By Maia Venuti
Staff Writer
YouTuber Colleen Ballinger landed herself in hot water in recent weeks after allegations of inappropriate behavior towards her underage fans have resurfaced. Ballinger is considered to be one of the “OG YouTubers,” with her alter-ego persona, Miranda Sings, being a staple of 2010s YouTube culture.
The allegations originally began in 2020, with drama and commentary creator Adam McIntyre coming forward as a then 17-year-old with allegations of Ballinger grooming young fans in group chats. McIntyre came forward with proof of Ballinger’s behavior towards himself and other underage fans in the form of screenshots, voice recordings and even a set of lingerie that she sent him when he was just 14.
Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence, Ballinger’s response in 2020 led to many of her fans discrediting McIntyre, accusing him of being a liar and faking it for the past three years. During those years, McIntyre has continued to post unrelated content and go about his daily life while still maintaining his truth.
However, the allegations resurfaced last month with several other fans coming forward with their own horror stories and allegations of inappropriate behavior from Ballinger. People have also begun to dive deeper into her Miranda Sings persona. Tiktok users like @unluckyp1ckle have made claims that the Miranda Sings content was seemingly never appropriate for children, with the character being seen as an elaborate ableist joke, as well as having a constant long-running joke about Miranda being sexually abused by her uncle.
After weeks of deafening silence from Ballinger, she uploaded an apology video on June 28th titled “hi.” The video is a ten minute long song with Ballinger playing the ukulele while telling the audience that “[she’s] not a groomer, [she’s] just a loser,” taking in pride that “at least she’s still skinny,” and all around trivializing the pain she inflicted on her underage and impressionable fans.
Safe to say, the internet tore her apart for this response. There have been many terrible apologies in YouTube history, like Logan Paul’s 2018 apology for filming a corpse in a Japanese suicide forest, Laura Lee’s 2017 apology for bullying and racism, or even Sienna Mae’s interpretive dance apology after sexually assaulting her friend, Jack Wright. But somehow, Ballinger’s apology blows all of these awful YouTuber apologies out of the water.
Many have dubbed Ballinger’s song responding to the allegations against her as the worst YouTuber apology ever, as dubbed by @kojironanjo on Twitter, mainly because she does not address any of the actual problems that people are having with her. Rather, Ballinger again tries to go for the jugular of her once underage fans by saying “all aboard the toxic gossip train,” trying to discredit those who were brave enough to speak out.
A big part of this scandal is not only her inappropriate behavior towards minors, but the fact that behind the scenes she is also said to be extremely toxic, with her friend Shane Dawson admitting that she uses the Miranda Sings persona to say some things she knows she cannot say as herself.
While in other failed apology videos the person apologizing tries to take some accountability, that is not at all what Colleen did. Rather, she deflected, discredited and dismissed the verified and backed-up allegations against her, saying it was nothing more than toxic people. This apology video showed her true colors and how she really sees herself as never being the one in the wrong, and she portrays herself as the victim in this situation.
She makes it an “all or nothing” situation with her fan interactions by saying she could have ignored her fans instead. Nobody is mad at her for interacting with her fans, as most YouTubers interact with fans in the comment sections of videos and at meet-and-greets; they are mad at her for making entire group chats where she is the only adult, and one that these kids worshiped. She created an uneven power dynamic by making these group chats and knew that she could get her child fans to do everything she asked just because she was their idol.
Most recently, Ballinger is facing heat from fellow YouTuber Trisha Paytas. As allegations against Ballinger came out, one of the things that came to light was her proclivity for bullying and body shaming Paytas. Ballinger would send her young fans naked photos of Trisha from her OnlyFans to mock and ridicule together. Paytas’s response was no short of heartbreaking, as she talked about how Colleen no longer exists to her and that the podcast they had together is coming to an end.
All in all, this apology has been labeled awful by swarms of people online and it is highly questionable if she can ever recover from this. This apology was essentially confirmation to most fans that she did what the allegations state.
