 For highlight today, I'm going to be using the Morphe M310 fan brush. I love this. This is really nice to just chisel. You can do the Morphe 510, which I love this guy, so let's use this one right now. To buff out the under eye and help it look really flawless, I'm going to be using this tiny Morphe 513 brush from Morphe, a really inexpensive brand. It's by Morphe. Morphe brush. Morphe. Morphe brush. Morphe. Morphe is the exact same quality. It's like makeup geek. Morphe. I'm an affiliate with Morphe. I actually was their first affiliate. Morphe. Morphe. Morphe. As always, you can use code James for $10% off your purchase. Guys you can use code James for 10% off your purchase at morphebrushes.com. As always, you can use code James for 10% off your purchase at MorpheBrushes.com. You can use code James for 10% off your purchase at Morphe Brushes. Hey guys, it's Madison back in my blue kitchen for another crazy video. Today we are talking about the beauty community. But before we get into the video, if you like deep dives and like to analyze scams, unethical business practices, and other crazy things going on on the internet, don't forget to subscribe down below and give this video a thumbs up if you like this video and you want to boost this video. And wealth, let's get into it. Yeah, it's too hot, I have to take this off. So this week I'll be posting two parts to this whole video topic and area. The first one will be this video that you're watching right now. And the second one will be all about influencer brands, which I think is a whole other aspect of this that really ties in and relates to what's going on here. I think that there's a lot of manipulation happening at the moment in the beauty community and on YouTube. And it's kind of concerning. Before we dive into this video, I wanted to give a shout out to Amanda Beebe on YouTube. She's awesome and amazing and has a lot of really great videos and video topics. And she did an amazing video on humanizing beauty brands, which I think relates really well to this whole entire topic. So definitely check that out after this video. I'll be leaving the link to that in the description. So let's talk about the sheer power of influencers in the beauty industry, the shady tactics used to sell makeup and how just labeling it a beauty community at this point might be to our own detriment. I want to start by stating the obvious, but I feel like it's not often stated. Maybe I'm wrong. Anyone who watches beauty related content on YouTube is a potential consumer for beauty brands. That means if you click on any sort of beauty related video, you automatically are a demographic who can be sold to. Does that mean that every single aspect of beauty content out there and beauty influencers is all bad and shouldn't be considered part of a beauty community? Of course not. No, that's not what I'm trying to say in this video at all. I know the title of this video is probably a little bit dramatic, but where things get a little bit shady is when influencers and brands blur the lines between business and community in order to sell and shill out more of their products. We broke the internet. We really broke it. We're talking, it was all of our subscribers, fans and customers. It was just all you guys and no trickery and that is what I'm most proud of is that like y'all showed out. And it's scary how effective it is. So scary. By labeling consumers as just part of a community, instead of what they are, consumers for influencers and brands, I can't help but feel like brands and influencers are manipulating the narrative to control the emotional connection that we all have to our favorite influencers. And the proof is in the data. If you just look at the data of how much the beauty industry has grown from influencers, it's insane, insane. They directly have had an impact on an entire industry. The beauty industry is a $500 billion industry at this point. $500 billion and the insane growth is largely contributed to beauty influencers. And while it's had a lot of very positive impacts, like being taught how to do makeup, now you have so much content out there, teaching you amazing techniques and really broadening the makeup knowledge. Knowledge. Also with the growth of the industry, we've had way more products to choose from. But the drawback of that is beauty influencers have an insane amount of power over the industry. I think more than we even give them credit for. If you resonate with an influencer and you connect with them, you have every right to want to support them, to buy their collaborations, their merch, all of that stuff. But if a group of influencers have an insane amount of influence and power over an industry, I think that needs to be at least acknowledged. And the tactics that influencers and brands use to sell to their consumers shouldn't be shady. And that's because 92%. 92% of consumers trust an influencer over advertisements and traditional celebrity endorsements. 92%. The data shows that influencers are extremely trustworthy to the public and are all influencers and especially in the beauty community using that trust in the right way. And like you guys trust me and that's the biggest thing ever to me. Like I thank you for that so much. And this is the hair skin and nails booster and this works. 100%. It is taught to you approved. This is magic right here, but the kind of magic that isn't just in your head, it actually does work. They're using that emotional connection that's built to manipulate their audience because their audience is more likely to trust their recommendations. My big thing with my channel is to earn your trust. And brands know this. For example, Beauty Giant Estee Lauder. Giant Estee Lauder is spending 75% of its marketing budget on influencers. 