The Complete Timeline of the Many Attempts to ‘Cancel’ Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star

Consider this your beauty drama bible. Photo: Getty Images

People on the internet have been waiting for Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star’s actions to catch up with them. What goes around, in theory, must come around, right? But after years of sporadic revolutions against blackface controversies, violent slurs, and pedophilia jokes — to name a few of the pair’s indiscretions — it seemed like there would never be a meaningful resolution, just white tears and a playlist of apology videos. Every time either of the YouTube megapersonalities and multimillionaire makeup creators would pull out the Notes app or cry on camera, their millions of fans would forgive and expect everyone else to forget. It’s almost like “canceling” people in positions of power is impossible to do.

Now finally, after over six years of backlash after backlash, two Dramageddons, and the creation of the drama channel genre, Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star are being hit with a tidal wave of accountability. On June 30, popular beauty brand Morphe announced it would stop selling Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson’s viral 2019 makeup collaboration. After beauty influencers like Jackie Aina began cutting ties with the company, it dropped Jeffree Star Cosmetics in its entirety. Here’s a timeline of all the drama and just a few of the many “cancellations” it took to get to this point. *Chugs tea.*

2014 Shane Dawson vs. Franchesca Ramsey

Shane Dawson was the king of edgy comedy on early YouTube. Starting in 2008, he would post sketches with an eclectic cast of stereotypes all played by him, impersonate celebrities, and make fun of popular culture. By 2010, he had amassed over half a billion views. After six years of monumental success on YouTube, built on blackface skits, appropriation, and offensive remarks, the community first attempted to hold Shane Dawson accountable in 2014, led by YouTuber and comedian Franchesca Ramsey. He was called out for a series of videos where he paints himself darker to play people like Wendy Williams and Chris Brown, and uses stereotypes to portray people of color. She also took a stand against Dawson’s jokes about “rape, molestation, child abuse, domestic assault,” and other offensive, harmful jokes. Dawson initially mocked the backlash and Ramsey personally on Twitter, calling her “the epitome of a hater.” His fans lashed out at her with racist slurs and threats. After weeks, Dawson posted his apology video. He says he used blackface to keep the “integrity” of his characters and that he was “ignorant,” but not racist. The fun news is that you can be both. But he doesn’t address any of the other accusations, which Ramsey found unsatisfactory. While Dawson got to move on, she continued to be harassed and made a video about the experience titled “Here’s Why Racism’s Not ‘Just Comedy’” before taking a break from YouTube. Meanwhile, many big creators, including Tay Zonday, continued to stand by Dawson.

2016 “IS JEFFREE STAR RACIST?”

In July 2016, tattoo artist and makeup-brand owner Kat Von D called out her ex-friend Jeffree Star’s inappropriate behavior while feuding over a friend who she claimed Star never paid for their work. Jeffree Star, real name Jeffrey Steininger Jr., started his social media brand on MySpace in the early 2000s, where he promoted his music and fashion designs, and was known for being controversial. His music career took him to Warped Tour and landed a Nicki Minaj feature on his debut album in 2009, but he left the music industry in 2013, pivoting to full-time beauty guru. He and Kat Von D went back and forth, with Star claiming Von D was jealous of his success. It was more or less “maybe if you had a fucking business that you were passionate about, then you would know what it takes to run a fucking business, but you DON’T,” but over Twitter. But meanwhile, people were digging up way more than just inappropriate behavior. Footage from approximately 2004 to 2006 shows Star chasing women down the street calling them the N-word and cursing them out, apparently at random. In a “skit” from 2006, he makes a joke about using battery acid to lighten a woman’s skin tone. He’s also used the N-word and other derogatory terms in his music, referred to a Black person as an ape, made offensive comments about Mexicans, and consistently uses the term “rat” to describe Black women.

Star tweeted that he “regrets” the videos and is sorry “if anyone” was offended. YouTuber Kat Blaque made a video discussing Star’s actions, denouncing them and his poor apology, but saying she would be “happy” if he meaningfully apologized. (He still wasn’t getting her coin, though.) The video was copyright claimed, getting it temporarily taken down. Many believed that Star orchestrated it, despite having millions more followers than her and the fact that there were hundreds of videos being made about him. “I am really upset and hurt by this and I’ve learned that I need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt,” she wrote on Tumblr shortly after. “Some people are not worth salvaging. If you support him, please unsubscribe from my channel.”

