Go back

Jeffree Star Has Always Been Like This

104m 33s

Jeffree Star Has Always Been Like This

Jeffrey Star's rise from a controversial Myspace figure to a prominent conservative influencer is a case study in how toxic online personas, racialized performative politics, and systemic accountability failures intersect. His early years were marked by overt racism, self-harm content, and violent rhetoric—such as using swastikas and threatening weapons—while promoting a violent, hyper-masculine aesthetic. Despite these behaviors, he transitioned into a socially progressive image, capitalizing on the cultural shift toward inclusivity and beauty advocacy, especially among Black women and rural audiences. This shift, however, was superficial; his content often masked deep-seated hostility toward marginalized groups, as seen in his racist feud with Black creator Jackie Aina and his dismissal of cancel culture. Critically, Star has repeatedly denied sexual assault allegations, denied responsibility, and pushed back against accountability, using wealth and influence to avoid consequences. His behavior aligns with broader patterns of wealthy white men who exploit power, manipulate narratives, and evade scrutiny. The public perception that he is "honest" about makeup products is undercut by the reality that his authenticity is tied to self-promotion and conflict, not integrity. Ultimately, Jeffrey Star exemplifies how online celebrity can become a tool for reinforcing harmful ideologies, enabling a culture of impunity where offensive behavior is normalized and victims are silenced—paralleling the broader political dynamics seen in figures like Donald Trump, who also thrive on outrage, fear, and a refusal to take accountability. His enduring presence on TikTok and YouTube underscores the power of such figures to maintain influence despite repeated misconduct.

