The Cult of Michelle Phan

Michelle Phan, a makeup artist, has a most unusual power over the kids on social networking sites. Photo: candyblush
Michelle Phan. For those who don’t know, she is the former Ringling art student who gained worldwide notoriety for her YouTube channel where she would create makeup tutorials that are a huge a hit, particularly with the teens. Many of the videos have well over one million views.
This led to a position with Lancome, the makeup and skin care company.
She is also a superstar on the social networks with well over 500,000 “likes” on her Facebook fan page and nearly 150,000 followers on Twitter.
However, this all leads to the dark side of Phan and her militia of followers. There is an almost blind loyalty to Phan and a zombie-like, robotic reaction to anything she posts.
For example, Michelle Phan can make the most inane, worthless comments on her Facebook page and hundreds, sometimes thousands of her minions will like it as if she just split the atom or caused world peace.To illustrate this point, on Feb. 19, she made the following incredibly insightful post on Facebook:
“Holy Moly! It took me 15 minutes to zip up my dress! They need to make a fool proof way to zip up tight dresses by yourself, especially for dumpling lovers!”
A full 1,288 people “liked” this and it garnered 140 comments!
But it has gotten to the point where anyone that crosses the apparently thin-skinned and vain makeup artist, will get lambasted by the “Phan-tards” under orders from their leader. It can get violently threatening to the poor person who feels brave enough to critique Phan.
Take the case of the 13-year-old girl that created a Michelle Phan fan page of her own.
She made a Michelle Phan fan page and “liked” a comment which the “real” Michelle Phan didn’t “approve” of …thus out went the call to war to her internet soldiers:
Michelle Phan on Thursday, 3-10-11: Big favor! This person is fake and they’re “liking” really mean comments, which is messed up. It would mean a lot if you guys can help me flag this person. I did but I’m only one person. Thanks so much
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Then the thirst for blood began. Here is a sample of the comments:
too ugly to be urself?
maybe some of the makeup tutorials of the “real” michelle could help u overcome ur little ugly problem ;D
you suck get a life u faker
STOP FAKING. THIS IS A FAKER. GO TO THE REAL MICHELLE PHAN PAGE. SHE TELLS YOU ABOUT THIS! GO DIE!!
Here is one that exemplifies the cult of Michelle Phan:
so sad that ur a faker…no one can be better than the real michelle phan
How about this legal eagle:
This is fraud, it’s illegal and you can go to jail for it. The police can track who created this, technology moves so fast, it’s incredible what can be done today. Please remove this page for your own sake. =) I’m being nice right now you don’t want to see me being mean.
How about the comments from this classy teen:
fuckin faker go use your stupid time to wash your pussy instead. seriously GET A LIFE. FLAG EVERYONE. SOO ILLEGAL!! be yourself, if you’re a fan of her make a fanpage. not fake her dear. just to tell you, you’ve just lost a chance of fame. sorry my dear. if you want to gain real beauty it requires a true heart and soul. then your true natural art of yours which known as make up comes next.Finally REAL BEAUTY is achieved.
This is the mob mentality that surrounds the cult of Michelle Phan.
Well, I guess you get the point. It’s pathological. Where is Michelle Phan trying to put an end to this cyberbullying? For those who know this woman, this is not the first time she’s called her minions to attack some unsuspecting teen.
Last fall she fired up the villagers on Twitter to attack another person, this time a 16-year-old, who didn’t think Michelle Phan’s shit didn’t stink.
When this individual responded negatively to the following tweet by saying “are you going to do just Halloween tutorials for anime and retarded video games” the “Rice Bunny” sent out her batsignal for her militia of internet vandals. The minions attacked the girl with a barrage of tweets like “if you don’t like it, don’t have twitter” to the mafia-like comment, “wat is wrong wit u!,u know wat u did wrong”, as if the girl broke a commandment.