Jeffree Star vs. MakeupShayla

In May 2016, Star alleged that Black beauty guru Shayla Mitchell (MakeupShayla) told another influencer, Marialejandra Marrero (Mariale), that she needed lip injections. Allegedly in Marrero’s defense, he attacked Shayla on Twitter, calling her a cunt and threatening to beat her “to the fucking ground.” Shayla completely denied the interaction ever happening and she and Marrero publicly squashed it.

2017 Jeffree Starr vs. Jackie Aina

On June 16, beauty YouTuber Jackie Aina publicly denounced Star and his beauty brand in an “anti-haul” video, both for the way he attacked Mitchell and his previous racism. Star responded by calling her an “irrelevant rat” and attempting to out her financial troubles. But people were starting to put the pieces together. If he’s not the same, openly racist person from the videos, why would he attack a Black woman for critiquing the way he attacked another Black woman? It’s crazy that that sentence has to exist. “I make content that explains explicitly why I do not support certain people and their brands,” Jackie Aina tweeted, ending the back and forth. “It’s ALWAYS based on morals and ethics.”

“RACISM.”

Four days later, Jeffree Star apologizes. He uploaded an apology video entitled “RACISM.” where he claims he doesn’t know why he said all those racist things, but has excuses ready to go. “I do not know who that person was,” he said. “The person who said those horrible, vile things, that person was depressed, that person was just angry with the world, that person felt like they were not accepted, that person was seeking attention.” He doesn’t take responsibility or offer amends.

Kim Kardashian West

Two months later, on August 14, his racist past once again begged to be addressed after Kim Kardashian West accidentally supported it while trying to defend him from her own fans. KKW fans pulled up the receipts after he critiqued her new palette on Twitter, but Kardashian West didn’t have any smoke. “So, guys, like, and I see you being so petty bringing up things in his past where he, you know, was, you know, negative, but he’s also apologized for those things and I get it’s a serious deal if you say, like, racial things, but I do believe in people changing and people that apologize I will give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that people change and move on and I know better than anyone that I hate when people bring up my past or mistakes that I’ve made in the past, so let him live, like, I welcome honest, you know, comments about my products and because of it I’m swatching better now.” In a follow-up Instagram story and again the next morning, Kardashian West apologized for speaking on a situation she didn’t know about.

2018 “The Secret World of Jeffree Star”

In an attempt to pivot both of their images, Shane Dawson follows Jeffree Star for his next docuseries, following the success of his TanaCon breakdown. The five-part docuseries began on August 1. In between reckoning with his largely controversial past and glorifying his new life of excess, Star comments on rumors about his friendship with fellow beauty gurus Manny MUA (Manny Gutierrez), Laura Lee, Nikita Dragun, and Gabriel Zamora. “With my ex-friends, people still don’t really know what went on,” Star said. “Why do I feel like they need to know? Because there are so many versions of things that never happened out there. Half of the people still think I’m the bad guy, when I only loved and cared about all these people, boosted them up, and gave them all my connections, but I’m still the fucking bad guy.” It was an interesting framing, especially considering some of the only concrete proof of drama we had at that point was Star tweeting that Laura Lee’s soul was “pure evil” in November 2017. Star had new friends at this point: Dawson, then-36-year-old BeauTuber Tati Westbrook (GlamLifeGuru), and then-19-year-old beauty guru in the making James Charles, who’s even featured in the documentary.

Dramageddon 1.0: Jeffree Starr vs. Manny MUA, Gabriel Zamora, Laura Lee, and Nikita Dragun

The subtweet heard round the world. On August 12, a few days after the final episode of the docuseries dropped, Zamora tweeted a photo of himself, Manny, Laura, and Nikita, each with middle fingers raised and the caption: “Bitch is bitter because without him we’re doing better.” A rebound pic? Fans knew who that was about. Zamora all but confirmed it, tweeting “Imagine stanning a racist?” and “Honey, every time I was around him he would constantly say racist things about black people.”

