Shane Dawson, the Ken Burns of the YouTube generation, released his latest documentary on Tuesday. It’s an hour-long installment in a multipart series about the makeup artist, drama magnet, and guy who is really sorry about those racists comments, Jeffree Star. The broad conceit of the doc, titled The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star, is that it follows Star and Dawson as they build a makeup brand. It opens on Dawson at his home where he is packing for an overnight trip, via Star’s private plane, to Sacramento with Star. Star will be doing a meet and greet event at the local mall outpost of Morphe, a makeup company known for collaborations with YouTubers. (If all of these proper nouns are making you scratch your head I suggest you stop reading here.)
Now be warned: Dawson’s documentaries — of which there are many, including a previous close-up on Star — suffer from the same virus that afflicts most YouTube content these days: Toolongitis. (For example, here’s a 15-minute video from Tana Mongeau that can be summarized in a single sentence: Billie Eilish unfollowed me on Instagram.) As a longtime Dawson fan with an unhealthy fascination with his reinvention as documentarian, I could watch this shit truly all day, but I recognize, thank God, not everybody is wired that way. So let me tell you about the most dramatic moment from this installment so you can, at the very least, try to not embarrass yourself in front of the next cool teenager you meet.
At about the 36-minute mark, Dawson and Star and Star’s team are hanging out in a hotel suite with makekeup artist and influencer Lipstick Nick. Lipstick Nick gets a phone call from a “Cameron.†Dawson asks if she means Cameron Dallas but nobody confirms this. “[Bleep] tried to fuck him. I think he said no. I can’t remember,†Star says about an unnamed influencer and Dallas. Dawson’s team may have bleeped out the name Star says, but if the internet horde of gossip sleuths are to be believed, it’s allegedly James Charles, another beauty YouTuber too entrenched in drama to even begin to explain briefly. (But to try: Charles was previously called out by fellow YouTubers for, among other things, alleged sexually predatory behavior.) During a beef earlier this year, Charles posted a screenshot of a text Star had sent him threatening to expose him. He had mentioned a “Cameron†in the text. Later in the video, Dawson zooms in on pictures of Charles’s face in the Morphe store.
Other notable tidbits from the doc: Dawson talks about being YouTube poor in comparison to Star — he’s worth an estimated $75 million — and the next installment seems like the pair are going to get candid about the money behind YouTube stars. Star says he’s on good terms with Gabriel Zamora. (Again, I warned you about the proper nouns.) Dawson also gets a little candid about what it’s like to have your every body part and pound picked apart by strangers online. And, as a fun exercise, Star only lets him wear Star merchandize the entire trip. Tune in for part two, which will no doubt include more branded tracksuits.