The cult of Michelle Phan can be a terrifying thing to a young person and I would hope that parents whose kids are followers of the narcissistic makeup artist are aware of what your child may be subjected to.
Even more, the adult Michelle Phan knows exactly what she is doing and should act in a mature manner representative of her age.
And for her followers, do you really believe this is the way to act to a really minor issue? Put this nonsense in perspective. Don’t be so easily manipulated.
For more on the shenanigans and abuse from Phan and her social networking terrorists, see the website Michelle Phail.
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kinda late for this posting but anyway….. i knew there was a reason why i stopped subscribing to her youtube channel several months ago. i just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. this explains it all. at the time i could only think that she seemed extremely fake in her videos. sucks she doesn’t have much characater because she really is incredibly talented
seriously, guys, shes a person too. YOU are cyberbullying too for making michellephail.com and posting negative things about her, only pointing out the bad qualities. What if you were her? Of course her fans would single someone out if someone is hating her, because their her F A N S. She is probably their I D O L. If they post something mean that just means they are immature peoples for also making themselves look just as bad. I understand that ofcourse youtube celebrities are going to have haters, but really, whose doing the better thing here? Michelle Phan doesn’t sit infront of her computer all day hating on people. Instead, she has a life.
Maybe next time you should be the better person.
@BOB,
You’re the most nonsense commenter in all, base on the dumbest things you said. LOL………
I voted you for the BEST JOKE on this comment section. hahaha.
I love the man who wrote this
These comments are absolutely hilarious. I think my favorite one has to be this nugget of pure comedy gold:
“Michelle Phan is a serious danger to the world.…even more than terrorists.”
Hahahahahahahahahahaha, that is absolutely hilarious.
I’m sorry, but asking fans to flag a site of which you disapprove, because it uses your name, is not exactly the equivalent of flying planes into a building and killing thousands of people.
Even more pathetic is the notion that Phan somehow is responsible for the crudeness of the comments posted by her fans. Including a sampling of some of the more nasty comments, as if Phan had directed particular individuals to make those comments, is asinine.
I hate to break it to you, but virtually every celebrity, no matter how minor, has FANatics that will use the coarsest language imaginable to insult those who don’t idolize that particular celebrity. Phan is no more responsible for those nasty comments than I am. Breathlessly relating to us that Phan has fanatical followers willing to say nasty things, as if this is some sort of isolated phenomenon unique to her, is silly.
The following comment is a perfect example of the stupidity of blaming Phan for the actions of others:
“I think Youtube should remove her from their partner list because she is leading a bad online gang instead of being a guru. She is a bad influent foryoung teen. Some legal actions should be taken for her behavior.”
I highly doubt that asking your fans to flag a site that uses your name is legally actionable. Phan needs to take more action to prevent cyberbullying? Give me a freakin break. Her channel is the most subscribed to “guru” channel on all of youtube. She has hundreds of thousands of twitter subscribers. The notion that she should be poring over hundreds and thousands of comments in order to find those that may be less than civilized is just plain stupid. Moreover, given the content and tone of the twitter sent to her by the supposed 16 year old, the reaction that person received would seem to be well deserved.
“Lancome should do their researches to know most of her fans are young teens who can’t even afford to buy Wet n Wild products, and a big part of them are pervert guys who got attracted by her “eye f**king” and “tongue leaking” thumb nails.’
Yeah, I am fairly certain the above commenter has done absolutely zero research into the demographics of Phan’s fanbase.
But the funniest aspect of all this is not the stupid comments, it is the fact that so many people get so bent out of shape over someone who gives makeup tutorials on youtube. Get a freakin life.
Anyone who is insulting the author must know that they are not targeting Michelle Phan out of revenge. This post is not about what she eats or sleeps on.
The author is pointing out that Michelle Phan is contributing to cyber bullying which can even cause death. Of course, if you were in diapers during the myspace days you would not understand it.
