One of the first and biggest YouTube sensations, Miranda Sings‘ creator, Colleen Ballinger, has been accused of grooming and taking advantage of her audience and admirers, which primarily consists of young children and teenagers. When Ballinger uploaded a video on Thursday in which she “apologized” for the mess while singing and playing the ukulele, the already awfully dreadful controversy surrounding her took a turn for the worst. The 10-minute video, just titled “hi,” has received more than 3 million views so far, garnered criticism on Twitter from some people involved in the affair, and inspired a ton of memes on TikTok. It is safe to say that it has not helped, in any way, to calm the fury of the already enraged netizens.
Ballinger, 36, launched her first YouTube channel in the year 2007 under her own name. She posted her debut video as Miranda by February of 2008, and only the faintest traces of the narcissistic, talentless, high-waisted, lipstick-smeared musical theatre wannabe that she would later become were visible. Ballinger had created the character a few years previously while enrolling in music performance classes at a university in California. According to a 2010 Broadway World article, “Miranda videos were meant to be an inside joke between Colleen’s friends – the classically trained singer used to stay off the pitch in college choir classes just to annoy her classmates.”
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By 2009, Miranda Sings had her own YouTube channel, and by 2015, Ballinger and Miranda were true stars with a combined subscriber base of about 20 million across multiple YouTube channels, besides other accolades, books, albums, tours, and international appearances. They also racked up billions of views. She has an additional 9 million followers on TikTok. Miranda Sings mostly appeals to kids and young adolescents with her purposefully bad singing, farting, burping, and inflated ego. Ballinger/Miranda also had direct conversations with a lot of them in the early years of social media via chat groups and other platforms. That close relationship made it difficult for some fans to distinguish between friendship and fandom.
A little backstory about the recent controversy
In 2020, Adam McIntyre, who was 17 years old at the time, posted a 25-minute video in which he accused Ballinger of several offenses, including using his time for free to create social media postings and sending him intimate wear, that too when he was only 14. Additionally, he alleged that she had dumped him abruptly after a tweet he had written for her triggered a fierce backlash for making homophobic charges. Ballinger quickly tried to fix the situation by releasing a video of her own in which she expressed regret for the underwear incident. “I should have realized and recognized how dumb that was and never sent it to him,” Ballinger added that she reportedly planned on providing McIntyre with paid labor after a trial period but later altered her mind after receiving the negative feedback on Twitter.
“No, I should never have sent a fan underwear – how stupid am I? No, I definitely shouldn’t have given him access to my Twitter account. And no, I shouldn’t have talked to him as often as I did. But I am not a monster, I am not a groomer, and I shouldn’t kill myself.”
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That appeared to be the end of it until a few weeks ago, when a different former fan named KodeeRants, also known as Kodee Tyler, revealed in a since-deleted video that they were part of a group that attacked McIntyre after his video went viral, implying that Ballinger had encouraged them to do so. Since then, more of her former admirers have come out of hiding to offer their original accounts and awful experiences of “being bullied, intimidated, and embarrassed by Ballinger and members of her team,” in the words of a Rolling Stone piece. McIntyre’s online reputation started to shift drastically, after which he posted a new video titled “I was right about Colleen Ballinger.”
How has Colleen tackled the issue?
She addressed the issue head-on in a video apology that appeared sincere back in 2020. She remained silent this time until she posted what may very well be the least repentant apology video in history. “Hi, everyone. I’ve been wanting to come online and talk to you about a few things, even though my team has strongly advised me not to say what I wanna say. I recently realized that they never said I couldn’t sing what I wanna say,” she sings as she plays the ukulele.
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She refers to her encounters with fans from “many years ago” and says that she was somewhat of a loser but not a groomer. “I know you wanted me to say that I was 100 percent in the wrong; well, I’m sorry, I’m not going to take that route of admitting to lies and rumors that you made up for clout,” is what she sang in her apology video.
Ballinger has been accused of acting unethically and recklessly. This story does, however, shed light on the odd realm of para-social connections that exist online, where one person thinks the connection is genuine, strong, and mutual while the other doesn’t even know they exist. The story demonstrates that children are vulnerable online, even how technologically advanced they may appear, and that adults have a duty to shield kids from improper behavior and content.
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