75% of its marketing budget. A Beauty Giant company like Estee Lauder does a ton of market research enough to know what works and what doesn't. And if they're spending 75% of their marketing budget on influencers, it's because it's extremely effective. It's because influencers sell. Of course, authenticity is important when it comes to influencers. And there are studies that show that when influencers do paid promotions, it's trusted less by their audience. Like their recommendation is trusted less. But don't worry, brands have found a way to get around that. And it's called brand trips, promo codes and PR. There are other tactics, but these are the main ones used to promote brands without direct sponsorships. How many boxes are there? There's 67 boxes. 67 boxes. So we're doing a major PR subscriber mail. Must have mats from OFRA. Okay, look at these beautiful colors from OFRA. They look very promising. Oh, that's really pretty. I am an affiliate with Morphe. I actually was their first affiliate. All of these relationships with a brand don't directly have to be disclosed, but they still greatly impact an influencer's bias of that brand. It's not even that they'll always give them a positive review, but they'll just talk about them even more frequently. Morphe palette, Morphe, honest to God. And you see so many people raving about Morphe, not because anyone is getting paid, you guys. Morphe, Morphe, Morphe. I have it, it's Morphe. You buy Morphe again. Morphe, Morphe, Morphe, Morphe, Morphe. You guys can use code James for 10% off your purchase at morphebrushes.com. Remember, you can use code James for 10% off your purchase at morphebrushes.com, that is morphebrushes.com, code James. Remember, you can use code James for 10% off all products. You can use my coupon code James for 10% off all Morphe products. And even just talking about a brand more often than other brands gives them free advertising, gives them promotion, even if what you say isn't always positive. Just the fact that you're talking about that brand more brings it to the forefront of consumers' minds as opposed to other brands. And we, as viewers and consumers, might even understand this direct relationship, even subconsciously. But all the noise and all of the talk about specific brands still makes us think about that brand, still makes that brand more relevant, and still makes us more likely to buy that specific brand's product. But also, let's talk about when consumerism, especially in the beauty world, goes way too far. And in this part, I'll kind of speak on my own experiences. Let me know if you can relate. But around 2017, 2018, I started watching a lot of beauty YouTubers on YouTube. That's a really weird way of saying it. And was getting into makeup and learning a lot more about how to do my makeup, all that. And at the time, I was only 17, 18, and didn't know much about marketing, which a lot of these influencers have a younger audience who's maybe learning and getting into makeup, like when you're in high school or middle school and you're kind of learning all about it, but they're not seasoned enough in the business world, I guess, to understand when they're being sold to or manipulated by someone. So of course, I had a few influencers that I love to watch and I would watch all the monthly favorites. So as you guys can see by the title of this video, I'm going to be showing you all of my current favorite beauty products. And I have a lot. Oh my God, it just makes your skin, I mean, I don't know if you can see my skin. Even my boyfriend couldn't stop complimenting my skin. He's like, would you do different? Your skin just looks so like fresh and just so like dewy and supple. And I'm like, yes, thank you. The dewyest looking translucent powder ever. If you are dry, this would be incredible for your skin. I am dry, I am obsessed with this. As you guys can tell by the title, today's video is going to be a massive, massive Sephora haul. So I got a ton of stuff. I would buy way too much makeup. I was spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars monthly to buy new makeup products that I thought I needed because I just watched this monthly favorites video and this person who's amazing at makeup recommended this product. It got to the point where I bought so much makeup that I couldn't possibly finish it all in my lifetime. So in here, I have like all my favorite, favorite palettes and then decide what I want to keep and what I don't want to keep. And then we'll kind of split it up and put the stuff away that I want. All right, so we have more, this is like more drugstore in here. And then I don't know why I held onto any of this. Lashes because I have a lot of, ooh, that one doesn't even open. Oh my God, can you believe it? More lipstick. And I wear red maybe twice a year. Dear God, all of this can go. And at the end of the day, a lot of the perishable products that I bought went to waste. Okay guys, this is what we ended up getting rid of. This is my biggest clean out yet. I feel like every clean out gets bigger and bigger. This is insane. Yeah, this is so crazy. That's lovely. You ready for this? I am ready. Gentle, gentle, gentle. Most of his lipsticks though, they won't break. We're doing this with a thumbnail, by the way. It's where we're dumping this. Yeah, I want to show the thumbnail, like show the real teeth. All right. Oh. While a variety of products is really good and of course, if you're a makeup artist, especially, it's awesome to have variety. Nobody needs five foundations. And that's what I had. Five foundations, three concealers, seven eyeshadow palettes. No one needs that much makeup. And it's so wasteful as well. It's so wasteful. The amount of resources and packaging and just all of that that's getting wasted is extremely concerning. But also just the amount of money that consumers are being encouraged to spend in the beauty industry is just not needed. $12. Oh, that. You think this is $12? Yeah. $53, US