The YouTuber apology video is an artwork kind. A penitent creator have to be remorseful, however not theatrical. Concise, however not rehearsed. Sincere, however not defensive. Above all, an apology video can’t be memeable, or it’ll by no means be taken critically.
Colleen Ballinger’s apology saga, nonetheless, might be probably the most memorable in YouTube historical past as a result of it simply retains getting worse.
Representatives for Ballinger, who constructed a faithful following of younger viewers because the satirical and usually offensive character Miranda Sings, at the moment are denying claims that she filed copyright infringement claims on movies reacting to her ukulele apology music.
The music, by which Ballinger addresses allegations of fostering inappropriate and exploitative relationships together with her teenage followers, is likely one of the most absurd makes an attempt at apologizing ever documented on-line. The followers coming ahead accuse Ballinger of sending them unsolicited nudes of one other creator to make enjoyable of her physique, utilizing her group chat of underage followers as on-call emotional assist all through her divorce, exploiting and humiliating minors throughout her stay reveals and above all, abusing the facility dynamic between herself and her followers.
Her response? A music in regards to the “poisonous gossip prepare” — an agonizing 10-minute lyrical automobile crash that dismisses the allegations as misinformation fueled by the “mob mentality” of the web.
“Everybody simply believes that you’re the kind of one that manipulates and abuses kids. I simply wished to say that the one factor I’ve ever groomed is my two Persian cats,” Ballinger croons. “I’m not a groomer, only a loser who didn’t perceive I shouldn’t reply to followers. And I’m not a predator, despite the fact that a variety of you assume so, as a result of 5 years in the past I made a fart joke.”
It’s a multitude. Right here’s what’s occurring.
Who’s Colleen Ballinger?
Colleen Ballinger, 36, began posting YouTube movies as Miranda Sings in 2008. “Miranda” is a self-obsessed younger lady who’s obsessive about stardom, regardless of her lack of ability to really sing. The character, who wears vivid purple lipstick and has a speech obstacle, is egotistical, socially awkward and largely blind to present occasions.
Ballinger’s musical parodies as Miranda grew to become a viral sensation, and at her peak she had roughly 19 million YouTube subscribers between her private channel and her Miranda Sings channel. Her movies consisted of vlogs (each as Colleen and as Miranda), trending YouTube challenges, satirical vocal classes and off-key covers of pop songs. Ballinger was significantly widespread with kids, and featured different youngsters’ creators like JoJo Siwa and Sophia Grace Brownlee on her channel.
As Miranda, Ballinger made offensive jokes that revolved round incest and racist stereotypes. Picture Credit: Gregg DeGuire/Getty Pictures for Nickelodeon
As Miranda, she usually made jokes about pedophilia, incest and racially insensitive stereotypes — in movies, Miranda would reference the “Daddy Saddle,” an object that allowed her to experience round on her “Uncle Jim.” Affinity Journal criticized the character for mocking disabled individuals and perpetuating dangerous stereotypes about disabilities. In 2020, she apologized for impersonating Latina ladies in a since-deleted video together with her sister.
She additionally usually toured as Miranda, performing stay selection reveals mixing comedy and music. Ballinger was in the midst of a nationwide tour final month when former followers alleged that she had inappropriate and exploitative relationships with them once they have been minors. Within the aftermath of her apology video, the remaining tour dates have been quietly canceled, NBC Information reported.
The primary wave of allegations
In a 2020 YouTube video, then-17-year-old Adam McIntyre mentioned that he had been ghostwriting a few of Ballinger’s tweets as her “social media intern” with out pay, and alleged that she had abused her energy as a creator to foster inappropriate relationships together with her younger followers.
He mentioned that the connection began when he was 13 years outdated, and that at one level, Ballinger despatched him lingerie. In 2017 and 2018, Ballinger informed him that Miranda Sings wasn’t doing effectively “as a result of she couldn’t actually be problematic because the character anymore,” McIntyre mentioned in his video, and that she finally requested him for assist with rebranding the character.
He started suggesting social media concepts for each Miranda Sings and Ballinger’s private accounts, and he or she gave him entry to the Miranda Sings Twitter account in March 2020. In screenshots McIntyre shared in his video, Ballinger informed him that she wasn’t “planning on taking benefit” of his assist and meant to pay him.
That month, McIntyre urged that Miranda ought to “come out” as a Meghan Coach fan — which Ballinger accredited over direct message. When she acquired backlash for “queerbaiting,” nonetheless, she informed McIntyre that she would “by no means put up one thing like that.” She by no means responded to McIntyre after that, and allegedly by no means paid him.