Yes, you can go on saying that it was her phans who did it and not Michelle Phan herself. But think again, she does mention that she uses her phans to attack other people. There is evidence of it all over the Internet. So write comments only after investigating properly.
Michelle Phan is a serious danger to the world.…even more than terrorists. She is feeding people wrong information like using seaweed from sushi as skin care product, wearing anti aging cream at age 8 and using her products which were failed by FDA. But what is more of concern is cyber bullying. What would you do if a teen ends up committing suicide because of her filthy phans? And to be honest, Michelle Phan can take care of this problem. She is 100 percent aware of the fact that her phans do listen to her. So when she sees these people attaching others she can write a note where she can urge them to not do anything like that.
All celebrities have to accept criticism. It is a part of stardom. But she thinks that criticism equals to hatred. Thank God, she isn’t a movie star. If a bunch critics gave 1 out of 5 stars to her she would have called some mafia to get them killed.
vaginas; You all suck.
haha…I like jelly too. @Hey there, you said all what you were eating while sitting to monitor around to find this website. LMAO…Thanks for telling me what you ate and did to find your way here and left your comment. I don’t eat pizza like you do so I don’t worry about gaining weight as you did.
Michelle has a NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS, not a real fanbase, that’s how Youtube is about, ppl subscribe to watch couple of vids and don’t come back nor bother to unsubscribe from her. That numbers is built up since ’07, not that she has that many fans still watching hers.
Jelly is yummy!!! LOLLLLLL
I like jelly
So this is what you probably do everyday…sit in front of the monitor munch on a chocolate bar or a pizza, and try to prove Michelle Phan is wrong by pointing out every flaws that you can find about her, including her grammar. At least she’s working and making big bucks out there…while you on the other hand sit in front of the monitor, gain weight,and use your time trying hard to criticize certain people. Okay, so sometimes she has tons of her fans liking her status and comments, well obviously because they are,after all,her fans.
I don’t know about you but I’m guessing the fact that Michelle has tons fans
and followers gives you a bitter taste in your mouth.
You jelly or something? You jelly alright.
I said…no one can fix the dumb head…they’re dumb, they’re dumb…
WTF is wrong with them when they go around searching for the websites where ppl know the truths about Michelle Phan to show how their blood is boiling for their “MOTHER PHAN”.
Don’t give her too damn much credit here, she didn’t do much to help anyone but show her works to make living, that’s her job, ahe doesn’t contribute anything but beat the hell out of young kids online because they are smarter than you fool, they see how she is now.
Asleigh Spice, the 13 yrs old victim of her is a very beautiful girl who has videos on Youtube, come see for yourself, she does makeup 10 X better than Michelle and only made a fan page to show her admiration to Michelle, and she sent her batshit crazy dogs to insult her. I is something ppl should be awre of if they want to become a fan of a psycho guru who loves to fight with her fans and beat them up is they don’t agree with her.
Check and see how cute and innocent Ashleigh Spice is on Youtube, Again, no one can fix dumb heads. Michelle Phan’s minions are grossed as germs…
Who actually really cares lol.. this will all be forgotten about
Boycott? What are you the army of the Internet? You all are dumb..
This article is crap like National Inquirer crap. Does Michelle force you to do anything??? No you are all idiots for thinking a celebrity can control your life. You make decisions, instead of attacking a girl who is living her dream. You all are blowing this WAY out of proportion
You guys are disgusting. You think you are better than Michelle by acting like fools? Almost every comment on this article is no better than the dumb fan girls. You all are full of it.
What are you people complaining about? You all are overracting to nothing. Michelle Phan has done nothing to you except be helpful and live her life. You all are the batshit insane ones who pick out the odd comments and falsely claim the majority of her followers. It’s you people who are the jokes and sick for writing bullshit negativity just because you are butthurt by Michelle? I’m one of the sensible fans mind you. You assume the worst and fail for making false assumptions based on trash.
