details that they could then use on their channel – of course, telling his side of the story. Ravndahl acknowledges herself that her speaking out against Shane Dawson could incur the wrath of him and Jeffree, but only time will tell, and if an attempt is made to hurt her career by the pair, we might not even realise it. Just because Jeffree Star wasn’t the face of certain drama such as the Jaclyn Hill lipstick mess, doesn’t mean he wasn’t pulling strings behind the scenes to create a narrative that served him best.

So when Shane Dawson comes out and says that the beauty community is too negative for him, trying to cancel James Charles, Tati Westbrook, and many others, maybe he should look closer to home for the real source of the negativity. Entering the beauty guru world briefly to make millions of dollars and then dramatically exiting like this when frankly, no one cared about his presence and poor skills, only serves to create more drama.

title image credit: Seventeen Magazine