00:00:19.940I 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.
00:00:25.580Oh, baby, they weren't ready for that.
00:00:38.480I will always use my platform and my voice for good.
00:00:42.040hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity i'm matt bernstein and i've been feeling kind
00:01:02.020of under the weather and i got up this morning and i was like i don't know if i can record a0.63
00:01:05.980podcast and then i remembered the subject of today's podcast and like i'm up let's fucking go0.70
00:01:12.300on the day that charlie kirk died jeffrey star did what he does best went live on tiktok and a0.75
00:01:21.020twitter influencer by the name of gypsy patriot underscore shared jeffrey's reactions to charlie's
00:01:27.320death with the caption jeffrey star speaks about the assassination of charlie kirk and you won't
00:01:32.580believe what he has to say here's what he had to say he encouraged everyone to speak about their
00:01:39.140beliefs whether he believed them or not am i a republican no i'm a person because i'm standing
00:01:44.140up for someone that passed away i'm now being called names in the chat this is what's wrong
00:01:47.760with a lot of you people you will never get far in life you are sick in the head someone just said
00:01:51.940they're unsubscribing from me thank god please because if you believe in vain thems you're part
00:01:56.600of the problem. If you're so stupid enough to go against science, please unfollow me. You can1.00
00:02:02.820be whoever you want to be, but there's science and there's facts. You can pretend in your head
00:02:08.980you're a cat. You can pretend in your head that you're this and you're that. Good for you. You're
00:02:13.400still only A or B. And the truth hurts a lot of you, I see. I see a lot of you still can't get
00:02:18.640over it. So yes, I am a grown ass man that wears makeup. I will always be a male. My name is0.99
00:02:24.240Jeffrey. I am a male that likes cosmetics. All these grown men going into women's bathrooms
00:02:30.260wearing wigs. You should all be in prison forever. You are the problem. So a grown man that goes1.00
00:02:36.680around the country debating people, spitting facts, was just taken out. And I'm not over it.
00:02:44.200I can't sit here and play with makeup right now. I want to throw up. So no, I'm not a Republican.
00:02:48.180No, I'm not a Democrat. I'm Jeffrey Starr. Stop trying to label me. Stop trying to label me.
00:02:54.240I 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.
00:03:05.680Politics aside, biology will never change.
00:06:41.500Jeffree Star is, first and foremost, a cockroach of the internet.
00:06:46.240He was, at one point, the most friended person on MySpace, then rode the wave of beauty YouTube
00:06:52.700into becoming one of its foremost celebrities, built a makeup empire alongside that success,
00:06:58.240then transitioned into becoming a TikTok star, where he spends all day live streaming to huge
00:07:03.320audiences. And his most recent act, seemingly, is doing audience capture with the American far
00:07:09.880right. Jeffrey's open embrace of far right politics, while looking like a sort of femme
00:07:16.160queen, non-binary alien, or as one Twitter user would put it, like Kylie Jenner was put through
00:07:23.100a dehydrator, has led many to wonder, how? How can you look like that and talk like that and be so,0.53
00:07:31.820among other things, transphobic? And like so into Charlie Kirk. Many people were confused about that.
00:07:37.620Why is this gender-bent, pink-haired person lecturing me about how I should feel about
00:07:43.360Charlie Kirk? It doesn't make any sense. Or does it? Today, we're going to do a deep dive into0.98
00:07:49.540jeffrey star's long existence as a public figure and demonstrate not only that jeffrey star's
00:07:55.300current act makes so much sense but also that like jeffrey star is just another example of
00:08:02.400what white men can become when there are no real mechanisms of accountability in place for bad
00:08:07.240behavior and prove my thesis that jeffrey star is donald trump sorry there's kind of a wild card
00:08:14.660at the end there but i'll make i'll make the case i mean these are all just like white men who were
00:08:18.680like did alleged sexual abuse and got away with it and now they feel like they can do anything1.00
00:08:23.320and so they do they've got weird hair and they love sucking dick i love that0.99
00:08:26.720to do this i am so excited to be joined by this is the cat and cat special we are joined by cat0.99
00:08:38.780black who is a veteran youtuber who has been online and making content for so long and who0.75
00:08:45.700has chronicled jeffree star's youtube career at great length fuck that man0.85
00:08:50.860and by kat tenbarge who if you listen to this podcast a lot you're already familiar with
00:08:59.080kat is a journalist and has also been chronicling especially the misdeeds of jeffree star for a long
00:09:05.880time she is the person who broke the investigative reporting around jeffree star's alleged sexual
00:09:12.120harassment and assault allegations and the hush money allegations which we're going to be talking
00:09:17.620about all of that today so if any of that feels like a sore spot for you just know that that's
00:09:22.340going to be part of this conversation cat and cat welcome to the show thank you for having us
00:09:28.600it's such an honor to be in this cat duo right now at times too how are you guys broad strokes
00:09:35.500feeling going into this conversation about this person i know jeffree star but i have since written
00:09:42.460jeffree star off and i've seen whispers of what he's doing now but like last time i had a
00:09:49.140conversation with you this is some stuff that i'm probably going to learn a lot of as we go
00:09:52.940because jeffree star to me is just such an annoying person like figure just like concept idea whatever
00:10:01.100that when i see him i just ignore it so this will be an interesting episode because i'll i'll get to
00:10:06.740learn that i guess he has not really changed i suppose it's funny to me that people are still
00:10:12.240talking about it i think that's one of the baffling things about this is that like i think
00:10:16.540i made my video like 10 years ago like it's we're still talking about jeffree star and that's that's
00:10:22.060fascinating to me actually it actually proves a lot of the point that i was kind of making in that
00:10:27.200those videos, which is that like, no, he's going to continue to be successful and known and
00:10:31.000celebrated because he has that much power in this world as a white man. Yeah. And I feel
00:10:36.000kind of similarly in that there was a period in my life a few years ago when I was reporting on
00:10:42.840Jeffree Star, and there would be stretches of time when I would be thinking about Jeffree
00:10:47.080every day, like day in, day out, because I would be knee deep in writing these stories and
00:10:53.240reporting these stories about him. But around that time period, around when, as we'll talk about,
00:10:59.600he became a quote-unquote farmer, he kind of started to fall off the map for me a little bit,
00:11:04.940but he was always sort of there in the background. And in recent months, as I've watched him start to
00:11:11.320reemerge in this form, I'm like, yeah, this is just yet another twist on who Jeffrey has always
00:11:17.700been at his core. Shall we get into the chronology of Jeffree Star? Absolutely.
00:11:21.920I want to just do a teeny bit of early life. Jeffrey Lynn Steininger was born in 1985 in LA
00:11:29.720and raised in Orange County, just like another fixture of this podcast.
00:11:39.280No guesses. I was not raised in but I lived there for six years. Oh, wait, I actually knew that
00:11:45.220about you. Well, so the answer is Gwen Stefani. Okay, yeah. Oh, I should have known that one.
00:11:51.120Kat Black, as someone who was in Orange County, lived there for some time, can you just explain if anyone's unfamiliar with like the social and political landscape of Orange County?
00:12:01.840Okay, 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.
00:12:22.260Orange County is very conservative. Orange County is where people live when they don't want to live
00:12:28.340in scary LA. And when you're living in Orange County, there is this concept of never leaving
00:12:33.020the orange curtain, which is really about not going to the big scary city where all the black1.00
00:12:38.540people are. That's really more of what it's about. A lot of Orange County more recently1.00
00:12:43.280has become more blue or gone purple. But historically, it has been a very white0.67
00:12:50.720supremacist place. It's been a stronghold for that. And I left in 2016. 2017 actually is when
00:12:57.940I left. I was very happy to leave because it is now very much MAGA country.
00:13:03.540Yeah. So that is where Jeffree Star grew up. Jeffree's dad dies by suicide when Jeffree
00:13:09.620is five years old and he was raised by his mom. The way that Jeffree Star talks about his childhood,
00:13:15.680He was always really into makeup from the time that he would use his mom's makeup, you know, secretly, which like relatable.
00:13:24.260He was from a young age really into like gothic looks and sort of like this really high femme sort of alternative presentation.
00:13:32.520He also talks about his experiences with bullying or lack thereof.
