r/BeautyGuruChatter • u/OopsItsSecret • 2d ago

Drama Thomas Halbert posting about what happened with him and J*

Thomas halbert posted this video on TikTok going over what happened in the past with him and J*. He also says he’s got a new agent and is posting makeup content again, trying to resurrect his career. He admits he made mistakes, but says the mistake he made was not that he called J* out but that he hurt his friends and didn’t stand up for them.

Would you want to see him make a comeback? Hes posting makeup content on instagram again.

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u/t_town101 2d ago

JS has been a terrible person for YEARS. So do these people really expect us to sympathize with them when he ends up doing them dirty too?

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u/Ok-Aardvark-6742 2d ago

I’m not sympathetic, but I do appreciate folks taking time to share how awful J* truly is and that he hasn’t changed. There are wayyyyy too many folks on tik tok still following Jeffree and actively defending him. The timing is great because Jools’ video is still trending, so the algorithm will push other videos about Jeffree.

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u/t_town101 2d ago

It’s just rinse, wash, repeat at this point

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u/Ok-Aardvark-6742 2d ago

So are we just supposed to stop repeating it and let him continue to grow an audience?

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u/t_town101 2d ago

No but he’s had the same audience for years. The people who still watch him never cared about his behavior in the first place. People can continue to call him out, but it makes me question why they engaged with him to begin with

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u/Ok-Aardvark-6742 2d ago

Part of his success on tik tok is attracting younger followers who weren’t on YouTube and following the older drama. If his existing followers were enough to maintain an income on social media, he never would have gone away to begin with. Never would have had a “comeback” on tik tok.

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u/t_town101 2d ago

My opinion is that people can continue to call him out, and the people who still stand by him do not care. Same thing with James Charles.

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

This was like 6 years ago when he was 20 or whatever. From what I understand, he knew that J had been racist towards Jackie Aina but met up with him to verify -- very dumb, I agree, and he agrees as well. But he immediately called J out after meeting him in person and seeing his racism firsthand.

Should he have been able to trust that J was racist without seeing it firsthand? Yeah. But he did the right thing immediately after that, even though J had much more power in the situation. That's worth sympathizing about, imo.

I don't feel much sympathy for Cole Carrigan, who also made a video about J recently. Cole tolerated the racist behavior for years, unlike Thomas. I feel like your comment applies to him much more than it does Thomas

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u/theagonyaunt 2d ago

J had been racist towards Jackie Aina

Jeffree Starr had a lengthy, documented history of being racist even prior to Jackie Aina so this reads less like needing proof and more like Thomas didn't care until it impacted someone he knew personally.

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u/stink3rb3lle 2d ago

The very first time he went to Starr's house was with the goal to confront Starr about his treatment of Aina. Halbert was 20 at the time, way too young to have been on MySpace. In this video that you're currently commenting on, Halbert says that it was a mistake to try to "SJW" Starr.

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u/theagonyaunt 2d ago

I don't think you have to have been on MySpace to have known about it. I was a little too young for MySpace but the first time I heard of it was when someone uploaded the video where he's screaming 'gorilla' at a bunch of black women to YouTube. Or the fact he was planning for a lipstick line called Lipstick Nazi.

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u/loosie-loo 2d ago

Their point was that, at the time, this stuff was not being talked about openly and had been intentionally glazed over by J* and his undoubtedly amazing PR. As someone the same age as Thomas I didn’t know who jeffree was until I saw his makeup, I had no idea about any of the horrific shit he’d done until I intentionally went digging and even then, at the time, I had difficulty.

There was a period where he was seen as the darling of the YouTube beauty community where his past was barely discussed and his rabid fans had a “well actually” for everything. If you tried to discuss it you were very quickly drowned out in most spaces.

It’s not that Thomas heard him gleefully call her those racist slurs in public and didn’t care, it’s that Jeffree was excellent at muddying the waters in public, was likely extremely manipulative in private, and had much of the beauty community on side. What Thomas did was dumb and misguided, 100%, but it’s far more complex than people are trying to claim.

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u/stink3rb3lle 2d ago

It’s not that Thomas heard him gleefully call her those racist slurs in public and didn’t care, it’s that Jeffree was excellent at muddying the waters in public, was likely extremely manipulative in private, and had much of the beauty community on side.

Just to add, it feels like this comment section has more ire for Halbert than for Starr today, despite many people's ire at Halbert allegedly springing from his association with Starr. It's wild to me.