dollars. That one's $21. This is for when you're done your makeup and you're trying to set it, okay? $48, oh, you're wrong. $110, so you are off. No, I thought it was 100. $110 US. I think that the demand to own this much product is not an authentic demand. I think in a lot of ways people are being taught that they need this palette, that they need this thing. Oh, it's only available for a limited time. Oh, it's the new best palette. You have to get it. And they came out with all of their monochrome palettes this year. They have purple, blue, green, yellow, orange. They have everything. They have a rainbow collection they made. They've done it all. They also recently came out with this palette, which is the Going Coconuts palette. And this is one of the nine pans. So as you can see, very similar color. I'm gonna open this up and we can put them side by side. But it's basically a gigantic version of this. One of those moments where I realized as a consumer that I get that whole I must have it because what if I miss out? It's like the fear of missing out type of thing for makeup which I think is a huge problem that I need to address within myself. That's absolutely stupid. I have more palettes than I could ever use in a lifetime. But that amount of demand is massive at this point. Once again, $500 billion industry to the point where I'm very concerned about the production of these makeup products. They're being mass produced for extremely cheap with constant competition to drive down the price. I'm concerned on the workers' rights of the manufacturers who are churning out these products so quickly. I'm concerned on the ingredients and where they're being sourced in such massive quantities. And I'm concerned about the amount of waste that these companies are producing to massively produce these makeup products. I don't think that everyday consumer needs five different blush shades in a palette, half of which just won't work for them. There's no half of five, but you get what I mean. Half of which just won't work for their skin tone and half may work. And it's just like half of that palette is going to go to waste. Same thing with the giant eyeshadow palettes with just slightly different variations of brown shades. Once again, if you're a makeup artist or you do makeup for a very artistic standpoint and you feel like that's needed, that's great. But the fact that these palettes and these products are being sold to the everyday consumer and marketed to the masses just doesn't make sense to me. Now, of course, I have to mention at around the time that this big boom was happening, there was also a movement of the anti-hauls started by the amazing Kimberly Clark. Hey guys, it's me Kimberly Clark and I am here with my fifth anti-haul video, AKA what I'm not gonna buy. What I'm not gonna buy. To open up the conversation of excessive buying and normalizing saying no to a brand or a product or an influencer. But I just wish that that movement grew bigger than it did or at least became more a part of the beauty community. I feel like YouTubers will do anti-hauls every once in a while but on a larger scale, there's still this mentality of like, you have to buy this thing. This is the newest thing, everyone should buy it. I just wish talking about how you don't need to buy this product. I just wish that that was more normalized in this community. But the most concerning thing of all of this to me is the extremely close relationship of beauty brands to influencers and influencer brands popping up. Going on brand trips and parties with a brand, hanging out with the owners of that brand. Receiving gifts from the brand, PR from the brand. You guys will not even believe what I am. I think this is crazy. I just received a random unexpected package in the mail from Louis Vuitton containing this. So this bag was a gift from Jeffree Star which is just so incredible and really, really generous. They send out to their new people on PR these huge giant boxes of essentially their entire line of products. It's insane. You also get the new launches like the one that I'm wearing on my eyes today, the Riviera Pellet, this is their spring launch. People on their PR list got this and the rest of their spring products before everybody else. Now what's the advantage of that? You can get your content out before everybody else. So when people are still in the shopping phase, you know, when they're considering buying it before the product is launched, launched you are the one that is showing everybody all about that product. That's when people are really searching for it. If you have any type of relationship with that brand, I do think that it needs to be disclosed when you review a product and some influencers do do that. They do do that. They do do that. Don't get me wrong, but not all of them do. And then they review products from people that they're very close with and try and act like it's unbiased. And my question is if these influencers weren't so closely connected with that brand, would they even review that product at all in the first place? Or would they review products from Beauty Bakery or other indie brands that maybe don't get enough light in the beauty space because they don't maybe have the funds or the ability to do so much with influencers? The brands are giving all of these perks to an influencer so that that influencer can turn around and sell the brand to their audience. Even indirectly, like even if it wasn't intentional, there's still an underlying bias there. Because of all these perks, even something as simple as PR can cause an influencer to feel obligated to leave a positive review. And of course, not every influencer does that. Not every influencer leaves a positive review of brands, but the fact that a lot of influencers have been dropped from receiving PR from brands because they gave a negative review Today's