Transcription

18933 Words, 101163 Characters

English
So now days it's all these fucking weirdos telling their kids, "Oh my God, you like a Barbie? You're a woman." And then the pandemic put a halt on all of our lives, right? Six feet apart. That was a lie, by the way. That was a full lie. Trump is taking away visas if you're tweeting, "I'm glad he died. Good. I want to teach people to eat better and how we've all been tricked and the government doesn't care about us, and they want to keep us sick." Oh baby, they weren't ready for that. Now they are. We have grown men with beards wearing dresses going into the women's restroom. I think it's the phones. I think it's made people, I don't know, dead inside. No one goes and plays outside. I will always use my platform and my voice for good. Hello, hello, and welcome back to a bit fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein and I've been feeling kind of under the weather and I got up this morning and I was like, "I don't know if I can record a podcast." And then I remember the subject of today's podcast and like, "I'm up. Let's fucking go." On the day that Charlie Kirk died, Jeffrey Star did what he does best, went live on TikTok, and a Twitter influencer by the name of Gypsy Patriot_ shared Jeffrey's reactions to Charlie's death with the caption, "Jeffrey Star speaks about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and you won't believe what he has to say." Here's what he had to say. "He encouraged everyone to speak about their beliefs whether he believed them or not. Am I a Republican? No, I'm a person because I'm standing up for someone that passed away. I'm now being called names in the chat. This is a draw with a lot of people. If you will never get barred in life, you are sick in the head." Someone just said they're unsubscribing from me. Thank God, please. Because if you believe in vain, thems, you are part of the problem. If you're so stupid enough to go against science, please unfollow me. You can be whoever you want to be, but there's science and there's facts. You can pretend in your head, you're a cat. You can pretend in your head that you're this and you're that. Good for you. You're still only ARB. And the truth hurts a lot of you, I see. I see a lot of you still can't get over it. So yes, I am a grown-ass man that wears makeup. I will always be a male. My name is Jeffrey. I am a male that likes cosmetics. All these grown men going into women's bathrooms wearing wigs, you should all be in prison forever. You are a problem. So a grown man that goes around the country debating people, spitting facts, was just taken out. And I'm not over it. I can't sit here and play with makeup right now. I want to throw up. So no, I'm not a Republican. No, I'm not a Democrat. I'm Jeffrey Star. Stop trying to label me. I am a male. I am a makeup artist. I am a makeup mogul. I am a business owner. I am a farmer. I am a rancher. I am a son. I am someone's cousin. I am someone's friend. Politics aside, biology will never change. Why is I up for debate? Am I saying any of this? Because Charlie Kirk bought for the rights. He fought for the truth. He debated everybody. And you guys cannot argue that. You are delusional and you are mentally ill if you were trying to go against what I just said. I didn't say my opinion. I said a fact. He really told us. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I'm a man. I'm a makeup artist. I'm a wife. I'm a cousin. I'm a brother. I'm a single mom who works two jobs. That video to me had the energy of the video of the male model where he's like 180 poses in two minutes. I'm a farmer. I'm not a Republican. Charlie Kirk. I hate non-binary people. Biology. Men in a wig. It's literally it was just buzzwords. It's literally. And that's the thing. The conservative grift is easy. It is a script that just gets repeated over and over and over and over again. That's kind of why it sounds like that. Because literally all he's doing is going down the list of very popularly stated transphobic points and repeating them with the knowledge that there's a large group of people who are going to agree with him. There's so many layers to what he says. And I think we have to remember how old Jeffrey Star is too. Because one thing I will say is that there are people who have some of these feelings and some of it is based in like when he says don't label me. There are a lot of especially older queer folks who feel that way and feel that there's a lot of people who are eager to label others in ways that like aren't how they actually feel. So I can get how Jeffrey Star would be like I'm not non-binary personally. Don't call me non-binary because I'm a man who wears makeup. That's not my identity. That's not who I am. I'm a male. Because that's how he feels. There were so many people who were surprised by Jeffrey star having this like very visceral reaction to Charlie Kirk's death. For so many reasons I was not one of those people who was surprised. We'll get into it. What I was surprised by though was how he was like this is terrible. Charlie Kirk died and then it's like a four minute long coke rant about non-binary people. It gives like an absurdist quality where it's like it's almost hard to believe that people do take Jeffrey star seriously politically. But to your point cat he's just repeating what is already said to these people in a multitude of different ways. He's just like spitting it out at them and they're so used to hearing this messaging that it clearly doesn't even bother some people. That he can't even focus on the topic of Charlie Kirk. He's going veering between these things because the audience just needs to hear those phrases and that's what he knows. And like as a content creator watching it I'm like I know you don't. Like this was almost like a prepared speech that you're giving or like something you know is gonna perform a certain way because I don't even believe that he believes some of what he's saying. 100%. So as always I like to lay some groundwork on this podcast. Everyone is coming here with their own well of knowledge and you may have the pleasure of not yet knowing my nemesis Jeffrey Lynn Steininger Jr. AKA Jeffrey star. Jeffrey star is first and foremost a cockroach of the internet. He was at one point the most friendly person on my space then rode the wave of beauty YouTube into becoming one of its foremost celebrities built a makeup empire alongside that success then transitioned into becoming a TikTok star where he spends all day live streaming to huge audiences and his most recent act seemingly is doing audience capture with the American far right. Jeffrey's open embrace of far right politics while looking like a sort of fem queen non binary alien or as one Twitter user would put it like Kylie Jenner was put through a dehydrator has led many to wonder how how can you look like that and talk like that and be so among other things transphobic and like so into Charlie Kirk many people were confused about that why is this gender bent pink hair person lecturing me about how I should feel about Charlie Kirk it doesn't make any sense or does it today we're going to do a deep dive into Jeffrey stars long existence as a public figure and demonstrate not only that Jeffrey stars current act makes so much sense but also that like Jeffrey star is just another example of what white men can become when there are no real mechanisms of accountability in place for bad behavior and prove my thesis that Jeffrey star is Donald Trump it's kind of a wild card at the end there but I'll make the cake I mean these are all just like white men who were like did alleged sexual abuse and got away with it and now they feel like they can do anything and so they do they've got weird hair and they love sucking dick I love that. To do this I am so excited to be joined by this is the cat and cat special we are joined by cat black who is a veteran youtuber who has been online and making content for so long and who has chronicled Jeffrey stars YouTube career at great length. Fuck that man. And by cat ten barge who if you listen to this podcast a lot you're already familiar with cat is a journalist and has also been chronicling especially the misdeeds of Jeffrey star for a long time she is the person who broke the investigative reporting around Jeffrey stars alleged sexual harassment and assault allegations and the hush money allegations which we're going to be talking about all of that today so if any of that feels like a sore spot for you just know that that's going to be part of this conversation cat and cat welcome to the show. Thank you for having us it's such an honor to be in this cat duo right now at times too. How are you guys broad strokes feeling going into this conversation about this person? I know Jeffrey star but I have since written Jeffrey star off and I've seen whispers of what he's doing now but like last time I had a conversation with you this is some stuff that I'm probably gonna learn a lot of as we go because Jeffrey star to me is just such an annoying person like figure just like concept idea whatever that when I see him I just ignore it. So this will be an interesting episode because I'll get to learn that I guess he has not really changed I suppose. Funny to me that people are still talking about it. I think that's one of the baffling things about this is that like I think I made my video like 10 years ago. Like it's we're still talking about Jeffrey star and that's that's fascinating to me actually. It actually proves a lot of the point that I was kind of making in that those videos which is that like no he's going to continue to be successful and known and celebrated because he has that much power in this world as a white man. Yeah and I feel kind of similarly in that there was a period in my life a few years ago when I was reporting on Jeffrey star and there would be stretches of time when I would be thinking about Jeffrey every day like day in day out because I would be knee deep in writing these stories and reporting these stories about him but around that time period around when as we'll talk about he became a farm quote unquote farmer like he kind of started to fall off the map for me a little bit but he was always sort of there in the background and in recent months as I've watched him start to reemerge in this form I'm like yeah this is just yet another twist on who Jeffrey has always been at his core. Shall we get into the chronology of Jeffrey star? Absolutely. I want to just do a teeny bit of early life. Jeffrey Lynn Steininger was born in 1985 in LA and raised in Orange County just like another fixture of this podcast. No guesses? I was not raised in but I lived there for six years. Oh wait I actually knew that about you. Well so the answer is Gwen Stefani. Oh okay yeah. Oh I should have known that one. Cap Black as someone who was in Orange County lived there for for some time. Can you just explain if anyone's unfamiliar with like the social and political landscape of Orange County? Okay so I live in Los Angeles largely because I spent a really long time living in Orange County attempting to be a housewife and I'm not kidding. It didn't go well. Turns out being the only Black trans woman in a community of white conservatives is kind of not healthy for me. Orange County is very conservative. Orange County is where people live when they don't want to live in scary LA and when you're living in Orange County there is this concept of never leaving the Orange Curtain which is really about not going to the big scary city where all the the Black people are. That's really more of what it's about. A lot of Orange County more recently has become more blue or gone purple but historically it has been a very white supremacist place. I've been a stronghold for that and I left in 2016. 2017 actually is when I left. I was very happy to to leave because it is now very much Maga Country. Yeah so that is where Jeffrey Star grew up. Jeffrey's dad dies by suicide when Jeffrey is five years old and he was raised by his mom. The way that Jeffrey Star talks about his childhood he was always really into makeup from the time that he would use his mom's makeup you know secretly which like relatable. He was from a young age really into like gothic looks and sort of like this really high femme sort of alternative presentation. He also talks about his experiences with bullying or lack thereof. Jeffrey Star has said in more recent interviews that I've watched he'll say in the same breath that he wasn't bullied but that also when like people would call him a facet out of a moving car for example that he would stand up for himself and he would fight back and he would like put bitches in their place. I am probably one of the only people that looks like me that has never been bullied. I was never really bullied at all. I always stuck up for myself and if someone tried me I'd get vicious back. I love I used to love fighting and so it's like it sounds like you were bullied and like I can't imagine being queer in like the late 90s early 2000s in fucking Orange County and not being bullied but this sort of like mythology that he has about himself is one where like anyone who's mean to him he'll be twice as mean back and so like that's how the world should be kind of yeah it strikes me that like the persona Jeffrey had from his like late teenage years onward it's formed of this sort of violent exterior where he has this persona both in his content online and people who knew him in real life at that time period described like real physical acts of violence sort of other people. So it's like he has this super aggressive way of dealing with the world around him that feels very much so like it literally emerged from his childhood and also the values in his early content are him like sort of punching down on other vulnerable marginalized individuals like unhoused people black people like all kinds of other minorities really and you know why he's doing that because he's trying to gain the favor of like the white dudes who are bullying him because if they can say oh well I also hate black people you know that's that's what it's all about and when I look at Jeffrey star that is immediately what I read of him and I get it I've lived in conservative communities for the vast majority of my life there's a lot about his personality and even some of my less favorite conservative figures on the internet who are in the alphabet mafia who have this persona thing that kind of comes from being in a very conservative community being attacked but then finding inroads with some of those people who are attacking you where you become essentially one of the good ones like oh yeah we may have called you a faggot but you're one of the good ones right like we can joke with you like we'll still be bigoted maybe to other people but you know you're cool or you're cool within certain context so he's still even in that video we just watched he's still seeking the approval from that group of people who would typically hate him who do hate him actually that's that's I think behind the vast majority of like the conservative LGBT frankly after graduating high school in 2002 Jeffrey star like hustles for gigs he talks about using a fake ID to get into Hollywood clubs to meet celebrities and then sort of like offer himself up as a makeup artist and it was through this sort of hustle that he became the makeup artist for Kelly Osborne did you know this I could see it I can I could think of her her makeup of that era and think of his makeup of that era and it does match it does match Jeffrey talks about how he would steal Kelly Osborne's clothes to take I mean like steal quote-unquote but he would take her clothes and then take my space photos pretending that like they were his clothes to project wealth that he did not really have which I think is also a really interesting throughline because we're gonna talk about yes Jeffrey stars accumulation and transfers and drop-offs of wealth and it is very very hard to understand how much money Jeffrey star actually has at any given point in time also very bling ring which was around to this year I recently I recently like a month ago randomly was like I'm gonna watch every documentary about the bling ring this whole thing of like Jeffrey star sort of like slipping into clubs in the early 2000s to try to like link up with celebrities that he had nothing to do with it is very bling ring and Jeffrey actually knew in like the early 2000s loosely through like a social circle one of the guys whose house had been robbed by one of the bling ring members early on like before they did the huge celebrity houses they just like robbed one of their high school friends as houses yes and like Jeffrey like vaguely knew that guy through my space circles so it's all a very like incestuous community of like we love fame we want to get close to fame like they're almost like