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Just how far down the toilet is Laura Lee’s career? Let’s look at the numbers
Very, it turns out
Laura Lee is not having a good month. Ever since the YouTube star's racist tweets were unearthed, fans have started to leave her in droves. Laura, formerly one of YouTube's favorite beauty gurus, tweeted: "Tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster #yourwelcome." Since then, her career has nosedived and it shows no sign of stopping.
Since the 2012 post was dug out, Laura has lost nearly 500,000 fans. As recently as July 31st, she Instagrammed a smug photo surrounded by McDoubles to celebrate hitting 5 million subscribers. Right now, her YouTube account shows she has just over 4.5 million subscribers. Ouch.
Her stats on Social Blade, an analytics tool for YouTubers, says since the start of August, her follows have dropped by over 350 percent. They have a live feed of her subs count – it is brutal to watch the numbers crash in real time, and I highly encourage you to do so.
Brands have followed suit. The lucrative partnerships that raked in an estimated annual salary of over $1 million are vanishing into thin air. All of her top business partnerships have been cut or postponed. Ulta Beauty has just announced they were "disappointed" by her tweet and is launching a review of Laura's upcoming products. They have now delayed the launch of Laura Lee Los Angeles.
ColourPop Cosmetics has deleted Laura's product from their site. So has Morphe Brushes. And Diff Eyewear. The CEO of Boxycharm, the makeup subscription company, uploaded a video to Instagram trashing Laura and ended their partnership. "Absolutely, we do not support that. We do not understand how someone could tweet something like this, it is a very disturbing tweet," said CEO Yosef Martin. "We do not sip on the tea."
Laura is not the first beauty YouTuber to be exposed for saying something horrid – she follows Jeffree Star (yelled the n-word at women in the street), Tana Mongeau (filmed a dead body and laughed at it) and Doe Deere (dressed up as Hitler). But all their careers are going strong. So what's different with Laura Lee?
Some of her ex-fans point to her apology video. It came days after the tweet first surfaced, and not only did she call it a "retweet" – making it seem like an accident that she didn't write herself – but she didn't seem like she was being entirely authentic.
"This couldn't be LESS GENUINE if she tried," reads one of the top comments. "Crying hysterically but no tears or wetness under her eyes … seems legit," says a commenter. "1/10 worst acting of 2018." Another adds: "Her subs are becoming non existent just like her tears."
It followed her Twitter apology (a classic screenshot of the Notes app, the go-to apology for imploding celebs), which blamed the tweet on growing up in the Deep South. "As a small town girl from Alabama I wish I had the cultural education six years ago that I have now," she said. Other than a retweet of some sea paintings and a cat video, that's it. She hasn't posted on YouTube or Instagram since.
So we'll update this post when she sinks below 4.5 million viewers!
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