 For the third year in a row, the multi-billion dollar YouTube beauty industry is in an uproar. In the last week, Shane Dawson has been called out by Jayden and Jada Smith, had his books removed from Target, and Morphe has pulled his palette. Now, Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star are both under fire as Taty Westbrook released a video stating they orchestrated the events of 2019 with James Charles. In 2018, we experienced the first dramagetin, involving Laura Lee's infamous apology. The following year, dramagetin was topped by Taty Westbrook making her video by sister, which accused James Charles of being a bad friend, as well as someone who preys on straight boys. This resulted in Taty Westbrook gaining millions of subscribers, while James Charles lost millions. When James finally responded, he had documentation that many of the allegations against him were false or taken out of context. After James's return, the community split. We had people claiming that they still didn't fully believe James, and others were glad to see him redeem himself. Looking back on the situation, how could the people involved, as well as the community, acted better? This situation may not have blown up the way it did had it not been for rushes to judgment, inherent human biases, and a lack of critical thinking. Now it's 2020, and Taty Westbrook has come out with a new video that has amassed nearly 8 million views in just two days. In this new video, she claims that Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson manipulated her into making that video about James by gaslighting her and feeding her lies. Much like in 2019, there's been an instant reaction from the community, and it's largely because people aren't critically thinking once again. In this video, we're going to focus on critical thinking skills and how they could be applied to this situation because critical thinking is what helps us get closer to the truth. And why is this so important? Well, because it has real life applications. This isn't just about drama within the YouTube community. It's about practicing critical thinking and skepticism in order to better our own lives. We are often slaves to our emotions, which makes us make decisions that we eventually regret. A true mark of an emotionally intelligent person is someone who can pause and approach situations with skepticism while applying various critical thinking skills to each situation. Critical thinking helps us better judge the situations we see, like what's happening in the YouTube community, as well as what we see in the news each day. It also helps us better navigate situations with friends, family and coworkers as we practice better emotional regulation. In fact, evidence-based therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy apply critical thinking to the different cognitive distortions we each struggle with. CBT involves asking ourselves where the evidence is for the troubling thoughts that we experience. Today, we're going to assess the current situation with Taty Westbrook and Shane Dawson by focusing on two primary critical thinking skills, understanding how memory works and hindsight bias. By having a better understanding of memory and hindsight bias, we can assess this situation as well as other situations in our life with a bit more objectivity. Before we get started, if you're new to the Rewired Soul, make sure you subscribe and turn notifications on. I try to make videos at least once a week to dive deep into topics and see what we can learn from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. The Innocence Project is an organization with a team of lawyers dedicated to exonerating people in prison who are wrongly convicted. When watching the new docu-series on Netflix, I became fascinated with memory. There were multiple convictions based on eyewitness testimony, which were later discovered as being incorrect memories. One story was of Thomas Hainesworth, a man who spent 27 years in prison after a woman claimed he assaulted her. Years later, through DNA evidence, it was found that Hainesworth was innocent. Today, Hainesworth and the victim give talks together to raise awareness about wrongful convictions as well as the flaws in our memory. After hearing about this, I wanted to learn more about how our memory works and how it can play tricks on us. The scariest part about our memories is how confident we are in them. One year after Taty's videos about James Charles, she's pulling from memory what happened. A common saying these days is that someone like Taty is quote-unquote speaking her truth. We may never know how accurate her memory is, but based on research, we shouldn't base our opinions on the confidence of someone's memories. One of the most famous studies on memory came from cognitive psychologist Ulrich Neisser after the Challenger explosion. In 1992, a 106 students were interviewed right after the Challenger explosion, asking them where they were and what they remembered. Two and a half years later, 44 of these students were re-questioned and they scored the students on their accuracy as well as the confidence of their memory. Two and a half years isn't that long of a time and this was a significant event for most of the world. So what were the results? 