like vampire a quay I feel like if history had been tweaked ever so slightly Jeffrey star would have been in the bling ring and then he would have like gone to jail for two years and like we would never would have heard from him again if only Jeffrey star was in the bling ring so in 2003 Jeffrey joins my space and quickly becomes extremely my space famous now I just turned 27 and I don't really know that I don't really know that much about my face it was a spectacle I mean all of us were friends with Jeffrey star on on my space because it was the era of that you know you added as many people as possible you organized your top friends it was a very political thing and everyone wanted to be on Jeffrey stars page and like a series of other people who also turned out to be shitty but I remember coming to school and being like oh did you see what Jeffrey posted and it's always like some outlandish thing I remember vividly the fruit loops picture of him yes self-inducing wait what is this this great example of how he hasn't changed actually it was a picture of him making himself throw up fruit loops and you know it was a very kind of cool-looking weird like edgy picture but it was such a great example of him doing edge lordship because obviously at this era people had sensitivity around anorexia and body and things like that that was early 2000s right and so yeah that's a good example of him being like edgy and glamorous and like not giving a fuck like not give not caring and like yeah I did it yeah yeah I did it and the thing is I think a lot of people don't to understand like how common that. attitude was online because there were less of us online. Like social media was like starting to really become a thing. And like, you know, if you were an early adopter, you were kind of often also more of like a nerdy person too. What really struck me was how specific of an aesthetic there was to this era. Like I don't think it really has a lot of easy one-to-one comparisons. Like this was the hot topic goth, like Jeffrey fell into that category with like the hot pink hair and like the crazy looks. But what I think really defined this era was also just like tiny scene queen girls. Like literally the scene queens of my space. And Jeffrey wove his social life into theirs. And like understood very early on that one of the ways to stay relevant in addition to cultivating this really like shocking aesthetic and having this shock jock persona was also to put himself in the social world and sort of cause drama. And he also at this era was appearing in like the background of Kesha music videos. And there are photos of him and Demi Lovato from this era at House Parties. He really wanted to embed himself in the scene and he succeeded. I was watching while preparing for this episode. Like there's like all sorts of old Jeffree Star My Space content like on the internet archive and like deep deep deep in Reddit. There are just these videos of him with like his other mostly like white scene queen type friends. And they're just being so unbelievably racist. Yeah. Like like really like truly shocking like just like throwing around the n-word. A lot of like anti-Mexican racism. It's it's it's it's quite shocking. Watching me because I wish they were famous and sad that I am. They'll never be anything. So there's then a little shack because they're fucking you know the lighters. We can't even afford an oven to bake their little food. And he's keep on harassing me. It's so pathetic. I love that. I really think you'd get away with fucking making a fake Jeffree Star profile just to promote yourself and getting pissed off and fucking being a dumb fucking black hoe. I mean one of the videos I did was about several of the clips that had resurfaced where he had like been saying the n-word right. And a lot of people at the time saw these these videos and were like things were so much different back then. And keep in mind you guys I'm 35. I was there you know like it was racist then it was and it's still racist now. These people just kind of got away with it because the one thing that has changed is that there are more people on the internet. It's not really subculture anymore. And I think that's the thing that a lot of people don't really have a good context for. Like I had to sneak on the internet to get on to to my space and start Azenga and do all this shit. Now it's in everybody's pockets right. And so now what you have is a wider range of people looking at what you're doing. And these kids could just be racist you know they could post really heinously racist stuff. You know I've been posting videos on the internet. There was a time when I didn't post videos with the idea that other people would see them. Or the videos would get outside of my immediate circle of people. Or you know I wouldn't think about people capturing it or downloading it or thinking about it. So I know that a lot of these kids they made these videos uploaded them mostly probably for their friends. There was probably a large amount of people on the internet who at the time were still subculture who were laughing at it but not necessarily criticizing it because everyone kind of understood that that's kind of the weird thing that they were doing is like being racist and like a safe way right. And no one really criticize it. And then when these things resurface because Jeffrey stars issue in my opinion I mean issue it's a good thing. He decided to jump on the bandwagon of extended shade ranges and started to become very much about yeah I'm all about black women and so when these things resurface and he centered himself as a central figure on social media who is a trusted source there are a lot of people who are naturally going to ask does a person who would make that content even back then keeping in mind that not every white person goes through a racist phase right. Would that person be the right person to trust when it comes to black women and extended shade ranges. And there were still a lot of people who swore by the makeup, swore by the quality of it, swore by his opinion of other makeup and said you know maybe Jeff Restar was racist back then but you know he's clearly changed. My main argument was I mean really all he's trying to do is like most capitalist make more money by selling products that can be sold to certain types of people right. Like at the end of the day it doesn't matter how extended your shade range is like you're still trying to make money it's not actually charity you know but people treated it like charity and I think Jeff Restar largely survives on the idea that he's in some way doing charity. And I think like going back to that early Myspace era the racism was a prominent feature the like top influencers were either incredibly fair-skinned and white like they were all white people for the most part and or openly white supremacists this was viewed as like a part of edgy culture a part of cool culture and Jeffrey performed in Warped Tour where popular bands and singers used this type of iconography to be edgy it was a fetishization of racism of white supremacy also of things like self-harm of eating disorders and this stuff fed itself into Jeff Feastar's content was a part of his like aesthetic image as well. Yes and Jeffrey at this point he loved like you said it's like fetishizing this sort of like Nazi iconography he loved confederate flags and he loved swastikas and to that end there's something I need to talk about but I do want to add that like to me from a psychological place a lot of this reads as like not to give him too much grace and not that it justifies anything but like to me a lot of this behavior makes sense as like a cry for attention. Oh yeah definitely. I mean this is someone who write whose dad died by suicide when he was five who like grew up as like this openly effeminate queer kid and like a very conservative place and it's like it to me a lot of it just seems like acting out. Definitely 100%. I mean a lot of people who rose to prominence on the internet not just in the Myspace era but throughout the entire timeline and history of the internet a lot of these people are young influencers from incredibly troubled volatile home backgrounds a lot of them say very lonely and isolated which is why they spend so much time on the internet putting content of themselves on the internet a lot of time they've had been abused like lots of times like trauma in their backgrounds and unfortunately the internet it is a very like comfortable place for people like this to thrive and it rewards and incentivizes the worst possible behavior that they are willing to do partly because of their backgrounds. I would like to give a quick shout out to ground news for sponsoring this episode. I always say a big part of my job is understanding where people are at with their thinking about what's happening in the world and a big part of doing that is understanding their information diet. For example, Zoran Mamdani famously went to the White House last week to meet with Donald Trump and while we don't know exactly what was exchanged by the two men during that closed door meeting Trump came out of it seemingly wildly charmed by Zoran defending him from conservative reporters and saying that he would love to visit New York under Zoran's morality. I think to most people it looked like Zoran worked some serious political strategy in that meeting but of course every newsroom is going to report on it in different ways. Ground news is a website and app that aggregates news articles from all different publications and newsrooms. They take all of the different coverage about a single story, organize that coverage into left, right and center biases and gives you information about the owners of those publications and any potential conflicts of interest therein and so many other transparency tools that help you not only better understand your own media intake and potential biases but also like those of your extended family members. I wanted to see how some right-leaning news outlets were covering that Zoran Trump meeting. Here are a few. Trump played Mamdani like a fiddle. Well, I highly doubt that and so does ground news. The platform is showing me that this particular outlet has a low factuality rating. Trump stuns with White House sit down with New York City Socialist. I love the pop crave syntax here. Trump stuns in new photo. Incredible moment. Donald Trump defends incoming Democratic Socialist mayor Zoran Mamdani. Wow. Trump loves Zoran so much that not even a Murdoch-owned news outlet could deny it. Ground news has been a really helpful and singular tool for me, especially as someone who maybe like you is trying so hard to understand this fractured reality. It feels like we now live in. If you would like to give ground news a try, you can get 40% off a vantage plan right now by scanning the QR code on the screen if you're watching the video version of this podcast or by going to ground.news/frudy. That is ground.news/frudy. Now let's get back to the show. And every time something new resurfaces about Jeffrey Star and people being like, "Can you believe - I believe Jeffrey Starr is a conservative. I'm like, you guys don't think that the guy who started lipstick Nazi would be a conservative, but the problem is they don't know about lipstick Nazi. Are you too familiar with Jeffrey Starr's first attempt at a beauty brand? - I am, unfortunately, yeah. (laughing) - Around 2006, Jeffrey Starr launches lipsticknatsy.com. I can't believe the words that are coming out of my mouth right now. (laughing) - Do you, if you wanna describe what lipsticknatsy is? - I mean, people dig this up every few years, and it is a revelation to too many, but essentially, you have this Myspace era web design, classically, the hot pink lipstick, the super heavy black and glitter eyeliner, and pink swastikas, pink razor blades, barbed wire, lipsticknatsy.com Hollywood. So this falls into this Myspace aesthetic that is so specific, so clearly, and at around the same time, there was a rumor, so I don't know how much of this survived to this day, but there was always kind of like an allegation that floats around from time to time that fans would like self-harm and post those pictures online, in tribute to Jeffrey Starr. - Ah, yeah. - That honestly, regardless of whether or not that is true, that does feel like a rumor that Jeffrey Starr would indulge - Oh, totally. - Because it would be like, look how much these people love me. In an interview that Jeffrey Starr gave recently, he, you know, now he's really leaning into this like, anti-cancel culture conservative grievance politics, like way more openly, and like you said, cat black, like using the script that he knows how to follow. He went on a cancel culture rift that I thought was really fascinating. - And for some reason, around 2013, everyone became a pussy, and people were, it was a very bizarre shift, like all my crazy wild jokes were now, I'm like, okay, got it. And people got really, really weird. And I think now we're at a place where people should be held accountable for really awful things, right? I think cancel culture is kind of over, but like we talked about, you're gonna glorify and make fun of someone that was murdered on, like now you're getting the repercussions. So the people that are losing their jobs, Trump is taking away visas if you're tweeting, I'm glad he died. Good. Now you're being held responsible versus, oh, you made a joke when you were 12, we're gonna hate you forever. I think people are allowed to grow and change. - And what's funny is he would love to be a kid right now making a Charlie Kirk joke. Like that, I can imagine, and he would literally be doing that. Like if he was a little teen, 'cause that's what the little teenagers are doing right now. - If he was a kid now, and like all of this had happened in the early 2000s, Jeffrey would have like, made a lipstick called Charlie's Blood. - Yeah. - It's so interesting and conservatives do this now, which is also like, Jeffrey starred just becoming like a run of the Mill conservative grifter type is so boring to me. Like I hold him to a higher standard. Like do a more complex grift than that, but he's doing what they all do, which is like creating a very narrow definition of accountability that includes everyone he personally disagrees with and not himself. And also reducing like his entire wild pass of like very overt racism that went well into his 20s as a joke that I made when I was 12. - There are two things about what he said in that clip that really irritated me. The first thing is when he talks about the cancel culture of the 2010s and how this period was so wrong, he weaponized cancel culture to his benefit. And he has done this throughout his career. He drives hate campaigns against his competitors in his various fields. And at this period in time, he weaponized cancel culture to his benefit. He weaponized cancel culture when he attacked James Charles. He weaponized cancel culture when he attacked morally and many MUA and Gabriel's more and all of those other people. And he uses it to his benefit and then he discards it to his benefit and acts like he was never a part of it. The other thing that really annoys me is when he's talking about the government taking away people's visas for joking or celebrating Charlie Kirk's death and how that's somehow better than cancel culture. It's not surprising, it's just annoying because conservatives already make this argument all the time, it's just even more infuriating to hear it out of Jeffrey Starr's like uneducated mouth. But I'm like, you understand that that is actually a freedom of speech violation when the government, when the state restricts your movement because of your speech, that is tyranny. Cancel culture is not. But of course, you make the opposite distinction. It is just so stupid to listen to. And it's a continuation of most of this stupid cancel culture shit anyway, did he get canceled? No, because cancel culture isn't fucking real. There's definitely something to be said about the way that people on the internet will sometimes jump on, hate campaigns and did it and on, whether or not accountability actually matters. There's a conversation to be had about cancel culture. But like, it's never meant what these motherfuckers are trying to make it sound like. And what kills me about what he said is, it actually doesn't require a lot of thick skin for you to be a conservative and to just be racist. And it really doesn't. Like, it is actually a little bit more bold to stand up against people like Charlie Kirk who are paid a lot of money by billionaires to go to college campuses and say that people like me don't have the mental capacity to ever possibly hold any position of power over a white man, right? It's also frustrating because actually the thing you should be opposed to as a person who believes in this constitution is