Ballinger responded in a video titled “addressing every part.” She admitted to sending McIntyre a bra and underwear in 2016, and mentioned she believed it was “no completely different” than the opposite gadgets she despatched followers “as a joke.” Ballinger additionally mentioned that she was breastfeeding her son when she accredited the Megan Trainor tweet.
“This was my fault. He despatched me a really lengthy record of a ton of various issues he wished to put up and I didn’t look over it carefully sufficient,” Ballinger mentioned.
Grooming allegations resurface
In June, YouTuber Kodee Tyler Dahl, 33, posted a now-deleted video about why they left Ballinger’s fandom, and shared screenshots of a Twitter chat referred to as “colleeny’s weenies group chat.”
The group chat was for the choose inside circle of Ballinger’s followers, most of whom have been minors, to immediately speak to Ballinger herself. The messages Ballinger despatched have been extremely inappropriate. In a single responding to then-15-year-old McIntyre’s request for inquiries to reply in a YouTube Q&A video, Ballinger requested, “Are you a Virgin?” She was in her 30s by then. In one other, McIntyre informed the group chat that his “ass seems good immediately.” Ballinger responded with “pics adam.”
Days later, McIntyre posted an hour and 45 minute video titled “my relationship with colleen ballinger” corroborating Dahl’s allegations. He shared screenshots of interactions within the group chat that he and different members saved, together with one in every of Ballinger asking him what his favourite intercourse place was. In one other, she requested the ladies within the chat to inform her about their first time getting their durations.
“She would simply are available in randomly and keep stuff like that,” McIntyre mentioned within the video. “To lots of people who have been underaged.”
Ballinger handled the group chat of youngsters as her confidants, and shared private particulars about her divorce from YouTuber Joshua Evans. She informed the “weenies” that Evans was “emotionally abusive” — an allegation that Evans denied in an interview with HuffPost. Ballinger publicly referred to as on her followers to stay respectful to Evans, however by no means discouraged group chat members from attacking him in social media feedback and on gossip boards.
One other former fan, Johnny Silvestri, got here ahead the identical week in a video titled “There’s Extra to the Story (my expertise with Colleen Ballinger).” Silvestri, who was not a part of the “weenies” chat, accused Ballinger of making the most of her followers’ labor. His relationship with Ballinger began after he attended a Miranda Sings present when he was 16, and Ballinger’s then-husband Evans gave him his private telephone quantity on stage.
By 2018, when he was 22, Ballinger employed Silvestri as an assistant on her tour. He was paid $125 per present. He accused Ballinger’s shut good friend and collaborator Kory DeSoto of bullying him all through the tour, which Ballinger knew of however didn’t cease, and mentioned that Evans exploited the friendship he began with Silvestri totally free assist operating his social media accounts. Silvestri additionally mentioned that Ballinger made merciless jokes about her followers and inspired him to affix in on the trolling. In a single message she despatched Silvestri, she mocked a fan for altering her gender pronouns.
“I discovered solace and security on this on-line group of individuals,” Silvestri informed Rolling Stone. “And these grown-ass adults abused it.”
Evans has since publicly apologized to Silvestri, and in a tweet posted after Silvestri’s video, acknowledged that he “failed” at being a “good friend and web large brother.”
Silvestri additionally accused Ballinger of sending him unsolicited nudes of YouTuber Trisha Paytas in messages mocking Paytas’ physique, and shared screenshots of the messages in now-deleted tweets.
Ballinger allegedly despatched Paytas’ express content material to McIntyre, who was a minor on the time, as effectively. In a video titled “pricey trisha paytas…,” McIntyre accused Ballinger of shopping for subscriptions to Paytas’ paywalled websites, downloading her express content material, and sending it to him when he was 14. McIntyre mentioned he was initially reluctant to talk out about it till he linked with Silvestri.
Silvestri alleged that Ballinger hosted “viewing events” of Paytas’ express content material with the intention to make enjoyable of her physique. McIntyre equally alleged that Ballinger inspired him to physique disgrace Paytas.
Paytas, who can be an OnlyFans creator and vocal about intercourse work, posted a response titled “colleen.” She and Ballinger grew to become mates by bonding over being new moms, and had simply launched a podcast collectively. Paytas mentioned that Ballinger denied the allegations when immediately requested, and that Paytas didn’t imagine the previous followers till she noticed the screenshots shared on-line. She described the messages as barbaric, misogynistic and “downright merciless” and mentioned that the podcast she co-hosted with Ballinger is over after simply three episodes.