00:13:36.920jeffrey star has said in more recent interviews that i've watched he'll say in the same breath0.98
00:13:43.160that he wasn't bullied but that also when like people would call him a faggot out of a moving0.96
00:13:48.460car for example that he would stand up for himself and he would fight back and he would like put0.98
00:13:54.140bitches in their place i am probably one of the only people that looks like me that has never0.98
00:13:58.140been bullied i was never really bullied at all i always stuck up for myself and if someone tried0.99
00:14:02.220me i'd get vicious back i love i used to love fighting and so it's like it sounds like you0.96
00:14:08.400were bullied and like i can't imagine being queer in like the late 90s early 2000s in fucking0.79
00:14:14.200orange county and not being bullied but this sort of like mythology that he has about himself0.83
00:14:19.600is one where like anyone who's mean to him he'll be twice as mean back and so like that's how the
00:14:24.780world should be kind of yeah it strikes me that like the persona jeffrey had from his like late
00:14:32.860teenage years onward it's formed of this sort of violent exterior where he has this persona both in
00:14:41.520his content online and people who knew him in real life at that time period described like
00:14:47.680real physical acts of violence toward other people so it's like he has this super aggressive way of
00:14:54.560dealing with the world around him that feels very much so like it literally emerged from his
00:14:59.800childhood. And also the values in his early content are him like sort of punching down on
00:15:07.620other vulnerable, marginalized individuals, like unhoused people, black people, like all kinds of
00:15:14.420other minorities, really. And do you know why he's doing that? Because he's trying to gain the favor
00:15:19.020of like the white dudes who are bullying him. Because if they can say, Oh, I also hate black1.00
00:15:25.140people, you know, that's, that's what it's all about. And when I look at Jeffrey Starr, that is0.99
00:15:30.280immediately what I read of him. And I get it. I've lived in conservative communities for the
00:15:35.040vast majority of my life. There's a lot about his personality and even some of my less favorite
00:15:40.520conservative figures on the internet who are in the alphabet mafia, who have this persona thing
00:15:47.020that kind of comes from being in a very conservative community, being attacked, but then
00:15:51.740finding inroads with some of those people who are attacking you, where you become essentially one of
00:15:58.540the good ones. Like, oh, yeah, we may have called you a faggot, but you're one of the good ones,0.99
00:16:02.640right? Like, we can joke with you, like, we'll still be bigoted, maybe to other people. But1.00
00:16:07.920you know, you're cool, or you're cool within certain contexts. So he's still even in that
00:16:12.980video we just watched he's still seeking the approval from that group of people who would
00:16:18.540typically hate him who do hate him actually that's that's i think behind the vast majority of like
00:16:24.460the conservative lgbt frankly after graduating high school in 2002 jeffrey star like hustles
00:16:31.700for gigs he talks about using a fake id to get into hollywood clubs to meet celebrities and then
00:16:39.220sort of like offer himself up as a makeup artist and it was through this sort of hustle that he
00:16:45.680became the makeup artist for kelly osborne did you know this i could see it i can i could think
00:16:51.460of her her makeup of that era and think of his makeup of that era and it does match it does
00:16:56.760match jeffrey talks about how he would steal kelly osborne's clothes to take i mean like steal quote
00:17:02.960unquote but he would take her clothes and then take myspace photos pretending that like they
00:17:07.540were his clothes to project wealth that he did not really have which i think is also a really
00:17:13.580interesting through line because we're going to talk about yes jeffree star's accumulation and
00:17:19.140transfers and drop-offs of wealth and it is very very hard to understand how much money jeffree
00:17:25.280star actually has at any given point in time also very bling ring which was around this era
00:17:30.720Very bling ring. I recently, like a month ago, randomly was like, I'm going to watch every
00:17:38.920documentary about the bling ring. This whole thing of like Jeffree Star sort of like slipping into
00:17:43.420clubs in the early 2000s to try to like link up with celebrities that he had nothing to do with.
00:17:48.040It is very bling ring. And Jeffree actually knew in like the early 2000s, loosely through like a
00:17:55.280social circle one of the guys whose house had been robbed by one of the bling ring members early on
00:18:01.380like before they did the huge celebrity houses they just like robbed one of their high school
00:18:05.940friends's houses yes and like jeffrey like vaguely knew that guy through myspace circles so it's all
00:18:11.640a very like incestuous community of like we love fame we want to get close to fame and like they're
00:18:17.920almost like like vampiric way i feel like if history had been tweaked ever so slightly jeffrey
00:18:23.000star would have been in the bling ring and then he would have like gone to jail for two years and
00:18:26.360like we would never would have heard from him again oh if only jeffree star was in the bling
00:18:29.860ring so in 2003 jeffree joins myspace and quickly becomes extremely myspace famous now i just turned
00:18:39.28027 and i don't really know that much i don't really know that much about my space
00:18:45.380it was a spectacle i mean all of us were friends with jeffree star on on myspace because it was
00:18:51.980the era of that you know you added as many people as possible you organized your top friends it was
00:18:58.300a very political thing and everyone wanted to be on jeffree star's page and like a series of other
00:19:03.460people who also turned out to be shitty um but i remember coming to school and being like oh did
00:19:09.140you see what jeffree posted and it's always like some outlandish thing i remember vividly the
00:19:15.640fruit loops picture of him. Yes. Self inducing. Wait, what is this? This great example of how
00:19:22.320he hasn't changed. Actually, it was a picture of him making himself throw up fruit loops. And you
00:19:28.600know, it was a very kind of cool looking weird, like edgy picture. But it was such a great example
00:19:33.660of him doing edge lordship because obviously at this era, people had sensitivity around anorexia
00:19:40.980and body and things like that that was early 2000s right and so yeah that's a good example
00:19:45.860of him being like edgy and glamorous and like not giving a thought like not give not caring
00:19:52.380and like yeah i did it yeah yeah i did it and the thing is i think a lot of people don't understand
00:19:57.920like how common that attitude was online because there were less of us online like social media
00:20:04.500was like starting to really become a thing and like you know if you were an early adopter you
00:20:09.880were kind of often also more of like a nerdy person too what really struck me was how specific
00:20:16.820of an aesthetic there was to this era like i don't think it really has a lot of easy one-to-one
00:20:23.220comparisons like this was the hot hot topic goth like jeffrey fell into that category with like the
00:20:30.160hot pink hair and like the crazy looks but what i think really defined this era was also just like
00:20:37.160tiny scene queen girls like literally the scene queens of myspace and jeffrey wove his social
00:20:43.300life into theirs and like understood very early on that one of the ways to stay relevant in addition
00:20:50.680to cultivating this really like shocking aesthetic and having this shock jock persona was also to
00:20:57.520put himself in the social world and sort of cause drama and he also at this era was appearing in
00:21:03.980like the background of kesha music videos and there are there are photos of him and demi lovato
00:21:08.920from this era at house parties he really wanted to embed himself in the scene um and he succeeded
00:21:15.620i was watching while preparing for this episode like there's like all sorts of old jeffree star
00:21:22.280myspace content like on the internet archive and like deep deep deep in reddit there are just these
00:21:28.320videos of him with like his other mostly like white scene queen type friends and they're just
00:21:36.200being so unbelievably racist yeah like like really like truly shocking like just like throwing around
00:21:44.420the n-word a lot of like anti-mexican racism it's it's it's quite shocking watching me because i
00:21:51.700wish they were famous and sadly i am they'll never be anything so they've done a little shack0.98
00:21:57.200with their fucking you know little lighters because they can't even afford an oven to bake0.99
00:22:00.900their little food and they just keep on harassing me it's so pathetic i love it i really think you'd1.00
00:22:06.360get away with fucking making a fake jeffry star profile just to promote yourself and getting1.00
00:22:10.880pissed off and fucking being a dumb fucking black hoe so pathetic i mean one of the videos i did1.00
00:22:17.840was about several of the clips that had resurfaced where he had like been saying the n-word right1.00
00:22:23.220and a lot of people at the time saw these these videos and were like things were so much different
00:22:29.420back then and keep in mind you guys i'm 35 i was there you know like it was racist then it was and
00:22:37.040it's still racist now these people just kind of got away with it because the one thing that has
00:22:41.240changed is that there are more people on the internet it's not really subculture anymore and
00:22:46.660i think that's the thing that a lot of people don't really have a good context for like i had
00:22:51.840to sneak on the internet to get onto to my space and start a zanga and do all this shit now it's
00:22:58.040in everybody's pockets right and so now what you have is a wider range of people looking at what0.98
00:23:03.580you're doing and these kids could just be racist you know they could post really heinously racist
00:23:09.620stuff you know i've been posting videos on the internet there was a time when i didn't post
00:23:13.720videos with the idea that other people would see them or that the videos would get outside of my
00:23:19.860immediate circle of people or you know I wouldn't think about people capturing it or downloading it
00:23:25.380or thinking about it so I know that a lot of these kids they made these videos uploaded them
00:23:30.760mostly probably for their friends there was probably a large amount of people on the internet
00:23:35.660who at the time were still subculture who were laughing at it but not necessarily criticizing
00:23:41.460it because everyone kind of understood that that's kind of the weird thing that they were doing is
00:23:45.440like being racist and like a safe way. Right. And no one really criticized it. And then when
00:23:50.500these things resurface, because Jeffrey Starr's issue, in my opinion, I mean, issue, it's a good0.99
00:23:55.300thing. He, he decided to jump on the bandwagon of extended shade ranges and started to become
00:24:01.860very much about, yeah, I I'm all about black women and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so when
00:24:06.580these things resurface and he centered himself as like a central figure on social media, who is a
00:24:12.920trusted source there are a lot of people who are naturally going to ask does a person who would
00:24:18.280make that content even back then keeping in mind that not every white person goes through a racist
00:24:22.840phase right would that person be the right person to trust when it comes to black women and extended
00:24:30.260shade ranges and there were still a lot of people who swore by the makeup swore by the quality of
00:24:36.800it swore by his opinion of other makeup and said you know maybe jeffree star was racist back then
00:24:43.160but you know he's clearly changed my main argument was i mean really all he's trying to do is like
00:24:49.680most capitalists make more money by selling products that can be sold to certain types of
00:24:53.680people right like at the end of the day it doesn't matter how extended your shade range is like you're
00:24:59.180still trying to make money it's not actually charity you know but people treated it like
00:25:03.660charity. And I think Jeffree Star largely survives on the idea that he's in some way doing charity.