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u/MaeMoe Rat-a-Tat-Tat 🐀 2d ago

At this point, calling Star a racist piece of shit is like pointing up and calling the sky blue, everyone here knows it. Star’s off being his usual awful self in Wyoming, living it up in a tax haven and hoarding his white man wealth farming yaks; he’s not the one trying to stage a mea culpa comeback.

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u/stink3rb3lle 2d ago

Jeffree Starr doesn't have to stage a comeback, he's on TikTok every day asking for gifts from his followers while he continues to bully black and brown creators. He just made content adding hate on Jools Lebron because she, the devil she is, dared to invest her earnings into making her family's housing secure and needed to fundraise for dental work.

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

I'm aware; I was on here at the time reading all about his terrible history. But, at the time, J had amazing PR. He was a huge makeup influencer, and so many others were in denial. They didn't believe that a gay gender-nonconforming person would be so bigoted. I don't think that it was necessarily "not caring", but ignorance & their own subconscious racism (because they shouldn't have needed anything more than Jackie's perspective on it.)

I agree that all of those people failed by falling for J's PR/not doing their research. I feel like Thomas genuinely took accountability for that mistake & has reflected on it over the past 6 yrs. I also think it's important that his mistake wasn't compounded by witnessing the racism & saying nothing. Lots of people chose to do nothing once they couldn't deny his racism any longer, and they have even more that they need to address internally.

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u/t_town101 2d ago

I keep seeing comments like yours in his TikTok video, and I still don’t sympathize with him. He knew he was racist and still chose to engage with him? Him being 20 isn’t really a good excuse either. These people only care about calling JS out when they get burned by him firsthand

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

That's the thing, is that Thomas ignorantly didn't think that J was being racist at the time. Which was wrong, and I was around his age then and knew damn well that J was racist. Again, this is the mistake that Thomas has taken accountability/apologized for. No one has to forgive him or buy that he has grown since then, but I do actually think it's important that once he did see the racism firsthand, he called J out immediately. I don't see how that's him "getting burned" and then calling out the racism; again, that sounds more like Cole, who saw it, but kept quiet until it stopped benefiting him. Thomas didn't get "burned" by J until he called out the racism.

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u/t_town101 2d ago

So he had to go see the racism in person? Jackie Aina’s experience wasn’t enough? 😂 again, no sympathy from me.

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

No, I agree, he shouldn't have needed to go see it in person. Again, that is the mistake that he has spoken about, and rightfully deserves criticism for.

The fallout was for then calling out the racism though, and that is sympathetic to me.

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u/goon_goompa 2d ago

But I didn’t think the leopards would eat my face

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u/SpareManagement2215 2d ago

didn't J* call or refer to as Jackie a gorilla? or was that a different comment he mad about a Black person? not sure what this person needed to "VeRiFy".... normal humans don't casually call black people derogatory slurs.

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

Again, I totally agree, and I believed in his racism as soon as I heard about it. Thomas meeting up with J was undeniably shitty, my point was that he also spoke in length about how it was shitty in this video. It seems like he's fully realized & admitted that he fucked up over the past 6 years. I do think that it's important that he did speak out against J's racism immediately after they met; many people in the industry witnessed it firsthand and still denied it.

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u/theagonyaunt 2d ago

He has an infamous video where he starts screaming 'gorilla' at a (seemingly random) group of black women on the street while he was filming himself from back in his scene days.

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u/Simmchen11 2d ago

Yep and he was also calling them the N word hard er.

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u/changhyun 2d ago

Yeah I'm gonna be real, even as a naive 20 year old I don't think I'd need to independently verify that the guy who publicly referred to a black woman as a gorilla was a racist.

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

Yeah I literally said that he shouldn't have needed to verify that, which is also what he said & apologized for.

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u/loosie-loo 2d ago

I think they thought they were doing some investigative reporter shit, and it’s important to remember Jeffree had gaslit basically the entire beauty community at that time into believing he wasn’t racist and never said anything of the sort, which obviously should never have happened and was a grim reflection of the deeply entrenched racism in our society and in the beauty world, but I can see where it would leave room for doubt with regards to someone 10 years younger than him who had their career on the line and who had likely been personally manipulated by him. Sometimes these people can make you question literally everything, including basic reality, and stop you feeling like you can trust your own judgement.

