After all we’ve been through together, 2019 wouldn’t truly be complete without one more Tana Mongeau update, would it? When the year started, Tana was best known to us as Bella Thorne’s girlfriend, and then things got confusing when she started flirting with Miley Cyrus on social media. But of course, the highlight of Tana’s thirsty 2019 was her abrupt engagement and fake marriage to fellow YouTube star Jake Paul. Over the summer, we watched in horror as they shoved their alleged love in our faces all over the internet, all the while wondering when this nightmare of a PR stunt would come to an end.
Well, after six months of waiting patiently forgetting that these people exist, Tana put out a video on Sunday talking all about how she’s—wait for it—not that happy! If you can’t see the look of shock on my face through the computer screen, that’s because there is no look of shock on my face. Literally no one thought this relationship would work out, but it’s still interesting to hear Tana open up about some of the specifics. Her video, which has the appropriately dramatic title “the truth about everything,” is 40 minutes long, so I really don’t expect you to watch it, but I’ll go over some of the biggest points.
To start, Tana filmed this video after taking a two-day “break” from social media. She acknowledges that this is a short break, but I would probably classify it as “not a break at all.” Like, I was just home for the holidays, and I practically went two days without going on social media without really trying. Anyway, Tana spends the entire video lying in bed, facing the camera sideways. I was going to make fun of her for this, but then I realized that this is literally what I look like when I’m working from home. That’s right guys, I’m currently horizontal. Props to Tana for not sitting up.
Tana opens the video by talking a little about her f*cked up past, which I don’t know the details of, because she covered that in another way-too-long video that I’m not going to watch. Then, she gets into how she started talking to Jake Paul, which sounds like the plot of a twisted rom-com where the main woman just kind of sucks. Basically, she was super in love with one guy, and then she started dating a different guy so she could “fall out of love with” the first guy, and then while she was dating the second guy, she was texting Jake the whole time. If that means nothing to you, Jake was pretty much the side-piece during a rebound. Sounds healthy!
Tana says that lots of people warned her about Jake’s problematic reputation, but explains that she was actually more attracted to that, probably because she’s also problematic AF. She says that she and Jake “have gone through so much of the same sh*t that I wanted to be the one to like, save him.” Oh honey, rule number one of dating f*cked-up guys is that you can never save them. It’s a waste of time. In the video, she literally says “Jake could kill my whole family and I’d still love him,” which is exactly the energy we’re NOT taking into 2020.
After Tana and Brad broke up “over weekend two of Coachella” (yikes), she and Jake started hooking up, but kept it on the down-low until people recognized Jake’s bed in one of her photos. For like two seconds, she makes it seem like she was sad people found out, but then she starts talking about how much she loved being swept up in the world of Jake Paul. She claims that she never actually cared about clout, which I feel like is a blatant lie, because why else would their wedding or literally any of this right now be happening.
As for the wedding, Tana says that “the wedding sh*t literally started as a joke,” but then they both just kept going with it. Okay, this is the first believable thing Tana has said yet. She says that she ignored any and all red flags, and that the wedding night was “hell” for her, because her dad had a stroke. She also says that she was angry about the infamous wedding livestream, but she went along with it because Jake wanted it.
Obviously Jake and Tana were doomed from the beginning, but it sounds like the biggest single problem was their lack of communication about what their open relationship meant. Tana says she was envisioning a chill arrangement where the both might hook up with someone else occasionally, but Jake took it as “him still being able to have sex with a new bitch every night.” And I OOP. Open relationships can be great, but those are two very different ideas, and in general, if you go into an open relationship just assuming sh*t and don’t clearly define your boundaries, you are setting yourself up to fail. So, again, not surprised about this. It didn’t help matters that Jake was seen hanging out with his ex, Erika Costell, which Tana apparently found out about on Twitter. Anddddd it just keeps getting worse.
Tana rambles on about some other topics in the video, but we never really get clarity on what’s happening between her and Jake right now. She doesn’t say that they’re broken up, but she does talk about a lot of this stuff in the past tense, and also says that they don’t “ever want to hate each other.” Yeah, that doesn’t make it sound like things are in an especially good place. We’ll have to wait for an official announcement to call a time of death on this relationship, but six months feels like pretty much what we expected.
Images: Tana Mongeau / YouTube; tanamongeau / Instagram
In the last few weeks, YouTube drama has been in the news like never before. You might not have known about James Charles or Tati before, but now you probably have a deep understanding of their feud and who betrayed whom and which receipts might have been fake. Okay, maybe “deep understanding” is an overstatement, but we’ve talked through the drama. But if you’re new to the world of YouTube personalities, there’s a lifetime of drama for you to catch up on.
It would be literally impossible to explain all the dynamics of the various YouTube communities, but there are obviously a handful of people who rise to the top and dominate. And what do you know, the majority of them are problematic! Prepare to be frustrated and more than a little confused, because YouTube drama is like nothing else in this world. Literally so many of you guys have asked me (I say without a hint of irony) to break down other Youtube stars you need to know about, so I’m here to do just that.