While points were made, Star’s fans were not having it. Laura Lee and Manny MUA both took back their “likes,” claiming they didn’t read the caption. People dug up two-year-old receipts from Zamora, Dragun, and Gutierrez, including tweets where Zamora used the N-word and Dragun says she “could never” imagine being Black and a Snapchat where Gutierrez side-eyes an Uber driver for not speaking English. While Lee deactivated her account during the fallout, a tweet reading “Tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster” was reportedly discovered from 2012, months after Trayvon Martin’s death. The backlash led to Manny MUA, Gabriel Zamora, and Laura Lee all posting apology videos. (Dragun went with an apology story where she also claimed the tweets were fake.) Their subscriber counts tanked, presumably affecting their incomes. Lee lost over half a million subscribers in 30 days, per Social Blade, was dropped from sponsorships like beauty brand Morphe, and her apology vid got the full meme package, including re-creations. While all this was happening, Star accused Gutierrez of being a bad friend and a social climber. Star and Zamora apparently talked it out and Zamora publicly denounced Manny MUA in his apology video, taking Star’s side in the feud. In a second apology video, Gutierrez addressed his friendships with Zamora and Star, saying sorry for the way he treated Zamora and the way things ended with Star. The only apology Jeffree Star acknowledged is Zamora’s, whose subscribers popped right back up. Gutierrez lost a quarter of a million subscribers all for … what, exactly?

On August 23, 2018, drama channel Messy Mark made a video claiming he hooked up with Manny MUA with a lot of ridiculous details that gained traction in the community. In a recent apology video, Messy Mark admitted that Jeffree Star egged him on even though he knew the story was fake, implying that Star “used his power to push me” and “paint this narrative of Manny.”

Jackie Aina 2.0

In the aftermath of Dramageddon, Jeffree Star’s former hairstylist, Daved Anthony Munoz, exposed text messages from February 2019 where Star uses the N-word. That’s after he apologized for all the other racist stuff. Munoz also leaked a screenshot of Star calling Jackie Aina a “gorilla” in September 2017. Jackie Aina released an open letter on Twitter saying that she can no longer overlook his racist actions. “I have not and will not excuse his blatantly racist behavior and — not his past references to me in derogatory terms, his use of the N words nor his efforts to eliminate spaces and opportunities for people of color,” she wrote. “No one in the community should feel like they are protected enough to continuously say things to make black women feel ugly and ashamed in their own skin.”

2019 Dramageddon 2.0: Tati Westbrook vs. James Charles

Where were you when Tati Westbrook said “Bye, Sister”? In a since-deleted video uploaded May 10, Tati Westbrook single-handedly brought down one of the most popular influencers of the moment, James Charles. (Or at least we thought it was single-handed.) In her video, Westbrook details the dissolution of her friendship-mentorship with James Charles which essentially boils down to: He promoted a rival hair gummy vitamin, SugarBearHair. But she also accuses James of predatory behavior toward straight men, specifically someone they met at a restaurant whom Westbrook claims Charles pressured into a sexual relationship. It had over 47 million views before Westbrook deleted it and it led to Charles losing over 1.2 million subscribers in a day. Shortly after, Star added fuel to this fire in a set of tweets. “There is a reason that Nathan [Star’s ex] banned James Charles from ever coming over to our home again,” he tweeted. “There’s a reason why I haven’t seen him since @GlamLifeGuru’s birthday in February. He is a danger to society. Everything Tati said is 100% true.”

A bold claim for something with no proof. Eight days after Westbrook uploaded her video — eight days filled with random guys exposing their messages with Charles and Twitter judges casting verdicts — James Charles responded with “No More Lies,” a 41-minute receipt-fest. In it, he details his relationship with the man in question, explaining that he initially told Charles he was bisexual, but after they hooked up, the man questioned his sexuality. He apologized for promoting Westbrook’s rival, admitting that he did so in order to get an artist pass to Coachella to avoid mobs of fans. But Charles also reveals that he attempted to talk to Westbrook about the sponsored post before it went up and continued to reach out to make amends up until Westbrook posted her video.