“We have already got a variety of stigma, misconceptions, allegations in opposition to us as intercourse staff … I don’t condone in any respect unsolicited nudes, sending unsolicited nudes to anyone. Intercourse employee or not, I believe utilizing somebody’s nudes as a solution to harm them, make enjoyable of them, make mild of them or be imply is the bottom type of human,” Paytas mentioned within the video.
She added that the content material Ballinger despatched to followers is paywalled for a motive, and that viewers have to be at the very least 18 to entry it.
Viewers interactions
Different followers spoke out in regards to the uncomfortable interactions they’d onstage throughout Ballinger’s stay reveals.
Her reveals usually included a “porn bit” and “yoga bit” which used volunteers from the viewers. Within the “porn bit,” Ballinger (in character as Miranda) would choose a fan sporting skimpy clothes and examine them to a fan dressed extra modestly. The fan sporting extra revealing clothes was “porn,” Ballinger would declare. For the “yoga bit,” Ballinger would try tough, borderline sexual poses with an viewers member.
Becky, a Twitter and TikTok person who goes by noitsbecks, posted that she was chosen for the “yoga bit” at a 2019 Miranda Sings present. She was 16 on the time. In the course of the present, Ballinger had Becky lay on her again, whereas she held up Becky’s legs and unfold them in entrance of the viewers. Becky, who wore a free romper that didn’t keep up throughout the pose, mentioned she felt “terrified” and sexually violated. She additionally mentioned she felt unsafe leaving the present due to the way in which she was uncovered on stage. She posted a photograph from the present on Twitter.
“Colleen exploited my minor physique for leisure and cash and didn’t shield my security at this present,” Becky mentioned in a TikTok video. “As an out of doors wanting into the scenario, it could look like this wasn’t a giant deal. However this was actually fairly scary for my teenage self, particularly as somebody who cherished and regarded as much as Colleen.”
Different former followers spoke out about Ballinger’s “seek for a bae” bit, which concerned Miranda stuffing the entrance of her pants with a bag of cheese balls, and alluring viewers members to seize the snack. In resurfaced movies on YouTube and Reddit, Ballinger carried out the act with kids as younger as six.
Different controversies
Sure, there’s extra!
YouTubers who’ve been round because the platform’s earliest days usually have unsavory, insensitive content material of their archives. Comedy has developed over the previous couple of a long time, and the crass humor that was excusable years in the past might be fairly offensive. However Ballinger’s jokes have been particularly racist, and as clips of her outdated content material resurface in wake of the allegations in opposition to her, many on-line query how she managed to stay round for thus lengthy within the first place.
An unlisted video on her Miranda Sings channel reveals Ballinger performing a parody of Beyoncé’s “Single Girls” on stage, with a darkish paint smeared throughout her face. Twitter customers questioned whether or not she was performing in blackface. The video, which was posted in 2018, seems to be a recording from Ballinger’s 2010 tour in London, in response to YouTuber Paige Christie. The one solution to discover the video was by scanning a QR code in her 2018 ebook “My Diarrhe.”
Ballinger’s authorized representatives informed Selection that she was sporting inexperienced face paint, not black, and that earlier than the recording began, Ballinger carried out the quantity “As Lengthy as You’re Mine” from “Depraved.” She painted her face inexperienced to mimic the protagonist, Elphaba, in her duet with Oliver Tompsett, who starred within the musical’s unique London solid.
However different outdated clips aren’t so simply defined.
In her parody of the Korean pop music “Gangnam Model,” Ballinger recited gibberish combined with Japanese phrases like “tamogatchi” in a vaguely East Asian accent. In one other offensive caricature — this time making an attempt to mimic Native American cultures — she wears a feathered headdress and speaks in gibberish in a reenactment of the primary Thanksgiving.
April Quioh, a author who labored on Ballinger’s temporary Netflix sequence “Haters Again Off,” described working with Ballinger as “so, so uncomfortable” in a current e-newsletter. Ballinger would usually pitch scenes that concerned Miranda and Uncle Jim getting caught in “compromising positions or stomach-churning intimacy,” Quioh wrote, and he or she would attempt to shove “as a lot incestual innuendo into the present as attainable whereas assuaging the rising behind-the-scenes issues that the present can be alienating to the meant viewers” of kids.
Quioh additionally alleges that Ballinger insisted that the present solid “restricted POC background actors” because it was set in Washington, and as soon as demanded that “all of the Asian shit” can be faraway from a scene filmed in an Asian grocery store. Ballinger as soon as bragged that she would by no means be “silly sufficient” to get caught saying a racial slur, Quioh continued. Quioh identified that Ballinger mentioned the racial slur itself on this boast.