00:25:10.020And I think like, going back to that early MySpace era, the racism was a prominent feature.
00:25:16.920The like top influencers were either incredibly fair skinned and white, like they were all white
00:25:22.540people for the most part, and or openly white supremacists. This was viewed as like a part of
00:25:27.800edgy culture, a part of cool culture. And Jeffrey performed in Warped Tour, where popular bands and
00:25:34.200singers used this type of iconography to be edgy. It was a fetishization of racism, of white
00:25:40.780supremacy, also of things like self-harm, of eating disorders. And this stuff fed itself into
00:25:47.320Jeffrey Starr's content and was a part of his aesthetic image as well. Yes. And Jeffrey, at this
00:25:53.260point he loved like you said it's like fetishizing this sort of like nazi iconography he loved
00:26:00.560confederate flags and he loved swastikas and to that end there's something i need to talk about
00:26:07.200but i do want to add that like to me from a psychological place a lot of this reads as like
00:26:14.360not to give him too much grace and not that it justifies anything but like to me a lot of this
00:26:19.740behavior makes sense as like a cry for attention. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is someone who
00:26:25.340right whose whose dad died by suicide when he was five, who like grew up as like this openly0.88
00:26:30.660effeminate queer kid and like a very conservative place. And it's like it to me, a lot of it just0.84
00:26:35.900seems like acting out. Definitely. 100%. I mean, a lot of people who rose to prominence on the
00:26:41.460internet, not just in the MySpace era, but throughout the entire timeline and history of
00:26:45.900the internet. A lot of these people are young influencers from incredibly troubled, volatile
00:26:51.860home backgrounds. A lot of times they're very lonely and isolated, which is why they spend so
00:26:57.080much time on the internet, putting content of themselves on the internet. A lot of time they've
00:27:01.780been abused, like lots of times like trauma in their backgrounds. And unfortunately, the internet
00:27:08.360is a very comfortable place for people like this to thrive. And it rewards and incentivizes the
00:27:15.740worst possible behavior that they are willing to do, partly because of their backgrounds.
00:27:21.860I would like to give a quick shout out to Ground News for sponsoring this episode. I always say
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00:29:51.100fruity now let's get back to the show and every time something new resurfaces about jeffree star
00:29:58.680and people being like can you believe jeffree star is a conservative i'm like you guys don't
00:30:03.780think that the guy who started lipstick nazi would be a conservative but the problem is
00:30:09.780they don't know about lipstick nazi are you two familiar with jeffree star's first attempt at a
00:30:15.120beauty brand i am unfortunately yeah around 2006 jeffree star launches lipsticknazi.com i can't
00:30:26.480believe the words that are coming out of my mouth right now do either of you want to describe what
00:30:31.540lipstick nazi is i mean people dig this up every few years and it is a revelation to too many but
00:30:38.220essentially like you have this myspace era web design classically the hot pink lipstick the
00:30:45.820super heavy black and glitter eyeliner and pink swastikas pink razor blades barbed wire
00:30:54.720lipstick nazi.com hollywood like this is falls into this myspace aesthetic that is so specific
00:31:01.400so clearly. And at around the same time, there was a rumor. So I don't know how much of this
00:31:08.520survived to this day. But there was always kind of like an allegation that floats around from time
00:31:13.400to time that fans would like self harm and post those pictures online in tribute to Jeffree Star.
00:31:22.140Yeah, that honestly, regardless of whether or not that is true, that does feel like
00:31:27.020a rumor that jeffree star would indulge oh totally because it would be like look how much these people
00:31:31.840love me in an interview that jeffree star gave recently he you know now he's really leaning into
00:31:37.960this like anti-cancel culture conservative grievance politics like way more openly and
00:31:43.120like you said cat black like using the script that he knows how to follow he went on a cancel
00:31:47.760culture riff that i thought was really fascinating and for some reason around 2013 everyone became a0.96
00:31:54.180pussy and people were it was a very bizarre shift like all my crazy wild jokes were now0.94
00:32:00.740and i'm like okay got it and people got really really weird and i think now we're at a place0.98
00:32:07.880where people should be held accountable for really awful things right i think cancel culture is kind
00:32:13.000of over but like we talked about you're gonna glorify and make fun of someone that was murdered
00:32:17.060on like now you're getting the repercussions so the people that are losing their jobs trump is
00:32:22.780taking away visas if you're tweeting i'm glad he died good now you're being held responsible0.72
00:32:28.760versus oh you made a joke when you were 12 we're gonna hate you forever i think people are allowed
00:32:33.420to grow and change and what's funny is he would love to be a kid right now making a charlie kirk
00:32:40.140joke like that i can imagine that he would literally be doing that like if he was a little
00:32:46.200teen because that's what the little teenagers are doing right now if he was a kid now and like all
00:32:51.080of this had happened in the early 2000s jeffrey would have like made a lipstick called like charlie's
00:32:56.000blood yeah but yes it's so interesting and conservatives do this now which is also like
00:33:02.220jeffrey star just becoming like a run-of-the-mill conservative grifter type is so boring to like i
00:33:09.260hold him to a higher standard like do a more complex grift than that but he's doing what
00:33:14.660they all do which is like creating a very narrow definition of accountability that includes
00:33:20.420everyone he personally disagrees with and not himself. And also reducing his entire
00:33:27.180wild past of very overt racism that went well into his 20s as a joke that I made when I was 12.
