James Charles deleted a TikTok video after posting a clip in which he mocked a woman who said she had lost her job at Spirit Airlines, filed for bankruptcy and asked him for financial help. The beauty creator told the woman to “get a job” and dismissed her as “lazy and entitled,” drawing a wave of reposts and criticism after the clip circulated off his account.
The video appeared on Charles’s spam TikTok account, @jamescharleslol, before being quickly removed, but TikTokers and Reddit users reshared it after it disappeared. One viewer wrote, “I unfollowed him immediately…,” while another said, “Looks like it got deleted when I was watching it,” adding, “Watching it hurt my heart.” Another user argued that repeated requests could be irritating, but said, “I wouldn’t have posted that video,” and a commenter added, “That’s so rude of James…”
In the deleted video, Charles said the woman was not a follower or fan and had “never supported” him before asking for help. He told her, “Send you money cause you lost your job?! Oh my God, welcome to the real world!” and added, “I’m not helping you—all you did was lost your job, okay?” He also said there were 11,000 people who reportedly lost their jobs with Spirit Airlines, though an NBC News affiliate in South Florida reported the shutdown led to about 17,000 job losses after the airline closed following 34 years in business.
That gap matters because the woman’s request came after a broad round of layoffs, not an isolated setback. Charles also suggested she apply for another job and said he might help if the person were a longtime fan who had shown years of support and was suffering through a serious illness, a standard that made the exchange look less like a private refusal than a public judgment on who deserves help.
Charles runs two TikTok accounts, including his main profile and the verified secondary account he uses for content outside his beauty posts. The deleted clip leaves one question answered and another open: on james charles’s own terms, the answer to the woman’s request was no, and the backlash showed how quickly a public refusal can turn into a test of tone as much as money.