“It was nearly like she took a bizarre pleasure in making me uncomfortable and realizing that even when I wished to, there was completely nothing I might do about it,” Quioh wrote.
The apology video
Ballinger responded to the allegations in a June 28 video, which began together with her sighing, reaching out of body and choosing up a ukulele. Then, she started strumming a cheery tune.
“Lots of people are saying issues about me that aren’t fairly true,” Ballinger mentioned over the chords. “However it doesn’t matter if it’s true, although, so long as it’s entertaining. All aboard!”
She then started singing in regards to the “poisonous gossip prepare” — a hook that returns over and over all through the 10-minute video. Her staff suggested her in opposition to saying something in regards to the allegations, she continued, however they didn’t inform her she couldn’t sing.
She acknowledged that she might have “overshared” with followers, however accused her critics of attempting to wreck her life by dramatizing lies and profiting off of the backlash.
“I didn’t notice that every one of you’re excellent, so please criticize me, carry out the daggers out of your excellent previous, and stab me repeatedly in my bony little again,” Ballinger continued. “I’m positive you’re disenchanted in my shitty little music. I do know you need me to say I used to be 100% within the fallacious. Nicely, I’m sorry I’m not gonna take that route, of admitting to lies and rumors that you just made up for clout.”
The video instantly went viral for example of the worst attainable solution to apologize. Screenshots from the video grew to become response memes. Clips circulated on TikTok. YouTubers posted response movies breaking down the music’s comically flippant lyrics.
Evans, who stopped posting on YouTube a couple of yr in the past, responded on Twitter.
“This habits was my actuality anytime I spoke up & disagreed together with her actions & rhetoric throughout 2009-2016. I used to be gaslit too. I used to be made to really feel like I used to be at all times the issue,” he wrote. “Any ache I felt was an inconvenience and was belittled. Each ounce of what you’re feeling, I perceive.”
Quickly after Ballinger posted the apology music, sure YouTube movies that included clips of the music have been flagged for copyrighted materials. The music was additionally uploaded to Spotify and Apple Music. It has since been faraway from all streaming platforms.
YouTuber and H3H3 Podcast host Ethan Klein tweeted that the music “Poisonous Gossip Prepare” was uploaded to the music distributor CD Child, and {that a} current H3H3 episode discussing the apology was tagged for income sharing with the copyright holder.
One other Twitter person mentioned that their Roblox video that used the music was additionally flagged. YouTuber JabroneyTV tweeted that they uploaded the apology video on an unmonetized channel, and instantly acquired a copyright strike.
Twitter customers speculated that Ballinger was both attempting to close down criticism by copyright claiming movies reacting to the music, or that she was attempting to revenue by getting a minimize of advert income from each monetized video that features the music.
Representatives for Ballinger disputed rumors that she was behind the copyright claims in a press release to BuzzFeed Information. They didn’t reply to TechCrunch’s requests for remark.
What’s subsequent?
Ballinger has not posted publicly on any of her social media accounts since importing her apology music.
When creators put up a Notes App apology, they’ll probably proceed current on-line with few, if any, actual repercussions. If the offending motion is so egregious that it requires an apology video, creators have a tendency to put low for an period of time, earlier than slowly rising from their disgrace den with extra content material.
James Charles, for instance, has been relentlessly pushing ahead along with his comeback into magnificence content material after apologizing, coming again and apologizing once more for inappropriately texting underage followers. Shane Dawson, who left each the web and California after outdated racist movies resurfaced in 2020, is again on YouTube and moved again to Los Angeles. Sienna Mae, who allegedly sexually assaulted her former good friend and fellow Hype Home member Jack Wright, is again on TikTok regardless of the warmth she acquired for her notorious interpretative dance apology video.
Few really keep offline — Jenna Marbles, the YouTuber who referred to as out her personal racist movies in 2020 in an effort to carry herself accountable, is likely one of the solely creators who adopted via.
Ballinger’s apology was performative, defensive and all too simply become meme fodder. Like different disgraced creators, she’ll should maintain a low profile. Whether or not she’ll really be capable of make a comeback, contemplating the allegations that proceed to pile up in opposition to her and absolutely the absurdity of apologizing through ukulele, is questionable. What’s sure, nonetheless, is that in an ever-growing historical past of YouTuber apologies, Ballinger’s video will at all times stand out as a cautionary story to creators: In case your staff tells you to not say something, that’s not an excuse to sing it.
