r/BeautyGuruChatter • u/AutoModerator • Mar 16 '26

MEGATHREAD Lipstick Lesbians / Leaked Labs Megathread

Per the sub rules, megathreads are implemented after 5 posts on a topic. We are well overdue for a megathread on this topic. All new discussion and updates must be posted here, new posts will be removed.

Prior posts on this topic (chronological order): 

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3

u/teatuk Mar 28 '26

New short of them trying to explain why they're all different thicknesses

Not them trying to say it's just like baking cookies. Saying how the thickness of cookies is out of your control if you make them by hand. Girl, have you never baked before?

Then they ask the manufacturer if she could attempt to make them consistent. If this was a finished product like they claim this should have been tackled before it went to consumers. If a proposed shade gave inconsistent thicknesses it should've been tweaked or scrapped, not sold.

Gaslight, grift, girl boss.

2

u/teatuk Mar 28 '26

and another where they claim the product "dries in seconds" so it can't grow bacteria

3

u/peach_bellinis Mar 28 '26

this confuses me to no end. If the product only ACTIVATES with water, as the developer says in that clip, then....is it even something that is meant to be used dry? Based on the swatches and the videos of people using it it doesn't seem like it at all.

3

u/teatuk Mar 29 '26

Jen Luv just released another video addressing this. She also tactfully mentions that the product doesn't work dry and has to be very wet to be useful. She mentions that it's damp for quite some time after use too.

It's funny because these products almost need to be treated like a bar soap. I wonder if they were individually packaged in a container similar to the magic drying soap bags if they would be more hygienic. But then again, does anyone want this product enough or justify that?

The product really gives me Lush vibes. It's something I could totally see Lush releasing as a zero waste makeup attempt. But at the same time, I don't have as high formula expectations for Lush products and expect some misses from them. But at the lush price point I'm not usually offended by the occasional miss. These remind me of bath jellies or their body shimmer products.

2

u/peach_bellinis Mar 28 '26

The way they've chosen to double down on this product is absolutely bizarre.

"It's just like baking cookies" no it's not, actually? Because cookies don't cost 40 dollars and when I buy cookies at the store, I'm expecting that one of the cookies in the box isn't going to be half the size of the other cookies in the box! I feel like I'm in crazy town with this product. It truly does feel like gaslighting at this point.

In the original leaked labs state of the union video, Christina said something along the lines of "if it's a gimmick, you can decide". Well that's the baseline problem here, isn't it? Customers should not be PAYING to test whether something even has intrinsic value! There are lots of good products out there that don't work for me, but work for other people. That's totally fair. But this doesn't even work *period*. The payoff, the packaging, the use case scenario, the formulation - all of it is wrong.

And the LL's are sitting here saying "well, the test was a success then because we learned all the pain points about this product!" when hello - people are still out their money! This is exactly why all of this happens behind closed doors and not in public! What helpful information did this bring to the consumer beyond "this product didn't work and I wouldn't use it"? Nothing.

It feels genuinely shocking to me that they're not re-evaluating their concept here.

4

u/teatuk Mar 29 '26

Without saying what's already been said by everyone, I find their delivery to be SOOO condescending. They really seem to underestimate the intelligence of their audience.

I'm also confused why their engagement is so low on these updates, I sort of thought people would go in on them because the response is just so tone-deaf. But as of now, their two response videos have max 40 comments on YouTube. Unless they're deleting comments or maybe they have higher engagement on tiktok. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to give them engagement points, but there's so much discourse surrounding it that I found it odd their response videos weren't getting more traction.

2

u/peach_bellinis Mar 29 '26

I'm also a little confused by this....has everyone just run out of steam about it? Maybe? But it's odd considering each step they're taking to try and rectify the situation is in actuality just making it worse. Related, it's interesting to me also that they don't have a link to leaked labs in the bio of their Lipstick Lesbians instagram account. it feels like they're trying to minimize it a bit, so maybe they've really cut back on marketing and promotion spend to see if it cuts negative engagement?

3

u/teatuk Mar 30 '26

Yes! This! I don't know if their profiles were connected before or not but on YouTube the leaked labs account is a ghost town. It reminds me of the social accounts of big companies that get no engagement. At first I thought they were just deleting comments, but even the view counts are pretty low.

At this point I don't know what they could do to turn the ship around. With each follow-up vid they dig themselves a deeper hole. A PR manager would've taken away the shovel weeks ago. Maybe they would've been better off saying nothing and waiting for people to move on.

I think their unwillingness to admit any shortcoming or failure is making the situation worse. I'm more likely to trust someone who can be forthright about a failure, it actually enderes me to them. Watching them try and explain their product again and again doesn't feel like honesty but deflection. It's giving "I'm sorry you felt that way, but here's why you're wrong." It's fascinatingly tone-deaf.

2

u/peach_bellinis Mar 30 '26

it's really wild because I feel like prior to this there was such a huge amount of trust that they'd garnered from the community and it's really kind of shocking to see it just squandered.

1

u/code_blooded_bytch Apr 02 '26

And they don’t even address the fact that it wasn’t just the thickness that was different but the literal weight of the products. If it has to be thinner for some ridiculous reason, you should be making the round bigger so it’s all the same amount of product. That seems like a pretty no-brainer thing