00:33:35.000There are two things about what he said in that clip that really irritated me. The first thing
00:33:40.500is when he talks about the cancel culture of the 2010s and how this period was so wrong,
00:33:47.260he weaponized cancel culture to his benefit and he has done this throughout his career he drives
00:33:53.780hate campaigns against his competitors in his various fields and at this period in time he
00:33:59.280weaponized cancel culture to his benefit he weaponized cancel culture when he attacked
00:34:04.740james charles he weaponized cancel culture when he attacked laura lee and manny mua and gabriel
00:34:11.280zamore and all of those other people and he uses it to his benefit and then he discards it to his
00:34:15.700benefit and acts like he was never a part of it. The other thing that really annoys me is when he's
00:34:20.240talking about the government taking away people's visas for joking or celebrating Charlie Kirk's
00:34:26.700death and how that's somehow better than cancel culture. It's not surprising. It's just annoying
00:34:33.200because conservatives already make this argument all the time. It's just even more infuriating to
00:34:37.860hear it out of Jeffree Star's uneducated mouth. But I'm like, you understand that that is actually
00:34:44.000a freedom of speech violation. When the government, when the state restricts your movement because of
00:34:49.140your speech, that is tyranny. Cancel culture is not. But of course you make the opposite
00:34:55.980distinction. It is just so stupid to listen to. And it's a continuation of like most of this1.00
00:35:01.220stupid cancel culture shit anyway. Like did he get canceled? No, because cancel culture isn't1.00
00:35:06.900fucking real. Like there's definitely something to be said about the way that people on the internet0.97
00:35:12.380will sometimes jump on hate campaigns and whether or not accountability actually matters isn't
00:35:17.660there's a conversation to be had about cancel culture but like it's never meant what these0.99
00:35:22.740motherfuckers are trying to make it sound like and what what kills me about what he said0.98
00:35:27.720is it actually doesn't require a lot of thick skin for you to be a conservative and to just1.00
00:35:36.220be racist. And it really doesn't. Like, it is actually a little bit more bold to stand up
00:35:42.280against people like Charlie Kirk, who are paid a lot of money by billionaires to go to college
00:35:48.020campuses and say that people like me don't have the mental capacity to ever possibly hold any
00:35:53.360position of power over a white man, right? You know, it's all so frustrating, because actually,
00:35:59.360the thing you should be opposed to as a person who believes in this Constitution,
00:36:03.440is people being imprisoned for their speech it would actually be far more american for you0.97
00:36:09.840if we're buying into the bullshit for you to stand up with your fellow americans and support their0.82
00:36:16.500freedom of speech rights right like that would absolutely be the more you know traditional way0.96
00:36:21.680and that's kind of the thing that's fascinating being raised around so many conservatives this
00:36:25.480whole trumpy maga thing is kind of funny to me because it's not consistent but of course it never
00:36:30.620is you know yeah i do think you're giving jeffrey star way too much credit in the idea that he's
00:36:37.280like aiming to be coherent in his politics like he's just saying whatever he needs to say people
00:36:42.620who you who buy makeup for you have the right to care about you saying the n-word and that's
00:36:47.260actually not a big deal you could argue that that's actually the free market with people
00:36:51.580making the decision to not purchase your stuff because of what you advertised you know in the
00:36:56.660past it's just it's funny to me like he wants to be able to be edgy he wants to be free to be edgy0.98
00:37:02.440he wants to be able to say the racist shit he doesn't really like any of the consequences for0.98
00:37:06.880it that's the funny thing because they'll walk away from the conversation thinking oh so i have1.00
00:37:11.440thicker skin when really you're a thin-skinned little bitch yeah so as we mentioned in the0.97
00:37:19.760latter half of the 2000s and the early 2010s jeffree star was making music he established0.98
00:37:26.680himself in this like van's warped tour scene he jeff the amount of celebrity cameos in jeffree
00:37:33.520star's existence is so bizarre jeffree star made a song with nikki minaj oh who is who is also who0.54
00:37:41.460is now also a nazi how great yeah which i'm like i'm like can you believe that and everyone's like0.61
00:37:48.540yeah especially now especially now yeah nikki minaj is also now a trumper but that's a whole0.93
00:37:56.400other thing but do you know who managed jeffrey star as a music artist akon fuck you know everything0.54
00:38:02.940about jeffrey star there's no surprises jeffrey star was managed by akon who signed jeffrey to0.75
00:38:12.600his record label and once referred to jeffrey star as the next lady gaga
00:38:18.820yikes but you know at that era some of his music was kind of giving lady gaga some of it oh yeah
00:38:27.780he did like a whole electro thing for a bit that was giving that and it was during jeffrey star's
00:38:33.180brief career as a sort of up-and-coming musician that jeffrey star has a number of sexual assault
00:38:41.260allegations levied against him. And this is where I defer to Kat Tenbarge, who investigated and
00:38:47.460reported those allegations. Kat, take it away. So I think it really goes hand in hand with what1.00
00:38:53.840we've been talking about in regards to the violence of these eras and environments that
00:38:59.700Jeffree Star partook in. Because going back to the Warped Tour era, which is when these allegations
00:39:05.900took place, the majority of the ones that I reported on at least, like Jeffree surrounded
00:39:10.320himself and was in this environment that was ripe with this type of abuse. And there have been so
00:39:16.840many allegations that stemmed from artists who performed at Warped Tour, including the artists
00:39:22.220that Jeffrey collaborated with, Blood on the Dance Floor. And before I reported on the allegations
00:39:28.300against Jeffrey, I reported on these allegations against the lead singer Dobby Vanity of Blood on
00:39:33.780the Dance Floor, who Jeffrey worked with. And at the time, going back in the archive of Jeffrey's
00:39:39.820tweets he tweeted about these allegations within this scene against Dobby Vanity he like said that
00:39:45.440he confirmed them that he was like an eyewitness to things that had happened and then fast forward
00:39:50.780to 2020 and Jeffrey kind of denounces some of this I think to uh not have any accountability
00:39:58.520or responsibility for what was allegedly happening there and at the same time that he's kind of
00:40:03.720denying knowing anything about Dobby Vanity whose allegations are being brought up allegations
00:40:09.380against Jeffrey come up. And this is also the period of time when Jeffrey and Shane Dawson
00:40:14.760were both experiencing this reckoning that touched on all kinds of terrible content and conduct that
00:40:21.580they were partaking in, racist content, offensive and derogatory content, inappropriate interactions
00:40:28.460with fans and with minors. And all of these allegations were like sort of swirling around.
00:40:33.040And a lot of them do date back to the MySpace era. But this pattern emerged over like years of behavior where Jeffrey had allegedly engaged, kind of embracing like his online persona offline, like people in the scene alleged that he had been violent toward them, that he had like either threatened to use or used weaponry on them that he would then show in videos on YouTube, like my pink taser.
00:41:03.040or like my handbag with all my weapons that I have. So there were allegations of that behavior
00:41:08.240happening offline. And then there were also sexual assault allegations against Jeffrey,
00:41:13.200groping men in venues and just sort of being like physically sexually aggressive in public,
00:41:19.500and then also involving like other people in the MySpace scene. And this was like pretty horrific
00:41:25.100stuff. When I approached Jeffrey for comment at the time back in 2021, a lot of sources and people
00:41:31.760who had made allegations reached out to start recanting those allegations before the story
00:41:36.440was published. And we were later able to report that Jeffrey had been offering sources for the
00:41:42.640story like hush money payments of like thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in some
00:41:49.060cases to recant those allegations. But the story still came out. But interestingly enough, the
00:41:55.220story, it was definitely felt and read at the time and fairly widely, but the story did not
00:42:01.880take off. Most people do not know about these allegations against Jeffree Star. And I think
00:42:06.620the reason for that is people expect a level of bad behavior from him, and it doesn't shock them
00:42:13.920in the way that it shocks someone when you hear allegations against a beloved celebrity. So the
00:42:19.920tolerance for the entire scale of his behavior, public or otherwise, has created this environment
00:42:26.180where he doesn't even receive the same levels of criticism or cancellation that maybe other
00:42:32.520celebrities receive. And yet here he is still complaining about cancel culture when he avoided
00:42:36.660and was able to sort of wriggle his way out of so much deserved scrutiny.