Youtube is an online entertainment that has so many channels, makeup gurus are watched by all ages, Michelle Phan has viewers and subscribers mostly as young as 8,9,10 to young teens, how can Youtube allow an unhealthy woman who is such a mess like this on their channels? They should put her so-call Charity channel on another category too, because it is not fitted in GURU when she hasn’t done any of “guru job” there.
I have checked her channels to see what were on there, her cults are really batshit crazy! They said so many disgusting words toward the fans who wrote their honest suggestions on her comment sections. I wonder if Youtube cares that she is not even worth to be called a Youtube makeup guru anymore?
Please write to Youtube about this “CHRISTIAN SISTER” who is using so much “fame power” to abuse her young fans. She also is a fraud business woman when she uses Youtube to advertise her harmful skincare line. I know that I don’t have enough power and knowledge to correct this matter, but I believe there are so many intelligent and educated people who care enough to bring her to FDA and FTC attentions. I read about her FDA false claims and how she is trying to avoid troubles by announce that she no longer owns her skincare line, that is so BS! Talking about her on websites won’t fix her, please help bring this “Christian guru” to legal attentions to help the young girls not being mislead by her.
People who care about the young and innocent girls, please help them by report Michelle Phan for fraud and scam business. She makes/made so much money from this illegal products. I found Michelle Phail tumblr and read the aticles with all the proofs that her business is a fraud and so many other things she lied about, it’s so danger there are so many young girls follow her orders as she is their Goddess. Please help them.
Should Youtube/Google and Lancome company support such a worthless woman like her?
I hope she will be boycotted soon. There is nothing real about her, she only lies, brags and promotes/be false promoted to get where she is on Youtube.
She behaves like a low class street girl online. I showed my little sisters Michelle Phail tumblr and this article and they were so shocked reading the stupid attacking words from Michelle Phan nasty cults, she must be as nasty as they are to keep encouraging them to attacking ppl online in such a low class way. I saw her in real life at a restaurant, she looked nothing as shown in videos and pictures at all. I believe she has mental issues, she should go to see a psychiatrist because her behavior and how she lies about so many things are not normal. This crazy woman needs helps, she pretends to be a Christians but sics her fans to curse so nasty at the young girls. Someone should help bring her fraud business and her illegal product to the government’s attentions to help the young girls not to be used and fooled by her anymore.
@xoASh
That’s kind of messed up that it was only a fan page.
ALSO, FB Fan Page for one mediocre make-up artist = death threats and messages from spiteful girls and sometimes spiteful adults?
Not cool, and not cool of Michelle to use her fans as dogs to attack one person. If I was a Phanbot, I’d be offended! xD
The thirteen year didn’t dish anything out, and it wasn’t a fake page. It was a fan page, and she “liked” a comment MP didn’t approve of. I don’t think that garners death threats, do you?
First if these teenagers are old enough to make fake account and send snobby tweets then they are old enough to take what they dished out.
and yes @Name CHarlene she should care about one fake; fake pages are wrong and illegal.
You all are crazy and need to get a life.
What the hell is wrong with this girl? Tell me, if you had over ONE MILLION people to give a shit what you do daily, would you give a flying fuck about one fake page? Would you give a fuck about a comment that says “Are you going to do anime tutorials? Because that’s retarded”?
If it were me, my head would be SO big. Like, who cares what you think? But no, she’s not happy with anything. She has some serious issues and is disgusting.
The heroes in films are usually alone, facing great odds. The villian has tons of minions to do their bidding to take down anyone that opposes. Now, Which one sounds like Michelle?
I suppose Sarah never had a teenage daughter who committed suicide due to cyberbulling.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/girls-teen-suicide-calls-attention-cyberbullying/story?id=9685026
Yes, it is “young teenage girl drama crap”, but it certainly is a problem. I have a daughter who used to like this Michelle Phan until her true side started to show through. I don’t have time to monitor what she does on the internet, but I did have a talk with her about internet personas and cyberbulling. Just because Michelle Phan is a Youtube celebrity doesn’t give her the right to make her fans attack girls.