people being in prison for their speech. It would actually be far more American for you if we're buying into the bullshit for you to stand up with your fellow Americans and support your freedom of speech, right? Like that would absolutely be the more, you know, traditional way. And that's kind of the thing that's fascinating. Being raised around so many conservatives, this whole Trumpy mega thing is kind of funny to me because it's not consistent. But of course it never is, you know? - Yeah, I do think you're giving Jeffrey Star way too much credit in the idea that he's like aiming to be coherent in his politics. Like he's saying whatever he needs to say. - People who you buy makeup for you have the right to care about you saying the N word. And that's actually not a big deal. You could argue that that's actually the free market with people making the decision to not purchase your stuff because of what you advertised, you know, in the past. It's just, it's funny to me. Like he wants to be able to be edgy. He wants to be free to be edgy. He wants to be able to say the racist shit. He doesn't really like any of the consequences for it. That's the funny thing because they'll walk away from the conversation thinking, oh, so I have thicker skin. - When really, you're a thin skin little bitch. (laughing) - So as we mentioned in the latter half of the 2000s and the early 2010s, Jeffrey Star was making music. He established himself in this like vans worked tour scene. He, the amount of celebrity cameos in Jeffrey Star's existence is so bizarre. Jeffrey Star made a song with Nicki Minaj. - Oh. - Who is, who is, who is, who is now, (laughing) also a Nazi, how great, yeah. - Which I'm like, yeah. - I'm like, can you believe that and everyone's like, yeah. (laughing) - Especially now, especially now. - Yeah, Nicki Minaj is also now a trumper. That's a whole other thing. But do you know who managed Jeffrey Star as a music artist? - Acon. - Fuck, you know everything about Jeffrey Star. There's no surprises. (laughing) - Jeffrey Star was managed by Acon, who signed Jeffrey to his record label, and once referred to Jeffrey Star as the next Lady Gaga. (laughing) - Oh. - Yeah, but you know at that era, some of his music was kind of giving Lady Gaga some of it. - Oh yeah. - He did like a whole electro thing for a bit that was giving that. - And it was during Jeffrey Star's brief career as a sort of up and coming musician that Jeffrey Star has a number of sexual assault allegations levied against him. And this is where I defer to Kat Tenbarge who investigated and reported those allegations. Kat, take it away. - So I think it really goes hand in hand with what we've been talking about in regards to the violence of these eras and environments that Jeffrey Star partook in. Because going back to the Warped Tour era, which is when these allegations took place, the majority of the ones that I reported on at least. Like Jeffrey surrounded himself and was in this environment that was ripe with this type of abuse. And there have been so many allegations that stemmed from artists who performed at Warped Tour, including the artists that Jeffrey collaborated with blood on the dance floor. And before I reported on the allegations against Jeffrey, I reported on these allegations against the lead singer Dobby Vanity of Blood on the Dance Floor who Jeffrey worked with and at the time going back in the archive of Jeffrey's tweets, he tweeted about these allegations within this scene against Dobby Vanity. He like said that he confirmed them that he was like an eyewitness to things that had happened. And then fast forward to 2020. And Jeffrey kind of denounces some of this, I think to not have any accountability or responsibility. for what was allegedly happening there. And at the same time that he's kind of denying, knowing anything about Dobby Vanity, whose allegations are being brought up, allegations against Jeffrey come up. And this is also the period of time when Jeffrey and Shane Dawson were both experiencing this reckoning that touched on all kinds of terrible content and conduct that they were partaking in, racist content, offensive and derogatory content, inappropriate interactions with fans and with minors. And all of these allegations were sort of swirling around. And a lot of them do date back to the Myspace era. But this pattern emerged over years of behavior where Jeffrey had allegedly engaged, kind of embracing his online persona offline. People in the scene alleged that he had been violent toward them, that he had either threatened to use or used weaponry on them, that he would then show in videos on YouTube, like my pink taser, or like my handbag, with all my weapons that I have. So there were allegations of that behavior happening offline, and then there were also sexual assault allegations against Jeffrey, groping men in venues, and just sort of being like physically sexually aggressive in public, and then also involving like other people in the Myspace scene. And this was like pretty horrific stuff when I approached Jeffrey for a comment at the time back in 2021, a lot of sources and people who had made allegations reached out to start recanting those allegations before the story was published. And we were later able to report that Jeffrey had been offering sources for the story, like hushed money payments of like thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in some cases to recant those allegations. But the story still came out. But interestingly enough, the story, it was definitely felt and read at the time and like fairly widely. But the story did not take off, like most people do not know about these allegations against Jeffrey Star. And I think the reason for that is people expect a level of bad behavior from him, and it doesn't shock them in the way that it shocks someone when you hear allegations against a beloved celebrity. So like the tolerance for the entire scale of his behavior, public or otherwise, has created this environment where he doesn't even receive the same levels of criticism or cancellation that maybe other celebrities receive. And yet here he is still complaining about cancel culture when he avoided and was able to sort of wriggle his way out of so much deserved scrutiny. That's why it's so annoying. He's been complaining about this forever, but I think to your point earlier, mostly as like a sales point because he's never really canceled. And him being canceled ends up being like the thing that draws more attention to him. And then you go to the comment section, oh, we love you Jeffrey. Don't let anyone, you know, who cares? Jeffrey is huge on TikTok. Sometimes I'll be on TikTok and I'll get his lives and I'm like, oh my God, I click not interested a week ago. You know, and even if it's like a new makeup thing, I'll get it, like he's everywhere still. That's why you can't really take any of the, I was canceled seriously because I don't think even he cares. - Can I just return to my thesis that Jeffrey star is Donald Trump? (laughs) But really, what I'm describing there is like an enormous category of celebrity men who, I honestly think being able to bulldoze sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations, which only a very certain type of person, right? wealthy white men are able to do. I feel like getting over the other side of that relatively unscathed. Like the message that sends is that you can do anything. It's very Trumpian to me. - Well, I think a lot of men, they hold onto this idea that if they one day amass enough wealth, that's what they'll be able to do. And it's funny because, you know, I've spent a lot of time with people of means and you kind of get the sense of that, right? That at a certain point, like they just want to purchase people. Then when you look at what's happening with Epstein, you sort of see it, you know? You've got people messaging Epstein while he's in jail about how they can get around sexual assault allegations. There's this group of men understand that at the end of the day, rich white men should be allowed to do it. And if they did do it, then, you know, whoever was on the other end of that should be happy it happened to them. You know, as a survivor, that's something that I've come to sort of understand as well. I've only once reported a man who's assaulted me and there have been several. And I feel good about not reporting some of the men that have harmed me because they are rich white men. They are men who have means and who would ruin my life. And unfortunately, that's the world that a lot of the Trump-like people want to hold on to. And I think it's a world that we hopefully dismantle quite soon. I don't know if that's possible in my lifetime, but unfortunately, that is a big thing. When I was reporting on these allegations against Jeffrey back in 2021, one of the things I remember strongly about having conversations with dozens of people who had known Jeffrey's star at various points in his life, a lot of them for a very short amount of time, but they had cost paths with him in some way. And a lot of them were terrified of him. And they were terrified for me, for reporting on him, and they had built him up with this sort of mythology that I think was really understandable where they were coming from. But it's like, he is an individual who traffics in fear and benefits from people being this afraid of him. So he cultivates this mysterious persona of like, "I'm unimaginably wealthy. I can get away with anything." And through conveying that to people, conveying that message to them, and that impression to them, he does get away with everything. He's like faking it until he makes it. And I think that's super Trumpian as well. And I also think that even the aesthetic in what both of them project is kind of similar, because with Jeffrey, when he transitioned over to selling makeup after his music career ended, his audience has always included a demographic of people who are like rural, who are very low income, who are like middle America. These are the types of people who have always been fans of Jeffrey Star, which doesn't necessarily strike people as like predictable or sensible, because it's like, oh, he's this Hollywood, openly gay, super exceptionally explicit about being gay, like flamboyant man. What about him appeals to this demographic? But in a similar way, you could ask what appeals to this demographic about Trump, because Trump is also like an East Coast like super flamboyant, loves Broadway, gold toilet seat, like the type of individual, and yet they both have the same appeal. And I think a lot of that appeal, a singular part of that appeal, is this like air of I can get away with anything? - Yes. So post MySpace, post Music Career, Jeffrey Star transitions this relatively niche fame into becoming one of the biggest faces of what is beginning to boom in the early 2010s, which is Beauty YouTube. - What's up, everybody? Welcome back to my channel. - Hi. - How are you? - You know, this is not going to be an episode where we document every single thing that Jeffrey Star has ever done, because Kat and I have tried to do versions of that on Patreon, and we end up just locking ourselves in a room for eight hours, and it's really hard, and people start screaming for help. So we need to be selected about what exactly we pull from each of these eras. I think the most interesting thing about Jeffrey Star's career on YouTube, is that this coincides with this cultural shift, this Obama era liberalism, where I think as Kat Black said earlier, you had to pretend to care about social causes. You had to pretend, and a lot of people earnestly did care about those things, but for Jeffrey, someone who just a couple years prior was like saying the N word on camera, chasing black women down the street and hurling racial slurs at them. This is someone who needed to do a radical shift if he wanted to capitalize on the moment, the way that he was about to. - Yeah, and my thing with it has always been, I don't believe you, you know, and I felt that way about a lot of people back then, actually, mostly because there's a way you carry yourself and speak about things when you actually have done the work, and what it felt to me was happening with Jeffrey and with a lot of other people is they just got the script. Like he had the script earlier in the first video we saw, he has another script, and we're all about inclusivity, intersectionality, stay woke. I'll never forget one time a Google executive asked me if stay woke is still relevant. There was an era of the Obama liberalism shit that yeah, a lot of people were bullshitting to make sales. And I think there are some people who feel kind of nice that we're not doing that anymore. - Jeffrey being one of them. - Jeffrey for sure being one of the things he never believed it, and I knew that, but all people could say is like, but he's selling makeup to black people though. Like, would he sell makeup to black people if he was racist? Like come on you guys. - Yes. (laughing) - Yes, yes, yes he would, yeah. - Jeffrey was doing what a lot of other, I think celebrities and influencers were also doing, which was shifting like Shane Dawson comes to mind for the YouTuber comparison. - Another episode, let me know. I don't know if we can maybe post holidays we could revisit Shane Dawson, because I don't have it in me right now. I wanna feel, I wanna feel merry, God damn it. - But yeah, I mean, a lot. a lot of these celebrities and YouTubers, Kardashians come to mind as well. What Jeffrey Star was doing was he was shifting from a kind of overtly racist viral content into a type of content that was like culturally appropriative and therefore was able to be packaged as socially liberal, socially progressive, but the reality of it was he was still taking advantage of and in a lot of cases still very overtly attacking targeting black women and black people and some of the aesthetic indicators of this era were like no longer do we have the super grungy high contrast my space era makeup. Now we've gone into this like lux aesthetic that really defines this group of people where it's like now we just fetishize wealth itself. So we have an entire room full of Birken handbags and all of our closer designer, we live in these absurd calibassist mansions and we have all these designer dogs and it's like Jeffrey in this era of YouTube really showcased wealth as a big like part of his shock and awe versus like some of the overtly offensive stuff that he was doing a few years prior. - One of the highlights of his many YouTube controversies was his like very racist feud with Jackie Aina who is a popular black creator online. She was also very popular in the beauty space. - I don't remember the exact timeline but I remember that text messages were leaked of Jeffrey. I think calling Jackie a gorilla if I remember him actually. - I think that's what I remember too. - I forget who leaked them or who was in that. I know I made a video about it but you know I've not cared about Jeffree Star in a long time. - That granular details themselves are exchangeable for like so many of these Jeffree Star controversies but it's like time and time again, even throughout this YouTube era, the peak of his career where he's the most beloved even by liberal and socially progressive people. The cracks were always there. The bad stuff was always bursting at the seams. We could see it the whole time. These text messages are so blatant and yet people still tried to like push it under the rug and pretend like that wasn't the real Jeffree that they saw on their YouTube screen. - Yeah, which is bizarre because most, most people, I'm bad at this but most people, they put on a character that they show. And to me, Jeffree's projecting a character and this character needs to sell makeup to you and black people have money, black women invest very heavily in the beauty space. And I personally think that Jeffree Star because of the way that both of their opinions were trusted was a little threatened by Jackie, who was doing a lot of stuff at the time. And I think like the thing for me with Jeffree is so much of it leads back to him hating black women. And people like to think that black women are sensitive, we're easily offended. We got thin skin, which is such a hilarious accusation, especially listening to him complain about being canceled still in 2025. But the reality is we just see it. We see it because we're used to having to see it. So a lot of black women did address Jeffree Star for being a little weird about black women. And literally all people could come back with was, oh, but he sells makeup to black women. And I think that there's obvious reasons why a non racist white people shouldn't even privately refer to a black person as a gorilla. But people love to like suspend their disbelief and, you know, oh, this person who's trying to sell things to me, they couldn't, they couldn't