Jeffree Star loses 100K+ subscribers after Kameron Lester’s allegations

Alice Hearing
Jeffree Star poses on Instagram

Jeffree Star’s social media has bombed after he was accused of manipulation by a former friend in the beauty industry.

In the last day, Jeffree has lost more than 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, 17,000 twitter followers in the last week, and around 18,000 Instagram followers on JeffreeStarCosmetics.

This comes after beauty YouTuber Kameron Lester posted an IGTV video officially cutting ties with Jeffree Star and Jeffree Star cosmetics. Kameron said that he felt like the ‘token black kid’ throughout their working relationship and that he felt manipulated and fearful.

He said: “I just felt like it wasn’t a friendship, it was never a friendship, in the beginning, to start with, it was always something, like, I was kind of like the token Black kid.”

After he began to pull away as a friend, Kameron said that Jeffree replaced him as a model in his campaign for the ‘Cremated’ line of Jeffree Star Cosmetics and that he felt it was sending a message that he was replaceable as a black man in the beauty industry.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBQ4_hVpHVS/

Kameron said: “as a Black beauty boy, I have fought for my spot to be heard and seen in the beauty community… I have been told not to say anything, to keep the network and benefit from it, and I’m just not that type of person. I want to remain authentic.”

A voice memo that was allegedly sent by Jeffree in response to the video has since been leaked online and retweeted by Kameron. In the clip, he says: “You trying to flip the script and make up a bunch of lies and make me the devil, is so boring.”

YouTuber ‘TAB’ later uploaded, and then deleted, a video criticizing Jeffree’s behavior online, which was then reuploaded by another user. In the video, TAB relayed some of his experiences with Jeffree including that he had once called Gwen Stefani “a very derogatory word towards Jewish people.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz2Ef7Af7HY

Shane Dawson, another YouTuber and very close friend of Jeffree Star, has also lost significant numbers of subscribers and followers. According to SocialBlade, his average daily follower growth on Instagram is currently -3901. He has lost almost 9,000 Twitter followers in the last week.