25% of the students scored zero out of seven when it came to accuracy of details. Half scored two or less out of seven. This study has actually been duplicated multiple times and one was a study after 9-11. What's fascinating about these studies is how confident the participants were in their memory recall because the memories were so vivid. Think about that for a second. People were 100% confident in their memory while scoring zero out of seven. So when you think about it, you could technically hook some of these people up to a lie detector test and they'd pass with flying colors because like Tati Westbrook, they're telling their truth. While we currently don't know for certain if what Tati is claiming is accurate, we now have scientific evidence as to why we should be somewhat skeptical of her accounts of the events. Now, some of you might be saying, but those studies took place two years after the event and Tati is recalling something that happened a year ago. Well, studies also show that our short-term memory isn't all that great either. In 2011, the Journal of Consumer Research did a fascinating study on short-term memory. They took 100 undergrads and students were randomly assigned to different conditions. One group was the high imagery group in which they were shown a very vivid descriptive video about a fake brand of popcorn. The smell, the taste, the feel, and more were described to the students but they never actually ate the popcorn. One week later, the students were interviewed to see what they remembered about the experiment. NeuroBunkers.com does a great job explaining the results and what happened. While students who saw the low imagery ad were extremely unlikely to report having tried the popcorn, those who watched the slick commercial were just as likely to have said they tried the popcorn as those who actually did. Furthermore, their ratings of the product were as favorable as those who sampled the salty, buttery treat. Most troubling perhaps is that these subjects were extremely confident in these made-up memories. The delusion felt true. They didn't like the popcorn because they'd seen a good ad. They liked the popcorn because it was delicious. What's important to understand is that although these studies and what happened to Thomas Handsworth make us more skeptical about memories, we must also remember that there are malicious people out there looking to exploit this brain flaw. In Tati Westbrook's video, she mentions gaslighting a few times when describing what Shane Dawson and Jeffrey Starr did to her. Gaslighting is a real manipulation tactic and it's common for narcissists to abuse memory manipulation in their relationships. Gaslighting is making someone question their own sanity as they recall events. Although our memories can be flawed and manipulated, we must avoid being gaslit. Personally, I have no clue how accurate Tati's memories of events are, but based on the screenshots James Charles shared, we have evidence that Tati isn't always accurate with how she tells stories. Remember, critical thinking is about getting as close to the truth as possible before making our judgments. And that's why we need to take all the evidence and the science into consideration when assessing this story. Next, we're going to discuss something that we all fall victim to, which is hindsight bias and how it can skew our perception of events even more. Something I realized about being skeptical is that it's in our nature to think we're right and others are wrong. When learning about biases and flaws in our thinking, we're quick to point them out in others, but to be a good critical thinker, you need to know how to analyze your own ways of thinking. So as we dive into the concept of hindsight bias, it's important to do some self-reflection and see how your own hindsight bias shapes your thoughts, memories, and behaviors. We all see the world through clouded lenses and the smudges on our perception come from our biases that we're often unaware of. When looking at the new video from Tati Westbrook about Shane Dawson and Jeffrey Starr, we need to ask ourselves a few questions. When she accused James Charles, what information did she have and how confident was she in it? A year later, when accusing Shane and Jeffrey, what information does she have and how confident is she in that? Most importantly, we must ask ourselves this important question. Had the events with James Charles turned out differently and in her favor, would she still have her current opinion? This is the essence of what we're trying to figure out when analyzing hindsight bias. So what is hindsight bias? Hindsight bias is a type of bias that allows people to convince themselves post hoc or after the fact that they knew something the entire time. Our ego protects us from simply saying, I didn't know at the time. So we use hindsight bias as we recall events. For example, have you ever broken up with someone and then thought of all the red flags you should have seen? Or maybe you have a friend who is a know-it-all and they're constantly using hindsight bias to say they quote unquote knew it all along even though there's no way they could have had the data to accurately predict outcomes at that time. Again, when reflecting on hindsight bias while trying to critically assess the situation with Tati Westbrook and Shane Dawson, what information did Tati have at that time? What did she believe at that time? If this all blows up in her face, how will she perceive this situation a year from now? By being aware of this form of bias, we can analyze the situation a bit more