00:42:41.640That's why it's so annoying. He's been complaining about this forever. But I think to your point
00:42:45.560earlier mostly as like a sales point because he's never really canceled him being canceled
00:42:50.640ends up being like the thing that draws more attention to him and then you go to the comment
00:42:55.720section oh we love you jeffrey don't let anyone you know who cares jeffrey is huge on tiktok
00:43:02.180sometimes i'll be on tiktok and i'll get his lives and i'm like oh my god i clicked not interested a
00:43:06.440week ago you know and and even if it's like a new makeup thing i'll get i'll get it like he's0.91
00:43:12.740everywhere still that's why you can't really take any of the i was canceled shit seriously
00:43:17.800because i don't think even he cares can i just return to my thesis that jeffree star is donald0.67
00:43:22.200trump but really what i'm describing there is like an enormous category of celebrity men who
00:43:29.500i honestly think being able to bulldoze sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations which
00:43:36.140only a very certain type of person right wealthy white men are able to do i i feel like getting
00:43:42.180over the other side of that relatively unscathed, like the message that sends is that you can do
00:43:47.380anything. It's very Trumpian to me. Well, I think a lot of men, they hold on to this idea that if
00:43:53.640they one day amass enough wealth, that's what they'll be able to do. And it's funny because,
00:44:00.000you know, I've spent a lot of time with people of means and you kind of get the sense of that,
00:44:05.900right? That at a certain point, like they just want to purchase people. Then when you look at
00:44:10.820what's happening with epstein you sort of see it you know you've got people messaging epstein while
00:44:16.720he's in jail about how they can get around sexual assault allegations there's this group of men
00:44:24.560understand that at the end of the day rich white men should be allowed to do it and if they did do
00:44:29.700it then you know whoever was on the other end of that should be happy it happened to them you know
00:44:34.100as a survivor that's that's something that i've come to sort of understand as well i've only once
00:44:39.440reported a man who's assaulted me. And there have been several. And I feel good about not
00:44:45.260reporting some of the men that have harmed me because they are rich white men. They are men
00:44:49.640who have means and who would ruin my life. And unfortunately, that's the world that a lot of
00:44:55.220the Trump-like people want to hold on to. And I think it's a world that we hopefully dismantle
00:45:01.020quite soon. I don't know if that's possible in my lifetime, but unfortunately, that is a big thing.
00:45:05.920When 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 Starr at various points in his life, a lot of them for a very short amount of time, but they had crossed paths with him in some way.
00:45:23.420And 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.
00:45:43.660So he like 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.
00:46:02.600And I also think that even the aesthetic and 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.
00:46:24.400these are the types of people who have always been fans of jeffree star which doesn't necessarily
00:46:29.820strike people as like predictable or sensible because it's like oh he's this hollywood openly
00:46:37.100gay super sexually explicit about being gay like flamboyant man what about him appeals to this0.89
00:46:44.320demographic but in a similar way you could ask what appeals to this demographic about trump0.99
00:46:49.820Because Trump is also like an East Coast, like super flamboyant, loves Broadway, gold toilet seat, like type of individual.
00:46:59.920And yet they both have the same appeal.
00:47:02.620And I think a lot of that appeal, a singular part of that appeal is this like air of I can get away with anything.
00:47:09.500Yes. So post MySpace, post music career, Jeffree 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.
00:47:27.060What's up, everybody? Welcome back to my channel. Hi, how are you?
00:47:31.560You know, this is not going to be an episode where we document every single thing that
00:47:36.180Jeffree Star has ever done because Kat and I have like tried to do versions of that on
00:47:41.160Patreon and we end up just like locking ourselves in a room for eight hours and it's like really
00:47:45.140hard and like people start screaming for help.
00:47:47.800So we need to be selective about what exactly we pull from each of these eras.
00:47:52.380I think the most interesting thing about Jeffree Star's career on YouTube is that this coincides
00:47:58.560with this like cultural shift, this Obama era liberalism, where I think, as Kat Black said
00:48:05.600earlier, you had to pretend to care about social causes. You had to pretend. And a lot of people
00:48:12.800earnestly did care about those things. But for Jeffrey, someone who just a couple years prior
00:48:19.160was like saying the N word on camera, chasing black women down the street and hurling racial
00:48:25.380slurs at them this is you know someone who needed to do a radical shift if he wanted to capitalize
00:48:30.620on the moment the way that he was about to yeah and my thing with with it has always been i don't
00:48:36.520believe you you know and i felt that way about a lot of people back then actually mostly because
00:48:42.080there's a way you carry yourself and speak about things when you actually have done the work and
00:48:47.760what it felt to me was happening with jeffrey and with a lot of other people is they just got the
00:48:53.340script like they had like he had the script earlier in the first video we saw he has another
00:48:58.320script and you know we're all about inclusivity intersectionality you know stay woke i'll never
00:49:04.280forget one time a google executive asked me if stay woke is still relevant there was an era of0.98
00:49:09.200like the obama like liberalism shit that yeah a lot of people were bullshitting to make sales and0.97
00:49:14.960you know i think there are some people who feel kind of nice that we're not doing that anymore0.99
00:49:18.600jeffrey being one of them jeffrey for sure being one of them because he never believed it and i
00:49:23.300knew that but all people could say is like but he's selling makeup to black people though like
00:49:28.560would he sell makeup to black people if he was racist like come on you guys like
00:49:33.040yes yes yes he would yeah jeffrey was doing what a lot of other i think celebrities and0.54
00:49:41.180influencers were also doing which was shifting like shane dawson comes to mind for the youtuber
00:49:46.760comparison another episode let me know i don't know if we can maybe post holidays we could revisit
00:49:53.760shane dawson because i don't have it in me right now i want to feel i want to i want to feel merry
00:49:58.420god damn it but yeah i mean a lot of these celebrities and youtubers kardashians come to
00:50:03.780mind as well what jeffree star was doing was he was shifting from a kind of overtly racist viral0.98
00:50:09.640content into a type of content that was like culturally appropriative and therefore was able
00:50:16.200to be packaged as socially liberal, socially progressive. But the reality of it was he was
00:50:22.540still taking advantage of, and in a lot of cases, still very overtly attacking and targeting Black0.98
00:50:28.660women and Black people. And some of the aesthetic indicators of this era were like, no longer do we
00:50:35.180have the super grungy, high contrast MySpace era makeup. Now we've gone into this like luxe
00:50:42.620aesthetic that really defines this group of people where it's like now we just fetishize
00:50:47.220wealth itself. So we have an entire room full of Birkin handbags and all of our clothes are
00:50:54.240designer. We live in these absurd Calabasas mansions and we have all these designer dogs.
00:51:00.660And it's like Jeffrey in this era of YouTube really showcased wealth as a big part of his
00:51:06.420shock and awe versus some of the overtly offensive stuff that he was doing a few years prior.
00:51:12.620One of the highlights of his many YouTube controversies was his very racist feud with
00:51:18.400Jackie Aina, who is a popular Black creator online.
00:51:23.240She was also very popular in the beauty space.
00:51:25.460I don't remember the exact timeline, but I remember that text messages were leaked of
00:51:32.860Jeffrey, I think, calling Jackie a gorilla, if I remember correctly.
00:51:37.980I forget who leaked them or who was in that.
00:51:40.360I know I made a video about it, but I, you know, I have not cared about Jeffree Star in a long time.
00:51:46.280The granular details themselves are exchangeable for like so many of these Jeffree Star controversies.
00:51:52.520But 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.
00:52:03.900The bad stuff was always bursting at the seams.
00:52:08.340These 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 Jeffrey that they saw on their YouTube screen.
00:52:19.180Yeah, which is bizarre because most people, I'm bad at this, but most people, they put on a character that they show.
00:52:26.020And to me, Jeffrey's projecting a character and this character needs to sell makeup to you.0.99
00:52:33.100Black women invest very heavily in the beauty space.
