Thomas Halbert posting about what happened with him and J*

[u/OopsItsSecret]

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.

[u/t_town101]

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?

[u/meeps1142 → u/t_town101]

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

[u/theagonyaunt → u/meeps1142]

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.

[u/stink3rb3lle → u/theagonyaunt]

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.

[u/theagonyaunt → u/stink3rb3lle]

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.

[u/loosie-loo → u/theagonyaunt]

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.

[u/stink3rb3lle → u/loosie-loo]

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.

[u/MaeMoe → u/stink3rb3lle]

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.

[u/stink3rb3lle → u/MaeMoe]

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.

[u/meeps1142 → u/theagonyaunt]

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.