Jeffree Star
If you’ve been following the drama with James Charles, then you know that Jeffree Star got heavily involved. He first said that James was a danger to society, then took a step back and apologized. Overall, he remained firmly team Tati, but that’s beside the point right now. Jeffree is one of the most successful YouTube beauty gurus, and he owns a massive makeup company, but his past is very interesting. Way back in the 2000s, Jeffree Star got his start on MySpace (tbt), making music that was a lot like Lady Gaga’s early stuff. He had devoted fans, but obviously he pivoted his career away from music and toward beauty. Sadly, Jeffree has a history of saying racist things, going all the way back to some videos that he made in the 2000s, where he says the N-word, and jokes about throwing battery acid on a black woman to lighten her skin.
Jeffree has apologized on multiple occasions in the past, but just last fall, his former hairstylist posted screenshots of texts from Jeffree, allegedly from early 2018, where he again uses the N-word. Yikes. Also last fall, popular YouTuber Jackie Aina posted an open letter on her Twitter denouncing Jeffree for his racist behavior toward her. It’s really baffling to me how he still has so many fans after the constant proof that he sucks as a person, but if Trump can win an election, I guess it makes sense that people are buying Jeffree Star eyeshadow palettes.
Laura Lee
As much as I wish I could talk about Laura Leigh from Vanderpump Rules right now, instead we’re talking about…more racism! Laura Lee is another major figure in the YouTube beauty community, and she was one of the most notable people to denounce Jeffree Star last fall after (one of) his racism scandals. But then, because irony is real and beautiful, people went and found some, um, questionable things that Laura Lee tweeted in the past. Here’s the worst one:
“Tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster.. #yourwelcome”
I mean, Jesus Christ. Laura lost hundreds of thousands of followers after she was exposed, and brands like Diff Eyewear and Ulta pulled out of deals with her. She posted an apology video, which is four minutes of her doing the fakest crying I have ever seen. She deleted the video, but luckily other people re-uploaded it, so please enjoy:
She was so widely mocked for the video that she literally made another video apologizing for her apology. I told you these people were messy as hell.
Logan Paul
Logan Paul and his brother Jake are hugely popular YouTube vloggers, but they also suck big time. Huge surprise. Back in December 0f 2017, Logan made a video about the Aokigahara Forest in Japan, which is known as a place where many people go to commit suicide. In the video, Logan calls the forest “haunted,” comes across a man’s dead body, which he SHOWS ON CAMERA, and then he also makes jokes about suicide. Understandably, people were horrified by this, and YouTube announced that they were kicking Logan out of their Google Preferred program, which is a partnership program for the top 5% of YouTube creators.
Dear Internet, pic.twitter.com/42OCDBhiWg
— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) January 2, 2018
That’s his Notes app apology, where he says he was thought he could “make a positive ripple on the internet,” then talks for a paragraph about how hard he works and how anyone could’ve made a mistake like this. Yeah okay, next.
Tana Mongeau
Hey, it’s another one you might know! Outside of the YouTube world, Tana Mongeau is probably best known for dating Bella Thorne and flirting with Miley Cyrus, but there’s so much more to her story. Her crowning failure was Tanacon, and the story is literally incredible. Every year, there’s a giant convention called Vidcon, where top YouTubers do panels, performances, etc. for thousands of fans. Last year, when Tana didn’t get chosen as a featured creator, she decided to boycott Vidcon and throw her own convention for her fans down the street. The event was a complete disaster. The venue was way too small for the number of tickets sold, so many fans who had flown across the country to be there were stranded in a parking lot for hours with no food or water. Essentially, it was the Fyre Festival of YouTube. Afterward, Tana got very defensive and blamed everyone but herself for the disastrous event. (Fellow YouTuber Shane Dawson actually made a documentary series about Tanacon that is a fantastic watch.) Joke’s on Tana, because she just announced that she’s attending Vidcon this year. Lol.
In addition to Tanacon, my favorite Tana moment was her slutty Jojo Siwa Halloween costume, because it’s obviously appropriate to dress up as a slutty version of a real child. She also created controversy when she marked Mac Miller’s death with an Instagram post that was all about her, insinuating that the two of them were in a relationship when he died. Problem is, the night Mac died, she was making out with Trippie Redd on the red carpet at the Pornhub awards. I promise, I couldn’t make this sh*t up if I wanted to.
There are many more YouTubers who have posted racist/sexist/homophobic/otherwise offensive things, but I only have the patience for so much stupidity in one day. If you’ve now been sucked into the world of YouTube drama, let me know if you want to see more like this!
Images: Shutterstock; jeffreestar, K-Row / YouTube; loganpaul / Twitter; @tanamongeau (2) / Instagram