Michelle Phan doesn’t look like the pictures she posts online. She is a low class attention whore with mental issues. Parents should watch their children and stop them from watching this guru. She teaches them nothing but to become her slaves. Youtube should recheck her ill activies online, she might cause teenagers to commit suicide after being attacked and insulted.
I laughed at how she preach about God and Christainity, she should keep her mouth shut about being a Christain already.Her charity channel has no proof of donations. Don’t you think after her iQQU big lies, we all should watch what comes from her mouth?
Youtube should break their partnership with Michelle Phan because she false claims on FDA approval.She became an unhealthy makeup guru for misleading the young fans about so many things.Her 9 layers of night time skincare is a big joke. She doesn’t deserve to be #1 youtube guru becaue she can’t even do a decent makeup on her own face.I saw how she sic her fans to curse on ppl so many times.I hope viewers will boycott her to support so many real talented gurus. Have you seen @frnheadtotoes, @xteeener? Pixiewoo is so skillful. Michelle Phan is only over promoting herself, she doesn’t even have enough Englsh skill to brag. Please report her for that shady iQQU business. She should be gone from Youtube partner list because she committed fraud,that charity channel is very shady too. She told so many lies,
Yeah, ok sure, but this happens with pretty much every Internet celeb. Why single her out? Go for them all!
Eh? I don’t really understand the Michelle Phan fandom. She’s an alright beauty guru. I think she has amazing sound quality and video editing skills, but, makeup skills, I think she’s kinda boring. She does her thing, I just prefer things a little more dramatic.
Honestly, who cares? It’s all young teenage girl drama crap. Giving attention to all these attention whores is like feeding the trolls.
@ Sarah, How is this article pointless if he is showing girls that their Youtube role model isn’t all sugar and rainbows?
I liked the article. I didn’t know about the “hit squad” behavior and attacks on the other Facebook page
This article was pointless, please stop posting stuff about Michelle Phan or any make up guru unless if it was actually informative or about make up.
I don’t see why it’s a bad thing to “like” her post about zip up dresses. I know I’ve gone through that hassle, and I probably would have liked it. It wasn’t a very “intelligent” post, but what about facebook status updates has to be intelligent.
The rest of the article was meh. There are some pretty nasty Pham followers, but that exists in every corner of the internet.
I just checked GuruGossip as mentioned on the site’s comments. I had no idea she went around lying that her dad is in jail and she grew up poor. How utterly pathetic.
i didn’t realize there was a hate-brigade to counter all of her fangirls. i first found out about her after seeing some of her cosplay tutorials. she’s very cute and informative but her style of talking seemed a bit odd to me.
Well. I was accused of calling her racist just because I said that she hasn’t made any tutorials for individuals with a darker skin tone. All I really wanted to prove was that I thought she was talentless. Oh well. All cults disperse eventually.
This cyber-bulling issue is so important, especially it’s continuously done by someone who keep preaching about God, Lord, Jesus…and how religious she is. Michelle Phan proved that she is a harmful internet entertainer for the young teens to follow.
I request the website’s owner to write a detail article about how Michelle Phan lied about her products is US FDA approved and disowned it when she was called out. Michelle Phail tumblr holds all the truths and proofs from FDA and all the screencaps of her lying statements. Please bring these illegal and harmful products to the attention of the worldwide news to save many people’s skin from being damaged, also helping to stop Michelle Phan from lying and fooling her fans from now on.
Take note minions. The writer is not a hater or a girl jealous of Michelle’s success or looks. He is simply telling it as it is.
@yxuz
I’m a fan of Linkin Park, but I won’t go so far as to say they’re the best band ever and that everyone who doesn’t like them should die. In fact, they got fruitier and so they’re kind of bad.