be a different person behind the scenes, not at all. Wait, I actually want to touch on that, though. We've been circling around this a little bit, but one comment that comes up over and over and over and over and over again for the like 20 plus long year's career of Jeffree Star is like, Jeffree Star is real as fuck when he's reviewing makeup. So like, I trust him because like he will always be honest when talking about that honesty of Beverly Hills, eyeshadow palette, and I'm like, the bar has to be higher than this. But you know, here's the problem. Here's what I'll say. This is going to sound like a little bit of apology, but I'll tell you. Oh, okay, no, I'm here. So Jeffree Star, especially at that era because he was projecting wealth, there were a lot of people who were like, okay, he really doesn't have a reason to bullshit us. That he's got all of the incentives to just be honest, right? And at the time, there were a lot of influencers being paid to say nice things about products. And I think actually this is maybe why Jeffree Star did appeal to some of the more rural folks too, because he would actually give, in my opinion, pretty good reviews of makeup. And for a lot of people, especially people who are trying to save money, you want to invest. You don't want to just go and buy this trendy bullshit because so and so said, so and they're reading a thing that says that you have, you know, so I think for some people, it was like, I'm going to watch a Jeffree Star video because I know Jeffree Star has no incentive to lie to me. Of course, that's, you know, to be questioned, but I think that was the idea. I think that's such a sharp analysis. And I also think like two things come to mind. One, it again relates back to Trump for me because that also is so much of Trump's appeal is like, because Trump was also really honest about eyeshadow review. (laughing) What's like, that's like the pathos is like, Trump is not a government guy. Trump is an outsider. So therefore, Trump will tell us the truth about what's really going on in this institution that we distrust. Even though Trump himself isn't extremely corrupt, untrust for the person. And I think the same can ultimately be said for Jeffree Star, but Jeffree Star was so smart about how he started and grew his makeup career at the same time as he was doing YouTube makeup commentary 'cause the first Jeffree Star cosmetics products were like the intense long-lasting liquid lipsticks that were pretty revolutionary at the time. People were using them, drag queens were using them, celebrities were using them. People, professional makeup artists, put them in their makeup kits. This was a good product for him to launch with because it actually set him up with like authenticity and credibility that other people did not have. He also was genuinely talented at doing makeup. He could impart actual makeup wisdom onto his viewers. And I think the way that he ultimately steered his brand was so unique, but worked really well for a time. Which was that he was so aggressive toward other brands, which is not how people usually market their products. You're not usually like I'm gonna buy your product because you're feuding with the owner of the competing product and I side with you. But that is literally how Jeffree Star conducted himself. He feuded with the Kardashians. He was like their products are trash. And the reality is that they were overpriced. And like he feuded with all of these different people. And a lot of times I think his insights about what the competitors were doing wrong were true. But his ultimate kind of downfall in this territory is that as Jeffree grew his brand, his own products could not live up to like what he was saying about competitors. 'Cause today he sells a massive range of products. He sells skincare. He launched, I believe like concealer and foundation and was doing all these different things. And as he put out more products, it became more and more clear that like MUA's are not reaching for the Jeffree Star setting spray. Like people like the Jeffree Star skincare, nobody's asking for that. Like yeah, never heard of it. Over time he almost like lost that edge, but it worked really well for a while. I will say, I know we're kind of getting away from politics here, but when he launched his skincare line, I was like, who looks at Jeffree Star and think skincare? (laughing) People call him the crypt keeper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the opposite is true actually. His makeup is so impressive because of what he looks like. I will say though, there is a demographic of people who purchase everything he puts out. Like if you go deep into the weeds of like Jeffree Star fan subculture internet, you will see people who have spent thousands and thousands of thousands of dollars on all of his products, on all of his like hand mirrors and will post like photo hauls of all of them. And when I discovered that part of like Reddit or whatever, I was like, that's crazy. Well, I have some experience with them because back when I was on Twitter and posting about every star all the time, these people would obviously be like coming for me constantly. And I would go look at like their pictures and like read their profiles and see how they had an entire wall of Jeffree Star hand mirrors. And like every single palette, I shadow palette, but they didn't really wear it. It was interesting. It felt like I was doing like a sociological study in a lot of ways because I could tell that these were not like wealthy people whatsoever. In fact, I don't think they could afford their level of devotion to Jeffree Star or at the very least, they were dedicating a substantial amount of like what they had, the resources they had toward these collections. They really sought his acknowledgement and approval. So like Jeffree would occasionally as many celebrities and influencers do, he rewards people with engagement. He has done like giveaways. He puts on as I believe Kat, you were talking about at the beginning like this charitable persona. That also really speaks to these people. And so they're vying for his attention. They want to show him that they are a devoted fan. And they also want to defend him. I'll never forget. last time I went down this rabbit hole it was he had released some some highlighter and someone at dragcon got this highlighter and it had broken apart and they were finding out in like real time I think that Jeffrey started to care about you and it was really sad because he was so dedicated because he had purchased all of these things you know I would like to give a shout out to factor for sponsoring today's episode I am home for Thanksgiving right now and my mother continues to lament to me that despite the thousands of hours I spent watching her cook as a child I never developed the itch to cook and I have continued to tell her mom I love you I do a lot of other things and cooking is just not one of them it is not a moral judgment maybe one day I would like to cook it's just not how I currently express myself and that day has not come but I do love eating and prepared foods aren't always that great and getting take out all the time obviously gets really expensive one super helpful way that I have been able to tastefully cut corners is with factor factor is a meal delivery service with gourmet chef made meals that make eating well easy and the best part is that they're all ready to heat and eat in two minutes there are all different menus for you to try I go for the protein plus lots of different creative chicken dishes and beef dishes and there are new meals being added every week so you don't have to worry about it getting monotonous I'm not much of a meal prepper either I know this just sounds like I'm like a pathetic person who doesn't like doing anything with food but like if factor exists then why do I have to you know if you would like to make eating at home more varied and less laborious experience you can try factor now you can do that by heading over to factor meals dot com slash fruity 50 off with the code fruity 50 off to get 50% off your first box and free breakfast for the next year that is factor meals dot com slash fruity 50 off for 50% off your first box and free breakfast for a year thanks so much to factor and now let's get back to the episode I know a lot of people are listening to this and they might be waiting for me to talk about buy sister and this is not a buy sister episode cat ten barge and I did a very dare I say excruciatingly long series about buy sister that is over on patreon what I will say about buy sister which let me see if I can synthesize the entire events of buy sister in like two sentences basically James Charles who was a younger much more quickly up and coming competitor to Jeffrey star Tati Westbrook who was another veteran of youtube made a video about James Charles who she was a friend and mentor to accusing him not only of betraying her as a friend but being a sexual predator and this was before all that stuff came out about James Charles so at the time there was no actual evidence to believe that it was true but Tati Westbrook nonetheless spun the narrative that it was true and then James Charles disproved everything and Tati Westbrook looked really bad and then Tati Westbrook one year later came back and said that Jeffrey star had manipulated her into making her original video that is like that is like the broadest of broad strokes but did I do okay I think you did a good job some some people know a lot about like law or science I know a lot about buy sister my only comment with regard to this episode Jeffrey star's political arc his general world view is that I completely believe that he orchestrated by sister because I think one thing we know about Jeffrey star is he has always been intimidated by business rivals he has never been shy about being unbelievably cruel to other people and so like I completely believe that he planted seeds in Tati's head about like oh maybe maybe James Charles is a bit of a sexual predator and that's how we can take them down and then you know reign supreme in this YouTube beauty space well I think that for me the kind of through line here is that Jeffrey threw the confrontational like marketing style Jeffrey saw James Charles as like someone he desperately needed to take out they were so similar to each other and James poised such a threat to Jeffrey's bottom line and when Jeffrey does this like aggressive confrontational style of counter marketing with other people in the industry there's no low he won't sink to he will 100% accuse someone a very dubious serious allegations even as a total hypocrite he will also rely on racism easily and people let him get away with that and I think for a long time this continued until this and other factors I think ultimately became too much for him which is when we go into the next phase of his career but like for a little bit this strategy worked very very well and it relied on people's underlying bigotry their underlying racism their underlying homophobia and we now see him doing that again should we talk about the insane apology videos before we go into that era yes I totally forgot about those apology videos Jeffrey star before realizing that he had to move on from YouTube because this era really came crashing down for him he made a number of apology videos for like past racism past transgressions and I just want to sit for a minute with the thumbnails of those videos particularly one where I totally forgot it's all coming back it's I'm dead I love the little boy he looks like a femme Voldemort in this thumbnail and he's like holding his face ever so gingerly in his like Gucci sweater and the the text on top of his on top of his body just says racism also I'm pretty sure in that video he never actually utters the words I'm sorry I don't think he ever apologizes like I feel like that's kind of a hallmark of Jeffrey is like the video is not titled I'm sorry that I was racist the video is simply titled racism it exists like let's talk about it and then he's like he's like the I don't know it was a different place back then or actually another classic rhetorical style that he falls back on is like I'm not that person anymore I'm really not I can't even recognize that person of Jeffrey yeah I don't I think that's what he says right I don't even recognize that person and it just makes me sick to my stomach because I don't know who that person was I know who I am today I know exactly the person I am today but I do not know who that person was and you know I do believe people change but have you changed sir I don't know I feel like he's one of the most consistent and predictable people I've ever seen on the internet well and this is the thing it's like we're watching as this person tries to just stay with the times ultimately to sell makeup and so what that means in this moment is like issuing a few really ridiculous apology videos there was another one and I think this was the last great YouTube controversy of Jeffrey star before he flees to Wyoming after the whole by sister scandal really collapses in 2020 Jeffrey star makes an apology video where he is perched on his golden sofa in Louis Vuitton slippers in front of a a dual spiral staircase and he's saying you know I never meant to get caught up in any of this I don't know if you guys remember this video but I have I literally have its transcript burned into the back of my brain he shifts so quickly from this is not who I am this is not Jeffrey star I know I'm dramatic I'm crazy at times I'm out spoken but at the end of the day that is not who I am too we need to be talking about there hasn't been justice for Brianna Taylor and did I get swept up into the bullshit again of course I did and for that I'm forever embarrassed of now Brianna Taylor still has no justice black trends women are being murdered every day in the news is silent Elijah McClain has no justice and the countless other people who are murdered every single day while everyone just goes about their business like nothing's happening yeah I do remember that I was like oh my god shut up and that's another example of him reading the script it was like I mean all of these influencers back then were like black lives matter but then they were like being racist on the weekend and like you know bullying their black friends like yes and then they were like but what really matters is it what I did it's Brianna Taylor but also he doesn't care about Brianna Taylor which is not it was always very evident but particularly after watching him praise Charlie Kirk yeah it's so obvious that he did not give a fuck about Brianna Taylor he just used her name as a buzz word Charlie Kirk he's extolling the virtues of this man yeah literally literally like what Charlie Kirk was advocating for is why she was murdered so for you to say but I believed in him and I did it it's like come on man you never felt that way and I I do appreciate that people are being more honest now about how they feel like the Jeffrey stars of the world did drive me a little insane during the Obama era like just be honest your race is just make you can make me - Makeup for just white people, I'm sure you'll be fine. - Honestly, the multiple acts of that golden couch apology video are so insane to me because it goes from, if it's not me and every did anything wrong, to like let's talk about what really matters, Brianna Taylor, too, I'm so excited for all the new things we're working on at Jeffrey Stark Health Meta. - All right, now, no matter what narrative anyone tries to spin of me, I am so fucking proud to own an inclusive makeup company. Since I opened my doors in 2014, I have created products for everyone, any product, shade, or formula I've created has worked for any race, gender, and most importantly, I want you guys to remember that all beauty matters. - Yeah. His ability to go from like just effortlessly from one thing to the next was really on display there. But I do think this was the last time that Jeffrey Stark was like really making a splash on YouTube because he failed so completely in this moment. And so what he did was, in 2021, he flees from Los Angeles to Wyoming. - Get away from the wokeness. Oh my God, I'm so scared, oh my God, get away. - This is funny to me. - To Wyoming, where he purchases a yak farm, which of course he seamlessly integrates into his business model and starts selling yak meat, what I will say about the move from LA to Wyoming is it's really interesting. He lived in this mansion in Hidden Hills, which is a gated community in Los Angeles. He ultimately sold it for about $16 million. He tried to sell it to Britney Spears. She and her ex has been tormented at the time. That was really interesting. But Jeffrey Stark sells his mansion for, I think $16 or $17 million, and then moves into this ranch in Wyoming, in Casper, Wyoming, which costs I believe $1.2 million. Jeffrey Stark now says, oh, it was COVID and I was shacked up in this big mansion that I didn't know what to do with. I never even used the movie theater, which I'm like, I'm with you. I would go crazy in a house that big, but there seems to me something missing in this narrative of so I downsize by over 1,000%. - I think that the clearest explanation of what happened here, which is corroborated by several things, is in 2020, makeup trends changed dramatically. And the things that Jeffrey Stark's brand had been known for, bright, bold, full coverage makeup, that was no longer in whatsoever. And that is around the time that he introduced like, Jeffrey Stark's skincare, he started doing more like makeup brushes, like other products besides what he was known for. None of that stuff ever took off the way that his like previous products had become cult classics. Jeffrey Stark cosmetics, it suffered as a brand, it was suffering as an industry. His scandals did not help. A lot of people in the public who would have otherwise been comfortable buying his makeup, I think were turned off by some of what had happened in the preceding years. And so you have all these economic factors. And then socially, you also have this sort of like quasi-falling out with his like, then best friend Shane Dawson, where they really stopped like seeing each other after being previously super close for content and money, of course. But nonetheless, like they had a little bit of like, a falling out that they kind of denied. He also broke up with his long-term boyfriend, Nathan Schwann. - Oh, Nate. - I was engaged right now, I believe. - To a woman? - A woman, yes. - Yeah. - Oh my God, wait, good for him. - Yeah, he looks so happy actually, he looks really happy. - Muzzle to have Nathan Schwann. - For those who don't know, Jeffrey was like, Nathan is straight except for me. - Yeah. Which honestly, like sexuality is very complicated, straight identifying men are very complicated. I believe that that's how both of them understood that relationship. - Not to get too obvious. - I agree. I think that like, there was a dynamic in the relationship but that had more to do with like Jeffrey's wealth. - Absolutely. - And the way that like, that played into it. But regardless, they had, they broke up. So Jeffrey moved to Wyoming. And obviously Casper Wyoming, where he lives, is a majority white population, like eight to nine out of 10 people there are white. And he just immediately embraced that rural conservative down-home aesthetic to a degree where I, at this time, around like 2022, the inkling had been planted in my head as a full-time Jeffrey star reporter. I was like, I think at some point he's gonna get political. I didn't know if he would do like, full-on run for office. It all makes sense to me. And you started to see him really lay the groundwork for where he is now at that stage. - Again, he hasn't changed. - When Jeffrey star moves to Wyoming, he starts dipping his toes in. I remember he did this podcast at the time that went very viral where he was like, non-binary, they, them, all this fucking bullshit that we started to make up during COVID, what is that? - I might not tell all the other bullshit, I think. - What other bullshit? - The They and Them. - Yeah. - And all that extra shit that we added during the pandemic 'cause everyone was so bored on their fucking houses. They just started to make up more shit and more shit. - More stuff, more stuff? - Yeah. - I feel that conservative is like me 'cause I'm just real. - Yeah, you do have a conservative vibe to you. - You're trans, your male or your female. - And you're standing on that. - So mad when I say that. How are you with They? What the fuck does that mean? - It's stupid is what it is. - Yeah. - But you need someone like me that looks like me to say it. Because if you say it, it turns into your homophobic. You hate trans people, you hate gays. And it's just how you feel. You don't hate anyone. You just think it's stupid. - He also really notably like embeds himself within the community of Casper, Wyoming. And this is an extremely niche interest that I have never been able to look away from. But are you guys familiar with the makeup and meat store? - Mm-hmm. - No, I've never heard of the makeup and meat store. But I think that we're Jeffree Star sells his yak meat and also his makeup. - Yeah. (laughing) - Jeff star shortly after becoming like a yak farmer. He opens up a store called Jeffree Star Makeup and Meat, where he sells Jeffree Star Makeup and like yak jerky, like beef jerky, but it's yaks. There was this like, I can never get out of my head. He did like an opening day celebration with like the ribbon cutting and the whole thing. And like this is a really specific reference point. But I don't know if you guys ever watched like the fairly odd parents. - Jeffree Star reminds me of like the mayor of Dim'sdale in Casper, Wyoming. (laughing) - Dugsdale, Dimadone. - I imagine Jeffree Star just like walking around. Like I imagine him as the mayor of Casper, Wyoming. - Yeah, he does kind of give those vibes. And if you didn't know anything about Casper, Wyoming, which most people don't, then you would kind of assume from this social media that he had taken over as like the king. (laughing) 'Cause he has the money in the community I assume. - He quite literally does have the money in the community or at least claims to, he does interviews now and he'll talk about how like he bought up yaks from neighboring farms. People will be like, "Oh, when you move to Wyoming "where people homophobic towards you." And he'll basically be like, "Well, you know, "I got some weird stairs, "but they didn't really know what I was about." And once they learned essentially through the sort of coded language, he's like once they learned that I was a conservative racist and that I had the money to buy up all of their yaks, they weren't so mean to me anymore, which is again, it's the same thing from Orange County early 2000s MySpace bullshit where he's like, "Yeah, everyone's being really mean to me." It's quite literally if you can't beat them, join them. - Yeah, absolutely. Now he has enough money to basically own those white people who used to beat him up. So I think it's probably a little bit of a power thing for him as well. You know, he comes from California where the cost of living is a lot higher. He goes to Wyoming where it's a lot lower and he gets to be king. You know, and I kind of think that's always what this is kind of about. You know, he strikes me as a person who just desires endless, endless praise constantly. - 100% and one thing that I find really kind of ironic and funny about this era, when he first moved to Wyoming and bought the yaks. People were like, "Jeffrey, you're not gonna eat them. Are you?" And he was like, "Eat the yaks. The yaks are like my pets. I love them." And then like three weeks later, he was like, "Hot, fresh, yaks meat." (laughing) "Come and get your yaks meat." So like, he's just such a ruthless capitalist. Also, when he first moved there, he was buying like engraved benches from local woodworkers and like going to local businesses and stuff, which in theory is also a good thing to do. But of course, he was doing it to like, when people's favor. Also at a local town square orchestra type thing, there were like banners of local businesses sponsoring it. And one of them was like, "Jeffrey's Star Cosmetics," which was such a weird image to see because it was literally like he had embedded himself as this Willy Wonka type figure in a random Wyoming town. And I'm pretty sure he has a factory there now and he employs a lot of people. And all of this stuff combined made me wonder for a little while if he was gonna like run for mayor or like run for local office or like start small. Like I was like, is he trying to move somewhere where he can like get a smaller position in office, like maybe be a representative or something and then work his way up. Like I wondered if politics would be in his sights. But I think based on what he's doing now, the answer is it's so much more work to be a politician than it is to be on TikTok live for like 17 hours a day and just say a bunch of offensive stuff and get people to buy your backlogs, make up stock. Yeah. and you have more freedom too. - So as we've said, Jeffree Star is sort of latest act. He's become a total TikTok celebrity. He goes live relentlessly and does like TikTok live battles with people, which I gotta say, doesn't seem like a super dignifying activity for someone with as much wealth as he claims to have. - I was shocked, but I saw him doing it. I really was actually. I was like, oh, is he broke? Is he broke? Like, and it's actually, I felt that way about a couple of different people. Like, there's a couple of people, like Michelle Fan, for example. I'm like, why are you on TikTok live? Because in my mind, I thought, isn't that kind of like not what you would do at your level, but, you know, I don't sell on TikTok, so who knows? - You saw with Jason Nash too, and that was such a big joke online, like influencers and YouTubers who have resorted to panhandling on TikTok live. I feel like Jeffree really thrives in this environment as well. Like, going back to that clip of him, we watched at the beginning, like, he can just be there and be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he can do that for like eight hours. I feel like-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'll share, I used to do, I used to be a cam girl. One of the things I didn't understand is that there are people who are literally, like, they'll go on camera and they'll just say, fuck that shit if people pay them. And it's kind of, that's why I don't do the live thing because I kind of, I have like, low key trauma from being a cam girl. I know that that's what people want. People want conflict. - Well, I mean, it is a type of like psychological pornography. And he has really sort of leaned into this conservative political identity again because what are we tracing? Jeffree stars political arc throughout his career, which can be traced right alongside the sort of cultural and political arc of America throughout his career. In his YouTube career, he had to do this Obama era liberalism, #BlackLivesMatterStick, where he pretended to care and he pretended to apologize and he pretended to grow and change and learn to be intersectional. But now we're in Trump 2.0. When the whole thing is just like, what is the attitude of this country right now? Be as mean as you possibly can, go fuck yourself. And he's really born for that. Honestly, like this is the most natural point in Jeffree stars like professional career where he can just be himself. - It's almost easier for him because it's less of a performative aspect. Like he's straining for credulity and believability when he's talking about racism from the perspective of racism is bad. It is so easy for him to talk about how people who identify would say them pronouns are freaks. Unlike me, 'cause I'm a man. Like it just rolls off the tongue. - It's low-hitting fruit. There's more people that are willing to pay you to say there's no such thing as non-binary people. Then there are people who are willing to fund a non-binary person describing their own life and experience. Like that, and that's been my experience. I've been an openly trans blogger for two decades. I've been in rooms where I'm asking for money. I've asked people for resources and things. They don't want to fund a lot of the stuff that would, you know, in so many ways, let's just be blunt about it. Sabotage many of the ideas that are central to capitalism. Like, they'll fund Jeffrey Star, especially as a visibly queer person to say that stuff because there's a larger group of people that want to hear that. Then there are people who want to actually humanize trans people, you know. There's way more money, way more support over there. And it's, I think, why he's doing it. Any vaguely queer person can make a video saying there are only two genders. And I'm a man and da-da-da-da-da. And they will literally get way, way, way more people who are willing to support them, follow them, throw money at them because that's just people like that more. So yeah, it's so predictable. He's following the money as he always has, I think. - Yes. And particularly he has leaned into this model minority persona where it's like, yes, I may look like, you know, a super femme, gay guy, queer person, gender, fuck, sort of individual. But like, I am the version of that that's going to validate all of your most homophobic and transphobic beliefs. And I think this is the part, especially now that a lot of people are like, how can someone who looks like him be saying that? And I just watched like this full two hour interview that he just did where he says a lot of transphobic things that went super viral on like, you know, Instagram, Reels, and Facebook with all of these conservative white people being like, I just love him. And I took a few clips from it because there is something extremely uncanny about watching someone and hearing someone who looks and sounds like Jeffree Star trying to like enforce this very arbitrary idea of gender. So let's take a look. - It started when the first person and we as a society let them, I'm they, okay, and what the fuck does that mean? - You don't, you don't. - Five years ago, we would not be able to have this discussion that everyone would have a meltdown. But why? You're a vein of them, got it. - So what you're saying is there need to be more context around it. - The absurdity is that. - What are you saying? - You can only be a man, a woman, or trans. (laughing) - Okay, there's a third thing. (laughing) - I love that you can be a man, a woman, or trans. - To me, this is more fun than trans people aren't real. There's only like men, like cis men and cis women because it's like, oh no, you know what I mean? It's like, it's not a binary. (laughing) - Is it a try carry? I don't know how it goes. - He's like, there's not quite a binary, but there's a little bit of a binary as I see fit. - I have so much to say, so I'll try not to say too much, but like. - Please say too much. - To me, all of these things, like I didn't want to go on the part about him having a straight boyfriend thing because this is all kind of part of the same sort of thing. I've known so many, Jeffrey stars, through my life. And it usually follows a very particular pattern of he's a person who is feminine, loves being feminine, likes makeup, likes being all up in, you know, drags and stuff, but he's not gonna transition 'cause he doesn't identify that way. And by nature of him being feminine, he does indeed attract straight men occasionally, who he does indeed have some sort of relationship with, but of course for most of these straight men, because they are straight men, it will never lead anywhere. It will always be this either being sexualized thing or I think as we saw in Nathan's case, it's financial. You've got the money, I've got the thing you want, give me a bit of money, you know, that's a very common thing. And then what I think sometimes they resent is when they see these men do go off and form these relationships with women, yes, some of them being transgender. Like to me, we can have a whole debate about whether or not these men are straight, but like I'm polyamorous, I have four partners, two of them identify as straight. And if you said they were gay, they wouldn't care, you know, it's not a big deal. But like there are some people who get so wrapped up in what they see trans women being able to do, what they see non-binary people being able to do, and they're over there thinking, well, what the fuck? Like I have this thing, and yeah, I occasionally, you know, cross into these areas that they do. And it's like, it comes from a place of bitterness and rejection. And I think rejection is a very common, very potent thing in his life, which is why he is so desperate to chase this. Yes, he's chasing money. It also helps him chase a lot of that approval. When I look at Jeffree Star, I see someone who is an incredibly ostracized, he resents the fact that there are people who would say, oh, you're they them? Cool, and didn't bully them in the way that he was bullied. I mean, that's a sad part. The worst thing in the world to people like this is that someone accepted their gender. And it's weird, because you know, I mean, I'm not saying that Jeffree Star is an egg. I don't think Jeffree Star is an egg. I actually think Jeffree Star is very much a man who is feminine and enjoys all these things. But I think that he has so much dissonance around his rejection, that it's causing him to not understand that some people experience being accepted and it's genuine. And like, what's the big deal if someone uses they them? It's a real non-issue, actually. It's a non-binary