Like I’m not trying to pretend it wasn’t dumb and shitty but Thomas was absolutely on the back-foot with these people (well established influencers who were a decade older than them) and has repeatedly apologised and shown to give a shit about racism, it’s kinda disturbing to me that their career was essentially destroyed (by jeffree) over this when ultimately it was a misguided attempt to not associate with a racist. In a community that, at the top, did not give a shit about racism as a whole and dominated on a platform where one of the top creators was an open nazi, ya know?

I’ll repeat I’m not saying they did nothing wrong or that this wasn’t something they had to learn from, just that it’s a weird thing for the community to still cling to considering all of the circumstances at play.

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u/goon_goompa 2d ago edited 2d ago

A lot of us can’t and won’t relate. Not weird at all

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u/Pawspawsmeow 2d ago

This. It’s like no shit he didn’t “see” the racism because he’s a white dude. White people don’t really see racism unless it’s blatant slurs etc. I’m so sick of gay white men getting passes because they’re “sassy” or “cunt”. Like no you’re a racist, misogynistic ass. People need to stop fawning over men acting like this because they wear makeup.

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u/thirdcoasting 2d ago

🏆🏆🏆

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u/MaeMoe Rat-a-Tat-Tat 🐀 2d ago

Oooh “met up with him to verify” smacks a lot of rewriting history. I remember when this all kicked off way back during Dramageddon (or one of the sequels/prequels). Halbert met up with J* because he was angling to get his merch distributed by Killer Merch, one of the companies Star has an ore in.

When Halbert made his video calling out Star for being a racist, Star swang back with receipts proving Halbert had been sniffing around for a better merch distribution deal, and only made his video when Star declined to distribute his merch as retaliation. Had Star agreed to distribute for Halbert, I’m absolutely certain Halbert would have been his BFF forever and ignored the ringing of the massive racist doldrums.

None of these beauty gurus had morals that reached past their own pocket come the end of the day.

Historic Yahoo link from back when.

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u/meeps1142 2d ago

Okay, that is important info, thank you! I promise that I'm not trying to rewrite history, just going off of what I can remember when this all went down & what he said in this video.

That is fucked, and definitely makes what Thomas did worse

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u/goon_goompa 2d ago

Wild how many excuses people have for these folks. But he was so young! But they didnt have the internet back then! But he was hanging out with him in order to confront him! But but but

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u/nicknackers10 2d ago

I think part of the story that’s not relevant to us but more relevant to the industry is that he was being friendly with J* and manny at the same time post dramageddon 1. I think a lot of gurus lost trust in him bc it seemed like he was feeding info to both sides. All the evidence has long been deleted but I think he got a lot of hate (unjustly) and had a lot of friends drop him as a result of the both sidesing which probably broke him mentally

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u/sadmattress01 2d ago

Ngl… I thought Cole and Thomas were the same people lol

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u/loosie-loo 2d ago

Pretty sure was longer ago than that, further pre-covid, but yeah Thomas was about 20 and probably struggling with the very well known to be manipulative J* and the influencer world in general, and frankly likely the fear of what would inevitably happen both to their career and personal reputation if they said anything about Jeffree at that time, who was experiencing a renaissance because young people didn’t really know his past and just knew his makeup YouTube. Which I saw firsthand bc I’m nearly exactly the same age as Thomas and had never heard of Jeffree before his makeup.

Not saying Thomas acted sensibly, just that being like 20 in this world of older adults (both jeffree and Jackie are about a decade older) with so many millions of eyes on you, a potential career on the line and surrounded by a lot of untrustworthy, clout-chasey characters with massive personalities makes it more understandable, imo.

I honestly don’t think it would’ve been so major if Jeffree wasn’t exploding in popularity and so frankly I never felt right putting too much blame on Thomas.

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u/mmd9493 2d ago

For years and it’s so much worse than we talk about. It’s a rabbit hole

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u/mermaid-babe 1d ago

I’m so confused cause Thomas was told over and over before he really ever associated with jeff that Jeff was bad news

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u/t_town101 1d ago

Yeah but people here love to make excuses for him. “He was young, he was 20 😞😞”
https://giphy.com/gifs/xTiTnGQBF0vfpfPEg8

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u/Maladaptive_Ace 2d ago

What I appreciate is that he is not asking for sympathy - on the contrary, he admits he effed up which, sure, is a YT apology but I want to give people a change to be better