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Colleen Ballinger is a YouTuber whose “character” is called Miranda Sings, a talented but incredibly awkward singer. She was one of the platform’s early success stories, and has been around almost since the beginning of YouTube. She’s written a book and has a Netflix show, so she’s one of the YouTubers who was able to crossover to more traditional media. A large portion of her fan base has always been teens and tweens. Then a month ago stories surfaced that Colleen had engaged in inappropriate discussions and behavior with underage fans. She would have young fans come onstage at her comedy shows and have them do things that were obviously uncomfortable. I’m skirting around the details here because it’s all pretty gross and I do not want to trigger anyone. There were also accusations that she performed in blackface back in 2009. Reporters at the Washington Post fact checked and it turns out the face paint she was wearing was green and leftover from a performance of songs from Wicked…but it still looks pretty bad. After these stories from fans came to light and Colleen started losing sponsorships, she created an apology video that was… a ukulele song. Truly. Because that’s how to demonstrate that you take accusations of grooming seriously, I guess? That went over about as well as expected. And now she’s cancelling the rest of her comedy shows.
Colleen Ballinger, who is better known for her YouTube character Miranda Sings, has had the rest of her shows in her 2023 tour canceled.< Ballinger was set to appear in her comedy show, where she performs as both herself and her character, on Thursday in Boise, Idaho. Links to that event and the rest of the remaining shows on her website now go to Ticketmaster pages noting that the events are canceled. The cancellations follow former fans telling HuffPost that they had inappropriate relationships with the 36-year-old YouTuber when some of them were teens. The former fans said that Ballinger would confide in them about her relationship problems and make sexual jokes. Adam McIntyre, one former fan, said on his YouTube channel that Ballinger “grooms” her fans. (In a YouTube video in which Ballinger sang the entire time, she denied “grooming.” “I’m not a groomer, I’m just a loser who didn’t understand I shouldn’t respond to fans, and I’m not a predator even though a lot of y’all think so,” she sang.)
I have never liked Colleen and never understood her popularity. But after learning what her fans are saying, I’m even more put off. It isn’t normal or appropriate for an adult woman to want to be ‘friends’ with minors or tell them blue jokes. I briefly worked as a school teacher and it was very important to me to uphold boundaries with all my students because I wanted to model what a safe, trustworthy, respectful adult looks like. Some kids unfortunately don’t have adults at home they can trust, and when you’re a teacher you’re very aware of that possibility and you have a legal obligation to be on the watch for it. You want to provide those students with the structure, boundaries, and care they need. That’s why I get so mad when I see people like Colleen taking advantage of her young fans’ trust and admiration. She clearly enjoyed having these parasocial type of friendships with a completely unequal power dynamic, which makes my skin crawl. The incident with the green face paint also isn’t the first time she’s been accused of racism. There’s precedent for that, too, which the WaPo article I linked to talks about. I’m not surprised she’s canceled her tour, I can’t imagine that many people would have showed up after all this. What she did is not OK and she doesn’t seem to have shown any real remorse for it. Also, this seems like a dynamic that has happened with a lot of YouTube stars.
3 years ago i posted a video titled, “colleen ballinger, stop lying” in which i described the emotionally abusive end to my ‘friendship’ (not real one…in theory) with youtuber colleen ballinger. the video response was quickly turned against me & i was villainized & bullied for 3… pic.twitter.com/kJnTFmsjvI
— adam mcintyre (@theadammcintyre) June 4, 2023
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