non-issue. [LAUGHTER] It strikes me that he, in this environment that he's currently in and with this demographic he's playing to, he knows what to say to get accepted by them in this context. I think he also understands that the only reason he's on this podcast is because in the same way that like beautiful women are objectified by conservatives, like his flamboyant and unusual appearance is being objectified by these people. And he is striving so hard to be in on the joke that he's willing to say whatever it takes for these people to see him as in on the joke. But he's never going to actually get there. And the flip side of that is that not too long ago when he was filming his documentary series with Shane Dawson, he said, and I've seen people pull this clip up and juxtapose them. He was like, so people call me a man, they call me a woman, whatever pronouns, all pronouns, alien, whatever. Oh, that's another question I have. I keep calling you "she" on accident. Andrew was like, wait, it's Jeffrey or what's happening? I'm just Jeffrey. So if you look at me and you're like, damn honey, yeah, it's like, "she." Everyone calls me "he," "she," whatever they want. Yeah, I'm an alien. every pronoun is okay, every pronoun. - He was doing the same thing. to a different audience. He wanted to be at that point accepted by a more liberal audience, but now that he strives for this acceptance from the conservative audience, it's no problem to him to go back on what he said, because he's like, it's performative, and he knows what they want. Yeah, and he's trying to make money. He's trying to find space for himself too. I think that for some content creators right now, some of us are a little nervous about whether or not we're going to be able to continue to have careers. And I do think that for a lot of people grifting and kind of like cosying up to the right, that feels like a safer bet, especially during a time when people are being in prison for their speech or kicked out of the country for their speech. I think some people feel safer there. And I think that that's also sort of the sad part about it is sometimes that rejection makes you desire or believe in this idea that those people who rejected you are actually safe. And if you could only be accepted by them, you would be safe. But the reality is he's never going to fully be accepted by these people. He's only as useful to them as long as he keeps reading the script. And eventually, they're going to say to him, well, okay, you feel that way? Then why the fuck are you wearing that wig then? Why do you have that makeup on? Like, yeah, it was fun and retaining for a while. But if you actually feel that there's only men and women and things like that, then you also should feel that men perform this way, women perform that way and what you're doing is attempting to be more like a woman than a man. So maybe you should stop being as non-binary in the way that you live and fall in line. And you know, the reason I'm able to say all this, and I think the reason why I think he's able to say this is because we were raised in conservative communities. These are narratives that we internalize. You know what to say because you know what people are reacting to. And for some people, you recognize that if you stay in line, if you entertain the narrative, if you stay on the script, you'll feel safer. It's not real, but it's an illusion that's very strong. And to me, so much of this goes back to that like teeny tiny detail of like, well, when I was bullied as a kid, I fought back and I loved that not to get like too like, woo, like, but like, what if you didn't have to fight back? What if you at any point during your 40 years on earth maybe got some therapy, did some internal work? I don't know, but like worked on quite literally, oh, I sound so unwing. This is like not the podcast for talking about healing your inner child. What if you at any point like kind of tried to heal your inner child and realized you shouldn't have to actually fight back like those forces of bigotry shouldn't exist. And like, you should have been able to be like, punk and have pink hair and be a fag. And it should have been fine. But it wasn't for you. And so now you need to make sure that it isn't for anyone. Yeah. And I think growth in part of healing your inner child for a lot of people is becoming that older person who does accept that younger person and makes space for the fact that they can be a queer kid with pink hair. And it's not a value judgment. You're not better or worse for it. And it's sad to me that he has not gone that down that direction. I think about the stuff that I post all the time that I want to be able to leave this earth in a way where something I posted and said helped move us in a direction where some of the kids wouldn't have to go through the ship that I went through when I was younger and being ostracized and being rejected and, you know, identifying with how strong I had to be. Like, it's great that I have thick skin or whatever. Like, that's awesome. Whatever. But what if I didn't have to do that? What if what if I could just be embraced and accepted? And what I hear in some of what he says here is that he does resent that that's happening. And it didn't happen for him. 100%. This is a beautiful place to land. But I do have a couple other clips from this interview that were just so deranged, but also so to the point of like he's memorized this script and he knows how to regenerate it on a podcast that we're like almost funny. I'm going to play them. I'm sorry in advance. But let's just really take it there. Let's take it there. Why are we encouraging our kids to be a different gender and feed them false information when they're so young? So this is what I said recently that people really understood. When I grew up and I started looking different, right, my mother encouraged me to just be myself. When I started wearing makeup and being more feminine and wanting to do certain things, it wasn't, oh my god, Jeffrey needs what what do they call it now? Gender affirming care. I'm gonna I'm done. I'm done. I just let me be myself. She didn't push me to be anything. Just like when you're a tomboy, did your mom try to, you know, get you a surgery to be a, you know what I mean? Exactly. She, she, she, did she cut your tits off? We could at 13. That's not, she cut your tits off now days. It's all these fucking weirdos telling their kids. Oh my god. You like, you like a Barbie? You're, you're a woman. No, that's just a little boy experimenting, not knowing what the fuck he's doing. It's just so funny to me because this is quite literally an essay that Andrew Sullivan wrote in The New York Times, like a couple months ago. Like this is just all, this is the thing that I find disappointing about Jeffrey star is it's like your whole thing is that you're outrageous and like unafraid to go against the grain. Like if you're gonna do this right wing pivot, like at least be interesting, you're just doing like, you're just doing like so run-of-the-mill boring conservative grifter shit. And it's not convincing coming from such a flamboyantly queer person because it's like he can sit here and be like, what is it gender-framing care? They just invented it three weeks ago. And you can be like, not binary, not binary people have only existed for five years, but it's like that's so not true. And it's just so obvious that like you Jeffrey star know that none of that is true. But you know, it's funny is I think that the conservatives don't care as much about that. I get the vibe from a lot of them that it begins and ends with them finding a video of a person who looks a certain way saying a certain thing just so they can say, see, see, look, people are always sending me like some black conservative woman's shit. And I'm like, great, I don't care. But there are some people where they think that that's so important that that's the main appeal of the Jeffrey stars of the world. And it's not convincing. I'm not convinced. You know better. Didn't you data straight man? And you're a man? How did that work? That's some role non-binary to me. I don't know. And these clips went so viral. Like I've had a million people send them to me and they're all posted by like conservative pages with thousands of replies being like, we love Jeffrey star. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure you do because you know, he does serve a real role in this ecosystem where someone who is homophobic, who is transphobic can hear all of their beliefs regurgitated back to them by someone who looks like Jeffrey star. And then feel like I don't have to challenge myself on anything because Jeffrey agrees with me and Jeffrey looks like that. Yes. I think that Jeffrey is comfortable with this very impressionable audience that he does not have to work hard to impress. Like he just has to say the magic words. He at this point has learned much like Donald Trump that he can stand in the middle of the street and shoot someone in the head and no one would care. I mean, how much has he gotten away with? Let's not forget earlier we were talking about sexual assault charges. You've got this motherfucker on here talking about our kids, our kids, our kids, our kids. Let's keep you from the kids actually. And off of those buses, huh? The whole conservative side, I was, I saw a Megan Kelly thing earlier today that was so perfect on this. You know, oh, I need to keep the boys out of the girls locker room, but like Donald Trump didn't do anything to those girls. And if he did, it wasn't that bad because y'all it's like, come on. It's all a fake bullshit script, but they've learned that they can get away with it. And I honestly think that the sad part is is our literacy in this country is very low. And there's enough people who just won't care enough to look into it. Like the fact that it is so tangibly hard for trans kids to get access to gender affirming care, but people have been able to buy into this narrative that you can send your your kid to school and they'll come back with a sex change the next day. It's insane. And they believe this, you know, like you have to get months upon months of electrolysis before you have a sex change operation because if you don't, hair's going to grow or it shouldn't. But somehow these children are getting full sex change operations. And that's just believable. And for me, that speaks to just how dehumanized trans people are the fact that no one wants to look into it enough to hear how actually hard it is to gain access to this care. He was mentioning, oh, cutting off your tits, right? In very, very, very few circumstances, kind of person who's under the age of 18 actually get that surgery. It's not a common thing at all. And if these people knew any trans kids, they would know that. They would know that the first couple of years of this conversation is not, well, you need to have surgery. It's more like, well, we're going to support you in your way of expressing yourself, you know, the same way that your fucking mom said to you, apparently, it would be, we're not going to judge you. We're not actually going to tell you who you are. We're going to give you the opportunity to decide for yourself. In fact, that's actually the function of puberty blockers is allowing a child to have time to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted those things. And you need to have typically a bit of time on actual hormones before you have any of these goddamn surgeries. And so it is so frustrating to me the way that people talk about this because they actually don't understand that more likely for a rejected trans kid to just, you know, go back into the closet and, you know, decide not to be themselves is that they're going to run away, get onto the streets, be assaulted by grown men, some of whom are conservative. And that's their only way up and out of their circumstances. being exploited by the same men that voted against their rights. That's the reality for a lot of trans people, is they have to do sex work to survive. It's my, it was my past, right? It aggravates me that people don't understand that the other end of rejecting trans youth is exploitation or suicide typically. The worst thing you could do to a trans kid is not just kind of accept who they are. Like, and I'm very passionate about that 'cause I am very much why I'm 'cause of some of the shit I had to go through when I was a teenager 'cause my parents didn't accept me. It pisses me off because I know that he doesn't care. He doesn't care. He gets to get away with it. But this actually does have an impact on people. You normalize the idea that this is such a thing. People do and have voted against people having access to their care just for this bullshit. - Yeah, I think that Jeffrey has done the calculus that the things that he's saying now aren't going to directly affect him in a way that matters to him. And he also knows I think at least he's made this sort of bet that as a gay man who does not have a super strong line of protection between him and any fascist agenda, but I think Jeffrey, even if he's not smart enough to recognize this, like even if he couldn't repeat this back, I think he probably understands that deep down, there are other queer people and allies who will be fighting for his rights and protecting his rights. So he's not really in danger, because he can ride on the back of other people's work to protect him while he in dangers, more vulnerable queer and trans people in a way that won't come back to bite him necessarily. - I mean, that's what we do on this podcast. Like I fucking advocate for Jeffree Star's right to be Jeffree Star every day, whether I like it or not. Whether I like it or not. Okay, this is my last six second clip, but I just, I had to include it because I love masculinity. Here's a problem with society. We've set up society to shame and ridicule straight men. (laughs) - Havley, Havley, Havley, Havley. (laughs) And if he looks at the camera softly enough, a straight man will finally pick him. (laughs) This is the problem with society. We've set it up to shame and ridicule straight men. Jeffree Star, if only you were right. (laughs) - I wanna live in that society. I think that would be a much more productive one. (laughs) - Kat and Kat, thank you so much for joining me today. Going through this journey, I don't know. I would say like, I hope this is the last time I talk about Jeffree Star. It won't be. It won't be. (laughs) - Thank you so much for having us. You just reminded me that I think I ended one of my videos literally saying, and I hope this is the last time I ever talk about Jeffree Star. (laughs) That obviously did not happen. - Jeffree Star is gonna like live to 200 years old and he's gonna be on like, whatever like, AI future app is dominating then. And like he will be one of the top 10 most followed people on that app. And I thankfully will be dead. (laughs) - Eddie Teens will keep his like this alive forever. They'll build pyramids in his name, I'm sure. (laughs) But thank you so much for having me. I did appreciate my time discussing this. This was a blast from the past. - Where can people find each of you, support your work, et cetera, et cetera? - Well, you can find me on blackinacity.com. That is my website where I write, you know, every once in a while, and also YouTube. That's really the main place. That's where most people follow me on YouTube. Cat Black, K-A-T-B-L-A-Q-U-E, like the 90s girl group. - And then I am at spitfirenews.com is my newsletter. And you can also find me on Blue Sky and Instagram @cattimbarge. - And if you have made it this far in the episode, as usual, I have no idea how long this will be once it's cut down, but you have very likely made it through quite a lot of time. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for allowing me to indulge in my little online fixations of the most annoying gay people in the world. I love you so much, and until next time, stay fruity.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Jeffrey Star’s public persona evolved from a racially charged, overtly offensive Myspace-era figure to a conservative political influencer, consistently promoting anti-trans, anti-cancel culture, and transphobic narratives while maintaining a flamboyant, gender-bending image.
  2. His early content, including the "lipsticknatsy" brand and racist remarks, reveals a pattern of self-promotion rooted in shock value, fetishization of extremism, and a calculated appeal to conservative audiences through fear and grievance politics.
  3. Despite numerous allegations of sexual assault, racism, and violence—especially during Warped Tour and in interactions with fans—Star has consistently denied accountability, offered hush money to sources, and avoided real consequences, reflecting a broader pattern of wealthy white men using power and wealth to evade responsibility.