00:52:35.900And I personally think that Jeffree Star, because of the way that both of their opinions were trusted, was a little threatened by Jackie, you know, 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.0.97
00:52:53.000and people like to think that black women are sensitive we're easily offended you know we got0.73
00:53:00.700thin skin which is such a hilarious accusation especially listening to him complain about being
00:53:05.560canceled still in 2025 but you know the reality is we we just see it you know we see it because
00:53:13.060we're used to having to see it so a lot of black women did address jeffree star for being a little
00:53:19.760weird about black women and literally all people can come back with was oh but but he sells makeup
00:53:26.140to black women and i think that there's obvious reasons why a non-racist white people shouldn't0.82
00:53:33.060even privately refer to a black person as a gorilla but people love to like suspend their
00:53:38.300disbelief and you know oh this person is trying to sell things to me they couldn't they couldn't
00:53:43.120be a different person behind the scenes not at all wait i actually want to touch on that though
00:53:49.520we've been circling around this a little bit but one comment that comes up over and over and over
00:53:54.340and over again for the like 20 plus long years career of jeffree star is like jeffree star is0.82
00:54:02.880real as fuck when he's reviewing makeup so like i trust him because like he will always be honest0.66
00:54:10.660when talking about that anastasia beverly hills eyeshadow palette and i'm like the bar has to be0.99
00:54:16.280higher than this but you know here here's the problem here here's what what i'll say this is
00:54:21.060going to sound like a little bit of apologia but i'll tell you oh okay no i'm here so jeffrey star
00:54:28.060especially at that era because he was projecting wealth there were a lot of people who were like
00:54:32.400okay he he really doesn't have a reason to bullshit us that he's got all of the incentives
00:54:37.580to just be honest. Right. And at the time there were a lot of influencers being paid to say nice0.54
00:54:46.660things about products. And I think actually this is maybe why Jeffrey star did appeal to some of
00:54:53.320the more rural folks too, because he would actually give, in my opinion, pretty good,
00:54:58.340you know, reviews of makeup. And for a lot of people, especially people who are trying to save
00:55:02.220money, you want to invest. You don't want to just go and buy this trendy bullshit because so-and-so0.98
00:55:06.740said so and they're reading a thing that says that you have you know so i think for some people0.98
00:55:10.780it was like i'm gonna watch a jeffrey star video because i know jeffrey star has no incentive to
00:55:15.980lie to me of course that's you know to be questioned but i think that was the idea i
00:55:20.280think that's such a sharp analysis and i also think like two things come to mind one it again
00:55:26.280relates back to trump for me because that also is so much of trump's appeal is like because trump
00:55:31.520was also really honest about eyeshadow reviews. Well, it's like the pathos is like Trump is not
00:55:41.500a government guy. Trump is an outsider. So therefore, Trump will tell us the truth about
00:55:46.880what's really going on in this institution that we distrust, even though Trump himself is an0.99
00:55:51.180extremely corrupt, untrustworthy person. And I think the same can ultimately be said for0.89
00:55:56.200Jeffree Star. But Jeffree Star was so smart about how he started and grew his makeup career at the
00:56:03.940same time as he was doing YouTube makeup commentary. Because the first Jeffree Star
00:56:08.560cosmetics products were like the intense, long lasting liquid lipsticks that were pretty
00:56:15.300revolutionary at the time. People were using them. Drag queens were using them. Celebrities were
00:56:20.200using them. Professional makeup artists put them in their makeup kits. This was a good product for
00:56:25.640him to launch with because it actually set him up with authenticity and credibility that other
00:56:30.240people did not have. He also was genuinely talented at doing makeup. He could impart
00:56:35.220actual makeup wisdom onto his viewers. And I think the way that he ultimately steered his brand
00:56:41.940was so unique, but worked really well for a time, which was that he was so aggressive
00:56:49.200toward other brands, which is not how people usually market their products. You're not usually
00:56:54.720like, I'm going to buy your product because you're feuding with the owner of the competing
00:57:00.260product and I side with you. But that is literally how Jeffree Star conducted himself. He feuded with
00:57:05.860the Kardashians. He was like, their products are trash. And the reality is they were overpriced.1.00
00:57:10.460And he feuded with all of these different people. And a lot of times I think his insights about what
00:57:15.920the competitors were doing wrong were true. But his ultimate kind of downfall in this territory
00:57:21.880is that as Jeffrey grew his brand, his own products could not live up to what he was
00:57:28.040saying about competitors. Because today he sells a massive range of products. He sells
00:57:32.900skincare. He launched, I believe, concealer and foundation and was doing all these different
00:57:38.800things. And as he put out more products, it became more and more clear that MUAs are not1.00
00:57:43.840reaching for the Jeffree Star setting spray. The Jeffree Star skincare, nobody's asking for that.0.99
00:57:50.600like yeah never heard of it over time he almost like lost that edge but it worked really well for
00:57:56.820a while i will say i know we're kind of getting away from politics here but what he when he
00:58:01.120launched his skincare line i was like who looks at jeffree star and thinks skincare
00:58:08.260people call him the crypt keeper yeah yeah yeah the opposite is true actually his makeup is so
00:58:16.400impressive because of what he looks like. I will say though, there is a demographic of people
00:58:21.820who purchase everything he puts out. Like if you go deep into the weeds of like Jeffree Star
00:58:28.400fan subculture internet, you will see people who have spent thousands and thousands and thousands
00:58:33.320of dollars on all of his products on all of his like hand mirrors and will post photo hauls of
00:58:40.540all of them. And when I discovered that part of like Reddit or whatever, I was like, that's crazy.
00:58:45.180Well, I have some experience with them because back when I was on Twitter and posting about
00:58:52.580Jeffree Star all the time, these people would obviously be coming for me constantly.
00:58:56.980And I would go look at their pictures and read their profiles and see how they had an
00:59:01.860entire wall of Jeffree Star hand mirrors and every single palette, eyeshadow palette, but
01:06:10.160he looks like a femme voldemort in this thumbnail and he's like holding his face
01:06:18.740ever so gingerly in his like gucci sweater and the the text on top of his on top of his body just
01:06:26.240says racism also i'm pretty sure in that video he never actually utters the words i'm sorry
01:06:34.840i don't think he ever apologizes like i feel like that's kind of a hallmark of jeffrey is like
01:06:40.080the video is not titled I'm sorry that I was racist the video is simply titled racism it
01:06:45.480exists like let's talk about it and then he's like he's like the internet was a different place back
01:06:51.060then or actually another classic rhetorical style that he falls back on is like I'm not that person
01:06:57.100anymore I'm really not I can't even recognize that version of Jeffrey yeah I don't I think
01:07:02.920that's what he says right I don't even recognize that person and it just makes me sick to my
01:07:07.920stomach because i don't know who that person was i know who i am today i know exactly the person i
01:07:13.740am today but i do not know who that person was and you know i do believe people change but have you
01:07:19.980changed sir i don't know i feel like he's one of the most consistent and predictable people i've
01:07:25.620ever seen on the internet well and this is the thing it's like we're watching as this person
01:07:30.500tries to just stay with the times ultimately to sell makeup and so what that means in this moment
01:07:37.140is like issuing a few really ridiculous apology videos there was another one and i think this was
01:07:42.760the last great youtube controversy of jeffrey star before he flees to wyoming after the whole
01:07:48.060bi sister scandal really collapses in 2020 jeffrey star makes an apology video where he is perched
01:07:56.580on his golden sofa in louis vuitton slippers in front of a a dual spiral staircase and he's saying
01:08:05.740you know i never meant to get caught up in any of this i don't know if you guys remember this
01:08:10.000video but i have i literally have its transcript burned into the back of my brain he shifts so
01:08:17.680quickly from this is not who i am this is not jeffree star i know i'm dramatic i'm crazy at
01:08:23.740times i'm outspoken but at the end of the day that is not who i am two we need to be talking
01:08:30.000about there hasn't been justice for brianna taylor and did i get swept up into the bullshit
01:08:34.500again of course i did and for that i'm forever embarrassed of now brianna taylor still has no0.90
01:08:41.460justice black trans women are being murdered every day and the news is silent elijah mcclain has no
01:08:49.700justice and the countless other people who are murdered every single day while everyone just
01:08:53.860goes about their business like nothing's happening yeah i do remember that i was like oh my god shut
01:09:00.740up and that's another example of him reading the script it was like i mean all of these influencers0.81
01:09:06.240back then were like black lives matter but then they were like being racist on the weekend and
01:09:11.020like you know bullying their black friend like yes and then they were like but what really matters
01:09:17.280isn't what i did it's brianna taylor but also he doesn't care about brianna taylor which is not it
01:09:23.380was always very evident but particularly after watching him praise charlie kirk yeah it's so
01:09:28.560obvious that he did not give a fuck about brianna taylor he just used her name as a buzzword charlie
01:09:34.060kirk he's extolling the virtues of this man yeah literally literally like what charlie kirk was0.89
01:09:39.720advocating for is why she was murdered so for you to say but i believed in him and i did it it's
01:09:45.020like come on man you never felt that way and i i do appreciate that people are being more honest
01:09:50.920now about how they feel like the jeffrey stars of the world did drive me a little insane during
01:09:55.980the obama era like just be honest you're racist just make you can make makeup for just white
01:10:00.660people i'm sure you'll be fine honestly the multiple acts of that golden couch apology
01:10:05.620video are so insane to me because it goes from if it's not me i never did anything wrong to like
01:10:10.360let's talk about what really matters brianna taylor too i'm so excited for all the new things
01:10:15.040we're working on at jeffree star cosmetic all right now no matter what narrative anyone tries
01:10:19.240to spin of me i am so fucking proud to own an inclusive makeup company since i opened my doors
01:10:25.240in 2014 i have created products for everyone any product shade or formula i've created has worked
01:10:32.220for any race gender and most importantly i want you guys to remember that all beauty matters yeah
01:10:39.020his ability to go from like just effortlessly from one thing to the next was was really on display
01:10:46.040there but i do think this was the last time that jeffree star was like really making a splash on
01:10:51.160youtube because he failed so completely in this moment and so what he did was in 2021 he flees
01:10:59.460from los angeles to wyoming getting away from the wokeness oh my god i'm so scared oh my god
01:11:05.060get away this is funny to me to wyoming where he purchases a yak farm which of course he seamlessly
01:11:12.080integrates into his business model and starts selling yak meat what i will say about the move
01:11:17.900from LA to Wyoming is it's really interesting. He lived in this mansion in Hidden Hills,
01:11:23.560which is a gated community in Los Angeles. He ultimately sold it for about $16 million.