video is going to be a full face using brands that kick me off their PR lists and why I was kicked off potentially. Who knows? My conspiracy, allegedly. Like that's kind of a subtle way of insinuating if you don't give us positive reviews and put in a good word, you will no longer receive these perks. I do want to touch a little bit on the drama channels who cover influencers. While I think holding influencers accountable is super important, I think that just labeling what happens in the beauty community as drama is doing a disservice in a lot of ways. I do think that the business aspect of things should be more commonly discussed. At the end of the day, it is a factor of what's going on in this beauty community. Business is a huge aspect of it. And when you just talk about the drama as if it's person-to-person influencer-to-influencer, it once again makes it personal and makes it more about an emotional connection. And you can see how quickly the tides change. But the problem is there's a business outcome of that. Like when everyone loved Jeffree Star, for example, and he was all of a sudden like triumphant in the beauty community and like overcame the haters. In the Lorely apology, she has yet, girl, to apologize to Jeffree Star, honey. And a lot of people were wanting her to apologize to Jeffree Star and she didn't do it at all. And I got to an advantage of without knowing and just so many people gave me shitty deals. I think everything fully happens for a reason and might put us together. And we're just setting standards for the future and for people that are gonna come after us. That was a thing, let's not forget that. More people felt that emotional connection to him because of that story, because that story was being told. And that narrative of him was being pushed. More people developed an emotional connection to him and his business did better. It's hard to enjoy it, you know what I mean? It's like, she just passed away the next day. It's like, number one trending. Everyone thinks the collection's sick. You sent me the sweetest text not knowing anything that was going on. And I'm like bawling my ass in on the couch like, I can't enjoy another celebration. We broke the internet. We really broke it. And Shopify told us that basically the Shane X. Jeffree launch was the biggest launch in e-commerce history of the internet. At this point, when a lot of truths have come out, do you think his business is doing as well? No. On Friday, they announced on Twitter that they were cutting ties with Jeffree Star. They wrote, today we've made the decision to seize all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products. We expect this to conclude within the coming weeks. So there's a business repercussion to the way people are discussing these influencers. And I think that really needs to be an aspect of online conversations or else people can manipulate a story to get a business outcome, which has happened. I've turned on everyone. James, I am so sorry that I allowed myself to be poisoned and weaponized against you. And I made that two minute little Insta story. It was therapeutic for me. I don't regret it. You know what I went through to bring everything to life, the risk involved in going into a category that no one wants to get into because it's so hard and challenging. Brands and influencers are able to cause drama, pay drama channels and manipulate a story or narrative. And that has a direct monetary effect when the by sister video came out. How much did Halo Beauty profit from that? How much? There was a lot of profit that happened. And while that was part of the conversation, it was overshadowed by the emotional connections to the influencers. And that's concerning. If you can manipulate the narrative, you can directly profit from a story that's being told. Unfortunately, that's just the skeptic in me, I guess. That sees it that way. And lastly, let's talk about diversity in the beauty community. While of course, beauty influencers have fought for inclusivity by calling out brands who don't have inclusive shade ranges and advocating for brands who do have inclusive shade ranges. And they have done a lot of lifting up and supporting men in makeup. There are still a lot of things that I do think need to improve in terms of diversity in the makeup community. If you look at influencers at the very top of the beauty community, do you notice a pattern? Do we notice a pattern here? And when you look at the brand owners and executives of the most successful beauty companies, do we notice a pattern here? Let me know your thoughts. But to me, it feels extremely fake woke to talk about inclusivity of shade ranges, kind of just to get people of colors coin, but then the people directly profiting from the money being spent on makeup is all the same. You know what I mean? In the description of this video as well as pinned in the comments, I will be linking black female influencers and owned beauty brands. So let's please check them out and support. So in the beginning, I mentioned how influencers have so much power and it's kind of concerning how much power and influence they have. But however much power they have, we as consumers collectively have more of. So if we look at problematic brands and problematic influencers and we stop giving them our view, we stop giving them any noise, any attention. If they don't have viewership, they no longer have power. I think it's so important to support the people who are advocating for a future and a community that you want to see instead of people who are kind of trying to turn the beauty community into something that's all about money, power and greed. And if you guys have any recommendations for positive, awesome and amazing influencers who deserve more support, definitely leave them down in the comments below. And let's say bye bye to beauty industry bullshit.