Summary:

Jeffrey Star's rise from a controversial Myspace figure to a prominent conservative influencer is a case study in how toxic online personas, racialized performative politics, and systemic accountability failures intersect. His early years were marked by overt racism, self-harm content, and violent rhetoric—such as using swastikas and threatening weapons—while promoting a violent, hyper-masculine aesthetic. Despite these behaviors, he transitioned into a socially progressive image, capitalizing on the cultural shift toward inclusivity and beauty advocacy, especially among Black women and rural audiences.

This shift, however, was superficial; his content often masked deep-seated hostility toward marginalized groups, as seen in his racist feud with Black creator Jackie Aina and his dismissal of cancel culture. Critically, Star has repeatedly denied sexual assault allegations, denied responsibility, and pushed back against accountability, using wealth and influence to avoid consequences. His behavior aligns with broader patterns of wealthy white men who exploit power, manipulate narratives, and evade scrutiny.

The public perception that he is "honest" about makeup products is undercut by the reality that his authenticity is tied to self-promotion and conflict, not integrity. Ultimately, Jeffrey Star exemplifies how online celebrity can become a tool for reinforcing harmful ideologies, enabling a culture of impunity where offensive behavior is normalized and victims are silenced—paralleling the broader political dynamics seen in figures like Donald Trump, who also thrive on outrage, fear, and a refusal to take accountability. His enduring presence on TikTok and YouTube underscores the power of such figures to maintain influence despite repeated misconduct.

FAQs

Jeffrey Star is known for his controversial online presence, including early Myspace-era content featuring racist and offensive material, a shift to promoting inclusive beauty content, and frequent feuds with other influencers. He is also recognized for his flamboyant appearance, including pink hair and makeup, and for being a prominent figure in beauty YouTube.

Yes, Jeffrey Star made racist comments and used offensive language in the early 2000s, including referring to Black people as 'gorillas' and openly displaying racist and white supremacist views in his Myspace posts and videos.

Jeffrey Star shifted his public image by embracing socially progressive aesthetics and promoting inclusive beauty content, particularly targeting Black women and marginalized communities, which helped him gain popularity in the beauty and makeup space during the early 2010s.

Multiple sexual assault and violence allegations have been made against Jeffrey Star, particularly from the Warped Tour scene in the 2010s. These include claims of physical aggression, threats with weapons, and inappropriate behavior toward fans and other artists. He has denied these allegations and reportedly offered hush money to sources to recant.

Jeffrey Star has been involved in conservative political discourse, especially around cancel culture and anti-trans rhetoric. He has criticized 'cancel culture' and promoted anti-woke narratives, often aligning with far-right ideologies despite his mainstream image as a beauty influencer.

Many people trust his makeup reviews because he appears to have a genuine interest in product quality and was known for honest, no-nonsense critiques. This authenticity, especially in the early days of his makeup brand, built credibility with users who valued real, product-driven reviews over influencer endorsements.

Chat with AI

Loading...

Pro features

Go deeper with this episode

Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.