01:11:28.900He tried to sell it to Britney Spears. She and her ex-husband toured it at the time. That was
01:11:33.020really interesting. But Jeffree Star sells his mansion for, I think, $16 or $17 million and then
01:11:38.980moves into this ranch in Wyoming, in Casper, Wyoming, which costs, I believe, $1.2 million.
01:11:45.240Jeffree Star now says, oh, it was COVID and I was shacked up in this big mansion that I didn't know what to do with.
01:11:52.160I never even used the movie theater, which I'm like, I'm with you.
01:11:56.440Like, I would go crazy in a house that big.
01:11:58.660But there seems to me like something missing in this narrative of like, so I downsized by like over a thousand percent.
01:12:06.900I think that the clearest explanation of what happened here, which is corroborated by several
01:12:11.960things, is in 2020, makeup trends changed dramatically. And the things that Jeffree
01:12:19.740Starr's brand had been known for, bright, bold, full coverage makeup, that was no longer in
01:12:27.040whatsoever. And that is around the time that he introduced Jeffree Starr skincare. He started
01:12:32.400doing more makeup brushes, other products besides what he was known for, none of that stuff ever
01:12:38.600took off the way that his previous products had become cult classics. Jeffree Star Cosmetics,
01:12:44.280it suffered as a brand. It was suffering as an industry. His scandals did not help a lot of
01:12:50.680people in the public who would have otherwise been comfortable buying his makeup, I think,
01:12:54.820were turned off by some of what had happened in the preceding years. And so you have all of these
01:12:59.720economic factors and then socially you also have this sort of like quasi falling out with his like
01:13:06.420then best friend Shane Dawson where they really stopped like seeing each other after being
01:13:12.640previously super close for content and money of course but nonetheless like they had a little bit
01:13:18.340of like a falling out that they kind of denied he also broke up with his long-term boyfriend
01:13:22.640and nathan schwant oh nate who's engaged right now i believe to a woman a woman yes yeah oh my
01:13:31.520god wait good good for him yeah he looks so happy actually he looks really mazel tov nathan schwant
01:13:36.940for those who don't know jeffrey was like nathan is straight except for me yeah which honestly
01:13:44.700like sexuality is very complicated straight identifying men are very complicated i believe
01:13:49.840that that's how both of them understood that relationship. Not to get too off base.
01:13:54.360I agree. I think that like there was a dynamic in the relationship that had more to do with like
01:13:59.640Jeffrey's wealth. Absolutely. And the way that like that played into it. But regardless, they
01:14:05.400broke up. So Jeffrey moved to Wyoming. And obviously Casper, Wyoming, where he lives,
01:14:10.600is a majority white population. Like eight to nine out of 10 people there are white.
01:14:16.240And 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 Jeffree Star reporter.
01:14:31.520I was like, I think at some point he's going to get political.
01:14:35.460I didn't know if he would do like full-on run for office.
01:28:45.160It strikes me that he in this environment that he's currently in and with this demographic,
01:28:54.760he's playing to, he knows what to say to get accepted by them in this context. I think he
01:29:01.440also understands that the only reason he's on this podcast is because in the same way that
01:29:06.980beautiful women are objectified by conservatives, his flamboyant and unusual appearance is being
01:29:13.740objectified by these people. And he is striving so hard to be in on the joke that he's willing
01:29:19.420to say whatever it takes for these people to see him as in on the joke, but he's never going to
01:29:23.520actually get there. And the flip side of that is that not too long ago when he was filming his
01:29:29.200documentary series with Shane Dawson, he said, and I've seen people pull this clip up and
01:29:34.900juxtapose them. He was like, he's like, people call me a man. They call me a woman,
01:29:39.560whatever pronouns, all pronouns, alien, whatever. Oh, wait, that's another question I have.
01:29:43.500I keep calling you she on accident. Andrew was like, wait, it's Jeffrey or what's happening?
01:29:48.580i'm just jeffrey so if you look at me and you're like damn honey yes like she everyone calls me0.93
01:29:54.340he she whatever they want yeah i'm an alien every pronoun is okay every pronoun he was doing the0.93
01:29:59.200same thing to a different audience he wanted to be at that point accepted by a more liberal audience
01:30:05.240but now that he strives for this acceptance from the conservative audience it's no problem to him
01:30:10.880to go back on what he said because he's like it's performative and he knows what they want
01:30:15.860Yeah. 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 cozying up to the right, that feels like a safer bet, especially during a time when people are being imprisoned for their speech or kicked out of the country for their speech.
01:30:38.920I 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?
01:31:07.060then why do you have that makeup on like yeah it was fun entertaining for for a while but if you0.94
01:31:12.060actually feel that there's only men and women and things like that then you also should feel
01:31:16.220that men perform this way women perform that way and what you're doing is attempting to be more0.91
01:31:21.940like a woman than a man so maybe you should stop being as non-binary in the way that you live0.78
01:31:26.160and fall in line and you know the reason i'm able to say all this and i think the reason why i think
01:31:31.280he's able to say this is because we were raised in conservative communities these are narratives
01:31:36.020that we internalize you know what to say because you know what people are reacting to and for some
01:31:42.120people you recognize that if you stay in line if you entertain the narrative if you stay on the
01:31:47.080script you'll feel safer it's not real but it's an illusion that's very strong and to me so much
01:31:53.180of this goes back to that like teeny tiny detail of like well when i was bullied as a kid i fought
01:31:59.060back and i loved that not to get like too like ooh like but like what if you didn't have to fight
01:32:05.160back. What if you at any point during your 40 years on earth, maybe got some therapy, did some
01:32:12.020internal work? I don't know. But like worked on quite literally, oh, I sound so annoying. This
01:32:17.600is like not the podcast for talking about healing your inner child. What if you at any point like
01:32:23.140kind of tried to heal your inner child and realized you shouldn't have to actually fight
01:32:27.200back like those forces of bigotry shouldn't exist. And like you should have been able to be like
01:32:31.620punk and have pink hair and be a fag and it should have been fine but it wasn't for you and so now0.98
01:32:37.860you need to make sure that it isn't for anyone yeah and i think growth and part of healing your0.99
01:32:41.920inner child for a lot of people is becoming that older person who does accept that younger person
01:32:46.440and make space for the fact that they can be a queer kid with pink hair and it's not a value
01:32:52.320judgment you're not better or worse for it and it's sad to me that he has not gone that down
01:32:57.160that direction. I think about the stuff that I post all the time that I want to be able to leave
01:33:02.540this earth in a way where something I posted and said helped move us in a direction where some of0.78
01:33:08.620the kids wouldn't have to go through the shit that I went through when I was younger, and being0.94
01:33:12.360ostracized and being rejected and, you know, identifying with how strong I had to be. Like,0.99
01:33:18.360it's great that I have thick skin or whatever, like, that's awesome, whatever. But what if I
01:33:22.260didn't have to do that what if what if I could just be embraced and accepted and what I hear
01:33:27.380in some of what he says here is that he does resent that that's happening and it didn't happen
01:33:32.400for him 100 this is a beautiful place to land but I do have a couple other clips from this
01:33:39.520interview that were just so deranged but also so to the point of like he's memorized this script
01:33:46.520and he knows how to rotate it on a podcast that were like almost funny I'm gonna play them I'm
01:33:51.600sorry in advance, but let's just really take it there. Let's take it there. Why are we encouraging
01:33:56.440our kids to be a different gender and feed them false information when they're so young? So this
01:34:03.060is what I said recently that people really understood. When I grew up and I started looking
01:34:07.840different, right? My mother encouraged me to just be myself. When I started wearing makeup and being
