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Is Jeffree Star Becoming Irrelevant?

Could a drop in views and makeup products consigned to bargain boxes spell the beginning of the end for Jeffree Star?

As George Harrison sings in the 1970 album All Things Must Pass, "Sunrise doesn't last all morning; a cloudburst doesn't last all day." As this month marks the 50th anniversary of that album, it is perhaps appropriate to acknowledge that Jeffree Star's star, too, may one day die.

Um, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. So a couple of days ago, Insider reported that the controversial makeup mogul Jeffree Star could slowly but surely be losing relevance. Even by influencer standards, Star's year has been filled with scandal, including serious allegations of sexual and physical assault, the fallout from Dramageddon 3 and Tati Westbrook's accusations that he manipulated her, and a close connection with Shane Dawson, known for donning blackface and his disturbing jokes about pedophilia.

And while Jeffree has spent years profiting from his controversial image, his luck may finally be running out. Reportedly, the star's social media engagement is in dire straits, with his last video (a collab with drag queen India Ferrah) pulling less than one million views. Insider reckons he hasn't had a video perform so badly since 2016. Per Social Blade, in January of 2019, Star gained 114 million video views on his YouTube channel. This November, he's only had 12 million.

Meanwhile, Jeffree's once luxe makeup collection reportedly hasn't sold out, and has been spotted in TJ Maxx (an American discount store known for selling cheap, outdated makeup). For shame! Apparently, Jeffree has long dragged other brands for having ended up in TJ Maxx, too. In the words of one Reddit user, life comes at you fast. 

So what will happen if Jeffree Star's star does fade? Well, financially at least, he'll be just fine. In April 2020, Jeffree himself confirmed that "in this moment, [the] net worth of Jeffree Star Cosmetics is like 1.5 [billion]." Whether or not that figure is inflated is a battle for another day but with several investment properties, plus three homes for his personal use (per this very Jeffree-friendly piece in Distractify) and his fingers in several other pies including a grinder for weed (?), he'll be absolutely a-okay for money from the sounds of things.

So does all this spell the beginning of the end for the millionaire YouTuber's influence? Are the days of controversy-ridden stars coming to an end as people grapple with more hardship than they ever expected in their day-to-day? Or is all this just a blip in the road for Star? Watch this space. 

Written by Reena Gupta, a Melbourne-based writer at MTV Australia. Follow her on Twitter @purpletank

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