Lillee Jean: Internet Bully
This beauty “influencer” and her mother have a perpetual chip on their shoulder.
There are usually two reactions elicited upon hearing the name Lillee Jean — either a confused look because you don’t know who she is, or a pained grimace because you know exactly who she is.
For the lucky folks out there who don’t know who she is, allow me to introduce you. Lillee Jean Trueman is a 20-year-old model and makeup artist from upstate New York. She has one million followers on Instagram, but it’s painfully obvious she used some kind of followers-buying service since her posts don’t get near as much engagement. She’s been involved in scandal after scandal, most of these centering around Lillee and her momager Laur trying to (mostly unsuccessfully) silence the criticism surrounding them.
Upon reading this, you may want to look her up and be surprised at the sheer lack of search results available on her scandals aside from one Reddit thread and a singular YouTube video — even on page 2 of Google! That’s only because these two are apparent SEO whizzes and have used and abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to their advantage, even going so far as to use it to hide a BuzzFeed News article detailing their harassment of POC beauty guru Lauren Elyse from Google search results. (I promise, the fact that she’s a POC is important and will come up again later. Unfortunately.)
I could spend a lot of time here going over each individual scandal, but I already have, in video format.
But, just as luck would have it, thanks to this video, I would have my very own run-in with Lillee and Laur.
Plenty of people have made YouTube videos about Lillee and Laur — and those people also have likely gotten their videos copyright stricken and removed from YouTube as a result. Despite the landmark 2017 case of Matt Hoss v. H3H3productions that further refined the definition of Fair Use as it relates to copyrighted material on the internet, the Truemans are still able to DMCA videos they don’t like with impunity. And, they did it to me. To be abundantly clear, what they’re doing is illegal. Lying in a DMCA claim is considered perjury, which is a felony in New York State where they reside.
The video you see above was DMCA’d two days after it was uploaded, having only 580 views at the time — a lot for me, since my channel is modest in size, but nowhere near viral. The offending content? A heavily edited photo of Lillee that I used for the thumbnail. That’s it. I was given two options to dispute the copyright strike on my channel: go through the legal process of filing a counternotification, or contact the claimants directly. Knowing that the Truemans have a habit of doxxing individuals they don’t like, I didn’t want to give them my full name and home address, so I contacted them directly.
Was my email a tad bit petty? Sure, I can admit that. I was a bit heated at the time. However, I certainly wasn’t expecting her reply — or any reply at all, for that matter.
Due to Medium.com’s guidelines, I cannot show our emails. However, the entire exchange can be found elsewhere.
Lillee only replied to me once. After that, Laur took over. What followed was an email exchange that included such highlights as Laur giving me her personal phone number (likely in an effort to obtain mine and doxx me), her being generally condescending and nasty to me, a weird remark in which she implied I was in the 6th grade (which I haven’t been for quite some time now), and her saying that she was going to send all of this to a District Attorney. Aside from a lawsuit against YouTuber Tater Tatiana as mentioned in my video, the Truemans haven’t sued anyone who have talked about them online. Were I actually in the 6th grade, I might have believed her, but I am a grown woman with grown woman life experience and I am not afraid of empty threats.
After a month, my video was restored (I did have to give them my full name but utilized a P.O. Box), but many people in the LilleeVerse have pointed out that the Truemans are especially hostile towards the POC who talk about them. One YouTuber called The Christian Show not only got his entire channel taken down, but was continually harassed and stalked by Laur. Lillee and especially Laur have been accused of racism before with them posing as POC fan accounts and making odd remarks about wanting to have white skin like Lillee and Laur making disparaging remarks about Black Lives Matter on a livestream.
So, here’s the thing. I don’t harbor any resentment for Lillee Jean. Strange, I know, but hear me out. After being embroiled in this drama for some time earlier this year, I came to realize something: Lillee may well be a victim herself.
Lillee is the only daughter of Laur and her husband, and was homeschooled for a period of time in high school. I mean this in no disparaging way towards homeschooled people and only children, but it seems a combination of these factors has lead to an…interesting codependent relationship between Lillee and her mother. Lillee IS an adult and does have to take responsibility for her actions, but I can’t help but think this whole fabricated influencer lifestyle was started or at the very least heavily facilitated by Laur. To me, Lillee is only mirroring the actions of Laur.
And, this may come as a shock to you, but I do actually think Lillee has the potential to have a legitimate modeling career. Her makeup and photography skills have gotten better over the years, and in my opinion, she has the look. She was able to grift her way into many makeup sponsorships. If she ever set herself straight, then perhaps one day she could be a brand ambassador for Covergirl or Bite Beauty (like she faked that one time).
A lot of people think I’m being entirely too nice, especially after all that’s happened, but I’m willing to give Lillee the time it takes to become a better person. However, that can only happen if she gets out of her momager’s vice grip, and at this point in time, it sadly seems unlikely.
I fully expect this article to earn the ire of Lillee and especially Laur — they’ve done everything they could to get my first video taken down, as well as a follow up video (by using bogus privacy complaints for showing our spicy email exchange), and several Reddit posts, specifically on r/reallilleejean, which is dedicated to documenting all the transgressions of Lillee and Laur. I’ve said it to Laur before and I’ll say it here: trying to silence your detractors only proves that they’re right.
