Could This Be TikTok’s Answer To Dramageddon?

Dramageddon has been reincarnated into TikTok form, this time with TikTok makeup influencer Mikayla Nogueira at the helm. 

Mikayla Nogueira – one of TikTok’s biggest makeup influencers often praised for her down-to-earth personality and infectious passion for makeup – is currently fighting for her life. Her sponsored post with L’oreal Telescopic Lift mascara has gone massively viral, but not for reasons the brand probably would’ve wanted. (You might recognise her voice from the viral audio, “try being an influencer for a day… I literally just finished work and it’s 5:19”.)

In the video, Nogeuria stitches another TikTok of someone using the mascara as a segue into trying the product herself. “This literally just changed my life,” she begins, with mascara applied to one eye. “This looks like false la— this is… how, what?”

“How, what?” indeed as Nogeuria goes on to apply the mascara to her left eye. Nice. But as she adds a second coat, there’s a hard cut to a side angle where she shows off the length of these double-coated lashes. And that’s where it all goes askew. 

At the time of writing, the video has amassed over 40,000 comments, and they’re not exactly positive.“Why not record a video with no pauses or cuts in between so we can get a REAL review?!!”, one commenter writes. “I think we’re being gaslit,” declares another. 

And this is where it really feels like we’re entering Dramageddon 2.0. Mikayla’s lashlighting summoned so many beauty influencers it was like she’d cast a spell. KathleenLights talked about it on her Instagram story; Alissa Ashley posted a TikTok response; hell, even Jeffree Star tweeted that he was coming back to review makeup products, posting a TikTok just a few hours ago. I guess someone else is tending to his yaks?

A few people came out in support of Mikayla, too. The model Madeleine White, for example, weighed in to point out that the beauty industry has famously been gaslighting us for decades. 

True. But the difference is that creators like Mikayla have built brands hinged on the promise of authenticity and transparency. So it hits differently when they pull the same trick that mascara ads on TV have been pulling for years. 

In the end, like other TikTok viral moments, this too shall pass. I can forgive her for trying to get away with the old false lashes trick. But I can’t forgive that she may have singlehandedly conjured Jeffree Star back into the makeup universe.