He exposes text messages Star recently sent him saying things like “Are you going to respond to everything or pull a Manny 2.0?” Star also texted saying that Dawson, Westbrook, and others “told me everything that you have said about me over the last.six months, [sic] I am heartbroken, disgusted, and so sad to hear everything but shockingly not surprised…” In the screenshots, Charles replies saying that they can talk “up front” about whatever he thinks he said, but that Charles hadn’t spoken to Shane Dawson “at all in the last 6 months.” In another message, Star makes very specific accusations about Charles’s alleged predatory behavior toward the man from the restaurant, YouTuber Grayson Dolan, and Star’s ex-boyfriend’s younger brother. Charles responds to the accusations and denies any misconduct toward Dolan, saying he knew Star was lying because the Dolan twins were two of the first people to reach out to him after Westbrook posted “Bye Sister.” Charles initially uploaded a tearful response titled “tati” but deleted it. Several of Charles’s closest collaborators and friends unfollowed him, including his former “Sister Squad” members Emma Chamberlain, Grayson Dolan, and Ethan Dolan. While many creators have since refollowed Charles, they haven’t.

“The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star”

In October, Shane Dawson begins his descent on the beauty community with a three-part docuseries on the creation of his own makeup line with Jeffree Star Cosmetics. The docuseries also captures one of the many #ShaneDawsonIsOverParties there have been over the years, this one from March 2019. In a clip of Dawson from his old podcast Shane and Friends, he claims to have dry-humped his cat. After the clip goes viral, Dawson denies the allegations that he had sex with his cat in a rant on Twitter.

2020

Dramageddon 2.1On April 28, Jeffree Star goes on the podcast Mom’s Basement by YouTube drama king Keemstar, claiming to have a voice note from one of James’s alleged victims, but can’t say more due to convenient legal issues. Star also rants that Charles told a mutual friend that Star and Dawson “tried to ruin his life.” “Everyone wants to make me out ‘You ruined James Charles’s career,’” Star said on the April 2020 podcast. “No, Tati did, and uploaded a 40-minute video about him and she should never have uploaded that. But she did, and for some reason, James thinks that me and Shane tried to ruin his life and orchestrated the whole thing, like we effing care.”

Dramageddon 3.0 (a..k.a. Karmageddon): Jeffree Star and Shane Dawnson vs. the World

Here’s where the latest drama starts to trickle in. Ex-Jeffree Star pal and beauty influencer Kameron Lester shares his experience working with Star in an emotional Instagram TV video on June 10. Lester says both Star and Dawson “manipulated” him and used him as a “token Black kid.” He also recalls overhearing Dawson “curse out” Charles during a FaceTime call between Star and Dawson in March, pre-Dramageddon 2.0. After Lester posts the video, Jeffree Star leaves him a voice-mail (later leaked to drama channels) denying the allegations and making it personal, saying “I know you’re upset your boyfriend left you, he stopped loving you,” among other nasty things. Star gaslights Lester by ignoring the actual claims and making it seem like he’s hysterical, but the fans are done being manipulated, too. The breakup comments do not go over well, especially because Star just broke up with his own longtime boyfriend at the beginning of the year. And Star’s vicious reaction only leads to more and more rumors that he’s more involved than he’s letting on.

The next day, another former friend of Jeffree Star, Tab, who has modeled in Star’s makeup campaigns, alleges that Star has not changed and continues to use offensive slurs of all kinds. He deletes the video, but it’s later reuploaded by drama channel Sanders Kennedy. Star actually responds to the video in a since-deleted tweet, calling the claims lies from a “clout-chaser.”

“I WAS ON JEFFREE STAR’S PAYROLL.”

In June, three major drama channels, Ashlye Kyle, Sanders Kennedy, and the Viewer’s Voice, come forward with exposés about Star. They each apologize for their role in canceling James Charles before he could defend himself. In her video, uploaded June 12, Kyle reveals that Star would send her his opinions and inside scoops, especially during Dramageddon 2.0. On top of warning her before he would release statements, Star would trash Charles. “His eyes are so dead it’s haunting… like a demon,” reads a text from Star. Using information from Star in videos led to a gain in subscribers, views, and AdSense money, making Kyle and other drama channels feel like Star was funding them to publish his opinions. It contributed to an overwhelming number of negative videos about James Charles.

“WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS”: Shane Dawson vs. the Beauty Community

One recurring detail is Dawson’s involvement in Dramageddon 2.0. Kyle cites several messages from Star about Dawson, which she finds confusing in hindsight because Dawson wasn’t involved in the beauty community at the time. As theories pile, Dawson all but confirms them in a very long, ill-received Notes app “apology.” “The beauty gurus who are always involved in scandals are ALL THE FUCKING SAME. They are all attention seeking game playing egocentric narcissistic vengeful two faced ticking time bombs ready to explode,” he wrote, “And I’m OVER it.” Dawson denies any active involvement in “Bye Sister,” but admits to offering advice he shouldn’t have. “Do I think [Charles] was a young, egocentric, power-hungry guru who needed to be served a slice of humble pie in the size of the f***ing Empire State Building?” he wrote. “YES.”

The Never-ending #ShaneDawsonIsOverPartyIn the weeks following, internet sleuths take their time digging up offensive and harmful “jokes” Dawson has made in the past, from his podcast to videos to chats with fans. In a clip from an old video, he tells an underage fan to “twerk for us” when they meet in an Omegle chat room. In a podcast clip, he calls a 6-year-old “sexy” and admits to Googling child pornography. He also compares pedophilia to a foot fetish and claims he didn’t understand why sexual attraction to kids is illegal. In a recently leaked video, Dawson and his ex-girlfriend Lisa Schwartz make extremely inappropriate “jokes” describing sex acts to his 12-year-old female cousin. All the new receipts go viral on Twitter, along with the racist and blackface clips people have been trying to hold Dawson accountable for for years. Franchesca Ramsey is also dragged back into it. She makes a thread recounting her experience with Dawson, including Skype calls where Dawson would cry for forgiveness. In one of the calls she says Dawson denied that a 2016 clip of him from his podcast describing killing a “social justice warrior” was about her, but that didn’t stop his fans from harassing her with it. “Since Shane follows me on twitter in the years since I’ve DM’d him and asked him to think carefully about how he uses his platform, discouraged him from using his fanbase to attack smaller creators and cautioned him against using his channel to rehabilitate racists,” she tweeted. “No response.”

“Taking Accountability” In a 20-minute-long video he claims addresses “everything,” Shane Dawson says he is “taking accountability.” He says that. While he says the apology is genuine, he credits YouTuber Jenna Marbles with inspiring him. (Jenna Marbles, real last name Mourey, left YouTube by choice on June 26 in response to her own racially insensitive videos from the early 2000s.) Dawson starts off by tackling the blackface. “I am so sorry to anybody that saw that and also saw that people were lifting me up and saying, ‘You’re so funny, Shane,’” Dawson says, pushing some of the blame to his viewers. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be Black and see this white effing guy doing blackface and the whole internet at that time being like, ‘LOL.’”

Dawson also apologizes to James Charles for his role in Dramageddon. “I’m sorry James, I’m really sorry,” he said. “First of all, nobody deserves what happened. Nobody. The whole internet ganging up on somebody, nobody deserves that. And who am I to say that somebody needs to be humbled? Me, who am I to say that? I literally have put so much hate onto the internet over my 15 years in the YouTube world.” Speaking of which, he also has an apology for Franchesca Ramsey, “one person who really tried to get through to me.” “It was so toxic and I’m so sorry,” he said. He then has to clarify that the murder fantasy he discussed on his podcast in 2016 wasn’t about Ramsey, it was about another woman who called out his racist videos! Finally, he apologizes for the pedophilia “jokes,” videos with kids, and the video with his 12-year-old cousin, which he writes off as a “birds and the bees” conversation.

Shane Dawson, Welcome to the Red Table

Y’all hear something? Dawson’s weird comments and actions continue to make the rounds online, including a clip of him pretending to masturbate to a poster of then-11-year-old Willow Smith while quoting her song “Whip My Hair.” The Smiths are not happy. “To Shane Dawson … I’m done with the excuses,” Jada Pinkett Smith tweets on June 27. Jaden Smith also has some words for the YouTuber. “SHANE DAWSON I AM DISGUSTED BY YOU,” he tweets. “YOU SEXUALIZING AN 11 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO HAPPENS TO BE MY SISTER!!!!!! IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM FUNNY AND NOT OKAY IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT.”