objectively. The most important question to ask right now is what information did Shane and Jeffrey have at the time they were talking to Tati? Before proceeding, I wanna make it clear that I'm no fan of Jeffree Star. In fact, he even has me blocked on Twitter. But in order to become better critical thinkers, we can't pick and choose when we're going to allow our biases to manipulate our judgments. So what was happening last year leading up to Tati's video? When Tati Westbrook accused James Charles of manipulating straight boys, two young men came forward and made allegations. A young man by the name of Gabe and a young man by the name of Sam, both accused James of trying to manipulate them into a relationship by abusing his power. Tati even claimed that she witnessed James do this to Sam at her birthday dinner in Seattle. Based on our hindsight bias, we can say that we now know that Gabe and Sam fabricated a decent amount of their stories, but we didn't have that information at the time. But what about Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson? For a moment, imagine you're Shane or Jeffree and these accusations are coming out against James. Along with these accusations, more people are sharing stories online. During this time, there are also rumors that one of the Dolan twins may have had these same issues with James. In a recent video, Blair White claims to have heard a recording Jeffree shared with her from an alleged victim. Blair stated that Jeffree is holding onto this information as blackmail against James. Tati Westbrook also says that she's heard this recording. Although Tati Westbrook now believes James is innocent, Blair White believes these allegations against James are true. So which stance do you take? Now back to Shane and Jeffree. What stance do they take? It's easy to say that they should believe James is innocent because they were friends, but is it that simple? For a moment, I want you to imagine an alleged victim going to Shane Dawson or Jeffree Star and telling them that James Charles assaulted them. What would happen if Shane and Jeffree called the victim a liar? Even worst, what would happen if the public found out that Shane and Jeffree called a victim a liar? Currently, we don't know whether or not these allegations are true or false, but what we do know is that it's never a good look to accuse an abuse survivor of lying. These are all important factors taken into consideration as we watch as news unfolds with updates around the situation between Tati Westbrook, Shane Dawson, Jeffree Star and James Charles. Although this may seem like petty internet drama, lives are being affected. There are serious criminal accusations floating around again which may lead to legal actions. Not only that, but these are real people. James Charles and Tati Westbrook have both mentioned thoughts of taking their own lives and Jeffree Star has a history of self-harm. More importantly, critically thinking and asking these types of questions helps us out with our own relationships. Now that you know more about memory, is that person in your life maliciously lying or are they just misremembering? When you hear a rumor about a friend or family member, are you acting out of emotion or are you skeptical of the information you're given? Personally, critical thinking is a major aspect of my own mental health. As I learn more about the way my mind plays tricks on me, I can manage my depression and anxiety a lot better. When we practice these critical thinking skills, we start to realize that all of our thoughts aren't facts and they can be skewed by various biases or flaws in our thinking. Therapies like rational emotive behavioral therapy or REBT and CVT both apply critically thinking and they have great success rates. Over time, when you experience thoughts, emotions and situations, you can pause and ask yourself, how do I know this thought is true and what evidence is there for this thought? A great way to practice critical thinking is by applying it to all of the situations in your daily life and you'll start to see improvements to your own emotional intelligence. All right, everybody, thank you so much for making it to the end of this video and if you're interested in learning more about critical thinking, I've linked some books down below, one of them is actually a course that I just took. But yeah, there's a lot of cool books out there that help me out just looking at situations like not just what we're watching on the news, but like I mentioned in the video, things that we're experiencing in our day to day lives. And if you're interested in trying out some of the therapies I mentioned like REBT or CVT, I personally use BetterHelp online therapy. So if you would like to check that out, it's affordable, it's online, that way you can social distance while improving your mental health. And I have an affiliate link for BetterHelp online therapy down below. Basically what that means is that you get affordable online therapy and a little bit comes back to help support the channel and all the work that I put into doing these videos. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're new, don't forget to subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody out there who supports the channel by being a patron or buying my mental health books at therewirepsoul.com or from getting merch from the merch store. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.