Charli D’Amelio: TikTok star addresses backlash after dinner video with sister Dixie and makeup star James Charles

The 16-year-old dancer posted an emotional video in which she claimed she had received abusive messages

TikTok star Charli D’Amelio has called out trolls making cruel comments about her, after she lost almost a million  followers in a week when a new video went disastrously wrong.  

The 16-year-old dancer and her sister, Dixie, shared a post of a family dinner with their surprise guest, controversial YouTube star James Charles.  

D’Amelio had noted she was just a million followers away from her goal of 100 million on the social media platform.

However, fans seemed to take issue with the sisters after noticing them making rude comments about food cooked by their private chef.  

Aaron May served them Mediterranean salad and paella, which the sisters were apparently unimpressed by.  

One YouTube comment read: “She was making faces while the chef was talking… Idk if she was trying to be quirky or relatable but it didn’t seem fun, it came across as plain rude.”

At one point, after the group had been served the main course, Dixie was seen gagging as she prodded at something on her plate.  

After she asked (somewhat rudely) what it was, May explained that it was a snail, which is traditional in paella and “actually an omen of good luck and fortune”.  

Dixie made a show of trying to eat it before spitting it out and running outside to be sick. Charli then asked for some “dino nuggets”.

Other people commenting accused the sisters of being rude, spoiled and disrespectful.

Dixie later addressed the backlash, claiming her team set up the snail moment because they wanted to “get a reaction” out of her.  

“I’m so grateful for every single person that follows me, every single person I care about, every single person I work with, every single person who works with me because I’m just so grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had,” she said on TikTok.

Dixie D’Amelio (left) with James Charles (centre) and her sister Charli (right) (YouTube/screengrab)

“I would never in any way want to be taken as disrespectful, especially from an out-of-context, 15-second clip. ... I love [Chef May], and I would never disrespect him in any way. Maybe don’t judge someone’s personality over a 15-second video.”

Meanwhile, Charli also issued a statement in which she said the team had encouraged Dixie off-camera to eat the snail, and that May was in on the joke.  

She claimed that she had been receiving “really, really messed-up messages” from people “telling me to hurt myself” and “blatantly disrespecting the fact that I’m still a human being”.

“All of this is happening because of a misunderstanding?” she said. “I just feel like that’s not OK, and if this is the community that I’m in and the community that I put myself in, I don’t know that I want to do that anymore.”

“I don’t even know if I wanna do this anymore... This is messed up stuff,” she added.

Charles later tweeted: “This charli situation is NOT sitting right with me. 100M followers in one year & y’all expect her to know how to be a perfect role model? death threats because she’s a picky eater & made a joke about a milestone? 30+ year olds dragging someone half their age? feels familiar.”

Buzzfeed has since pointed out that Charli’s TikTok following appeared to dip more in response to her desire to reach the 100 million mark, with people unfollowing her out of spite.  

On Instagram, Twitter and other platforms, she and her sister appear to have gained followers.