Demonetization

Ramsey sheds some light not just on the allegations against Dawson, but the potential profit he was making from these offensive YouTube videos, in a Twitter thread. “Shane has literally made MILLIONS off videos normalizing vile racist attitudes about Black ppl & other POC, rape, child abuse etc & yet ‘i feel so awful for the racist things i did’ is ‘accountability?’” she writes on June 28.

On June 30, Target announces they will no longer sell Shane Dawson’s books, following the high-profile response from the Smiths. The beauty company Morphe does the same for Dawson’s makeup line, following a petition with over 11,000 signatures. While it was also asked to remove Jeffree Star’s cosmetics line, the company takes a different stance on him in a statement emailed to customers. “Jeffree Star has acknowledged mistakes made in the past and has apologized, taken accountability, and worked hard to make amends within the community,” the statement reads. Within whose community? Anyway, that same day TubeFilter reports that YouTube has demonetized all of Shane Dawson’s channels.

“BREAKING MY SILENCE”: Tati Westbrook vs. Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star

And when it rains, it pours. On June 30, Tati Westbrook reenters the drama. In “Breaking My Silence,” Westbrook says she was “gaslit into making” the video “Bye Sister,” and that in the weeks leading up to her video, Dawson and Star were constantly telling her new allegations about Charles. “Eventually I started believing what they were saying, because they said they had evidence,” she says, adding that she heard the voice memo Star claimed to have on Mom’s Basement. “By the time the drama around James Charles’s promotion of SugarBearHair reached its peak, I was beyond gaslit.” Westbrook says Dawson even offered to help film and edit her video. When she expressed concern that Charles might hurt himself in reaction to the backlash, she says Dawson called him a “narcissist” who wouldn’t do that. “I can tell you this: It’s now my opinion that Jeffree and Shane were both bitterly jealous of James Charles’s success,” Westbrook says. “Jeffree resented that so much of his business was centered around his biggest rival, and Shane did not like that James Charles wanted to make a documentary. Neither of them were happy with standing in his shadow on YouTube anymore.” Westbrook confirms that she and Charles have reconciled after clearing the air last December, though Charles remains unwilling to discuss it publicly (at least not to paparazzi). His friendship with his subs has since rekindled as well. He just hit 20 million subscribers and earned a second season of his YouTube Original show Instant Influencer.

Westbrook takes a moment of her video to apologize directly to Jackie Aina for being “blind” to her warnings about Jeffree Star. “Jackie, I’m sorry that I did not do the right thing and walk away from him then,” she says. “I should have not been blind to the reasons behind the accusations of his racism. I shouldn’t have defended him and I regret any of the pain that I may have caused you.” Aina hasn’t responded publicly, but in a March 2020 video, she said she and Westbrook were on the mend.

That same day, within an hour of Westbrook’s video going live, Dawson tweets, in all-caps, “This is a fucking lie and I’m losing my mind!!!!!!!!!!” He also quickly responds on Instagram Live, watching clips of the video and reacting while pacing around. “Oh my God, you are so manipulative,” he says when Westbrook discusses being a sexual-abuse survivor. “You’re fake crying. You’re fake crying. That is not real. Oh my God, I was molested.” Many were displeased with Dawson’s impulsive and dismissive response to Westbrook’s claims when he hadn’t made any public attempt to apologize to Willow Smith and her family.

MorpheTen days after Shane Dawson was dropped from Morphe, Jeffree Star is dumped, too. “Today we’ve made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products,” the company tweets. “We expect this to conclude within the coming weeks.” This is the first major undoing of Star, a direct result of public outcry. A statement posted to the Jeffree Star Cosmetics Instagram, not Star’s personal account, says they are “shocked and extremely saddened by the decision” to part ways. Meanwhile, Morphe continues its partnership with James Charles (and even sent him a gift for reaching 20 million subscribers in the middle of all the drama). Star himself remains suspiciously quiet. Blac Chyna posted a series of pics with him on July 8 and he was featured in a July 1 video buying a new car. Surely, he’s not slinking away. With Westbrook threatening legal action and her fears that Star has more receipts ready to blow, Dramageddon 3.0 is far from over.