01:34:13.480more feminine and wanting to do certain things, it wasn't, oh my God, Jeffrey needs, what do they
01:34:19.000call it now gender affirming care i'm gonna i'm done i'm done i just she let me be myself she
01:34:25.740didn't push me to be anything just like when you're a tomboy did your mom try to you know1.00
01:34:29.600get you a surgery to be a you know what i mean exactly she she did she cut your tits off because1.00
01:34:35.540at 13 that's not she cut your tits so nowadays it's all these fucking weirdos telling their kids1.00
01:34:42.020oh my god you like you like a barbie you're you're a woman no that's just a little boy1.00
01:34:47.120experimenting not knowing what the fuck he's doing it's just so funny to me because this is1.00
01:34:51.980quite literally an essay that andrew sullivan wrote in the new york times like a couple months0.98
01:34:57.200ago like this is just all this is the thing that i find disappointing about jeffree star is it's
01:35:01.640like your whole thing is that you're outrageous and like unafraid to go against the grain like
01:35:07.280if you're gonna do this right wing pivot like at least be interesting you're just doing like0.98
01:35:11.540you're just doing like so run-of-the-mill boring conservative grifter shit and it's not convincing1.00
01:35:18.020coming from such a flamboyantly queer person because it's like he can sit here and be like1.00
01:35:23.960what is it gender forming care they just invented it three weeks ago and he can be like non-binary0.99
01:35:29.500non-binary people have only existed for five years but it's like that's so not true and it's
01:35:35.300just so obvious that like you jeffree star know that none of that is true but you know what's
01:35:42.680funny is i think that the conservatives don't care as much about that i i get the vibe from
01:35:48.640a lot of them that it begins and ends with them finding a video of a person who looks a certain
01:35:54.200way saying a certain thing just so they can say see see look people are always sending me like0.99
01:36:00.160some black conservative woman's shit and i'm like great i don't care but there are some people where0.99
01:36:05.380they think that that's so important that that's the main appeal of the jeffrey stars of the world1.00
01:36:10.120and it's not convincing i'm not convinced you know better didn't you date a straight man and
01:36:14.920you're a man how did that work that sounds a little non-binary to me i don't know and these
01:36:19.060clips went so viral like i've had a million people send them to me and it's they're all posted by
01:36:24.520like conservative pages with thousands of replies being like we love jeffrey star and i'm like yeah
01:36:30.800i'm sure you do because you know he does serve a real role in this ecosystem where someone who
01:36:38.200is homophobic who is transphobic can hear all of their beliefs regurgitated back to them by someone
01:36:44.120who looks like jeffrey star and then feel like i don't have to challenge myself on anything because
01:36:49.000jeffrey agrees with me and jeffrey looks like that yes i think that jeffrey is comfortable with
01:36:54.200this very impressionable audience that he does not have to work hard to impress like he just has
01:37:00.060to say the magic words he at this point has learned much like donald trump that he can stand
01:37:06.440in the middle of the street and shoot someone in the head and no one would care i mean how much has
01:37:11.740he gotten away with let's not forget earlier we were talking about sexual assault charges you've1.00
01:37:17.580got this motherfucker on here talking about our kids our kids our kids let's keep you from the1.00
01:37:23.200kids actually and off of those buses huh the whole conservative side i was look i saw a megan1.00
01:37:28.500kelly thing earlier today that was so perfect on this you know oh i need to keep the boys out of
01:37:33.420the girls locker room but like donald trump didn't do anything to those girls and if he did it wasn't0.96
01:37:39.120that bad because yada it's like come on it's all a fake bullshit script but they've learned that0.95
01:37:45.140they can get away with it and i honestly think that the sad part is is our literacy in this0.97
01:37:51.600country is very low and there's enough people who just won't care enough to look into it like
01:37:57.180the fact that it is so tangibly hard for trans kids to gain access to gender affirming care
01:38:03.880but people have been able to buy into this narrative that you can send your your kid
01:38:08.960to school and they'll come back with a sex change the next day it's insane and they believe this
01:38:15.440you know like you have to get months upon months of electrolysis before you have a sex change
01:38:20.020operation, because if you don't, hair is going to grow where it shouldn't. But somehow these
01:38:24.580children are getting full sex change operations. And that's just believable. And for me, that0.98
01:38:29.640speaks to just how dehumanized trans people are. The fact that no one wants to look into it enough1.00
01:38:37.140to hear how actually hard it is to gain access to this care. He was mentioning, oh, cutting off
01:38:42.980your tits, right? In very, very, very few circumstances can a person who's under the1.00
01:38:49.040age of 18 actually get that surgery. It's not a common thing at all. And if these people knew
01:38:55.380any trans kids, they would know that they would know that the first couple of years of this
01:39:00.020conversation is not, well, you need to have surgery. It's more like, well, we're going to
01:39:04.100support you in your way of expressing yourself. You know, the same way that your fucking mom said1.00
01:39:09.800to you, apparently it would be, we're not going to judge you. We're not actually going to tell0.99
01:39:14.320you who you are. We're going to give you the opportunity to decide for yourself. In fact,
01:39:19.040that's actually the function of puberty blockers is allowing a child to have time to decide for
01:39:25.980themselves whether or not they wanted those things. And you need to have typically a bit of
01:39:30.800time on actual hormones before you have any of these goddamn surgeries. And so it is so frustrating0.99
01:39:36.920to me the way that people talk about this because they actually don't understand that more likely
01:39:42.460for a rejected trans kid to just, you know, go back into the closet and, you know, decide not
01:39:48.880to be themselves, is that they're going to run away, get onto the streets, be assaulted by grown
01:39:54.480men, some of whom are conservative, and that's their only way up and out of their circumstances,
01:39:59.720being exploited by the same men that voted against their rights. That's the reality for
01:40:04.560a lot of trans people, is they have to do sex work to survive. It was my past, right?1.00
01:40:11.300it aggravates me that that people don't understand that the other end of rejecting trans youth is
01:40:17.720exploitation or suicide typically the worst thing you could do to a trans kid is not just kind of
01:40:24.760accept who they are like and i'm very passionate about that because i'm very much who i am because0.95
01:40:30.540of some of the shit i had to go through when i was a teenager because my parents didn't accept me
01:40:34.260it pisses me off because i know that he doesn't care he doesn't care he gets to get away with it0.85
01:40:39.900But this actually does have an impact on people.
01:40:43.140You normalize the idea that this is such a thing.0.99
01:40:45.800People do and have voted against people having access to their care just for this bullshit.0.88
01:40:50.760Yeah, 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.0.98
01:40:59.360And he also knows, I think at least he's made this sort of bet, that as a gay man who does
01:41:07.660not have a super strong line of protection between him and any fascist agenda, but I
01:41:13.800think Jeffrey, even if he's not smart enough to recognize this, like even if he couldn't
01:41:18.140repeat this back, I think he probably understands that deep down there are other queer people
01:41:23.900and allies who will be fighting for his rights and protecting his rights.
01:41:27.820So he's not really in danger because he can ride on the back of other people's work to protect him while he endangers more vulnerable queer and trans people in a way that won't come back to bite him necessarily.
01:41:42.020I mean, that's what we do on this podcast.0.95
01:41:44.300Like I fucking I fucking advocate for Jeffree Star's right to be Jeffree Star every day, whether I like it or not.0.97
01:41:54.400Okay, this is my last six second clip, but I just, I had to include it because I love masculinity. Here's the problem with society. We've set up society to shame and ridicule straight men.
01:42:08.340Have we? Have we? Have we? And if he looks at the camera softly enough, a straight man will finally pick him.0.91
01:42:18.940this is the problem with society we set it up to shame and ridicule straight men