But it’s the same concept.
Michelle Phan is going to eventually crash and burn.
There are so many websites have been dedicated to show the truths about Michelle Phan, she is nothing but a “bragger”, her fans are too young to have enough knowledges so they idolize how she got the job with Lancome. Lancome should do their researches to know most of her fans are young teens who can’t even afford to buy Wet n Wild products, and a big part of them are pervert guys who got attracted by her “eye f**king” and “tongue leaking” thumb nails.
I hope she will be brought to the media’s attentions by someone who has the ability to do so. Because she is not a celebrity so her wrong actions are not known by the public, she commits so many illegal things. Just the false claims on iQQU should be enough for her to pay back for this business fraud. She bullied the young girl, then turn around pray for Japan and ask her fans for donations. What does she do with her charity channel money? We have never seen any proofs of donations from that channel. I hope the writer of this website would help the innocent girls not to be fooled anymore by her. If nothing to be brought to the news, what written on that many websites only cause the readers to be confused and believe her words that all these websites are dedicated from jealousy and hate. Therefore, these websites only make her “cloudy head fans” to feel sorry for her so they attack ppl who speak up the truths about her.
Please research to bring this worthless Youtube guru to legal attentions.
Michelle Phan is so crooked, I just read the Guru Gossip and they found out (with screencap from her FB) that she made acct to herself to post on her FB pretending a fan giving her a negative comment and accidentally posted with the acct with her picture on it.LOL…
That new “caught on scene” made me wonder she went on that fan page under multiple acct to beat up the 13 yrs old girls with her cunts too. She’s so disgusting, their must be some mental issues about this fake woman. She needs to quit her craps already. Let’s boycott her. I stopped giving her my views, she doesn’t deserve my support anymore since her videos turn South, she became a big disappointment in all her videos in the past few months.
@Allison
And I suppose her lies with IQQU were just mistakes? She’s just in it for the money, plain and simple.
I wonder how hard she will fall.
not to mention
1. in that fb incident, the owner of the fanpage was a 13 year old girl who handled the situation better than any 30 year old would, and left calm comments on the bash remarks. She explained that she wasnt the one liking the mean comments, and michelle made a mistake. she now has a load of comments saying about how they respect her for being so mature about it.
2. the twitter girl was in fact 16, and ended up crying from death threats she was receiving. over a stupid tweet.
good job michelle. (who btw ADMITTED on a youtube comment that all her fans were are an effective, low-maintenance army)
not trying to defend her but, arent all fans of anyone (stupid) like this?
It happens everywhere it was just blown up way to much. Everyone is human. Mistakes were made simple as that.
Anna: That IQQU incident was ridiculous! She was obviously caught in a lie, and rather than admitting she made a mistake / did something wrong… she backpedals her story and makes an even bigger fool of herself. For all her crazy “minions” do for her… you’d think they’d at least deserve the truth about ANYTHING.
And some of these fanboys and fangirls are unbelievable! Some of them sound… psychotic.
Ive watched the drama surrounding her and the skin care line she represented ‘IQQU’. When she was called out for lying about FDA approval she acted like a scapegoat. Every time that someone has confronted her over what she has said, she has acted incredibly immature. You should have read what she posted on her Facebook page recently in regards to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the claims she made about spending a whole day donating money to a Malaria organization which turned out to be a lie. What about the painting she put on her charity channel to raise money? she claimed it was a huge success and then a few months later when people asked her what she did with the proceeds she said she ‘lost the receipt’. Michelle is not a very good liar because a few months after the auction ended she purchased and posted a photo on her twitter page of a designer handbag which people found out was over $600. Where did she get the money to get it…..
I think Youtube should remove her from their partner list because she is leading a bad online gang instead of being a guru. She is a bad influent foryoung teen. Some legal actions should be taken for her behavior.
That is some crazy behavior by teenage girls…and the language – wow