Colleen Ballinger has been a YouTube star for greater than a decade, amassing tens of hundreds of thousands of followers—a lot of whom discovered her once they had been youngsters, and even youthful. They fell arduous for her potty comedy, and particularly her fictional alter ego, Miranda Sings, a talentless adolescent who delusionally believes she will sing although she’s at all times off-key. The persona resonated with outcast children who discovered her determined need for fame to be oh-so-accurately cringe. Such success earned Ballinger a Netflix collection, sold-out reside exhibits, and most just lately, quickly intensifying controversy.
Late final month, Rolling Stone revealed a narrative alleging that Ballinger had engaged in “inappropriate habits” with underage followers. The journal verified screenshots of texts during which Ballinger requested a minor about their virginity standing and their favourite sexual place; she additionally requested them to ship footage of their physique. Nonetheless inappropriate her alleged habits was, the article clarified that no sexual crime had been dedicated and that no proof in evaluation even hinted on the risk that Ballinger had supposed to begin a sexual relationship with a baby. Ballinger didn’t reply to Rolling Stone’s a number of requests for remark.
To these steeped on the earth of YouTube fandom—a chaotic, shapeshifting minefield the place allegiances are fortified and swapped by the hour—many of those claims weren’t new. Ballinger had even already responded to a few of them (after all, on YouTube). Rolling Stone’s piece was tame—one may argue, legally sound—in comparison with the language and rumors that’d been flying round her for years.
But its publication preceded starker allegations in opposition to Ballinger getting equally ushered into the mainstream press. A couple of days after Rolling Stone went reside, HuffPost revealed its personal investigative report: “Her Followers Say She ‘Groomed’ Them As Teenagers.” Within the ensuing weeks, Ballinger could be {accused} of the whole lot from performing a Beyoncé music in blackface (as Miranda Sings) to texting a intercourse employee’s nude picture to a minor. (Ballinger’s authorized workforce has denied she carried out in blackface, saying she was carrying inexperienced face paint for a previous cowl of a music from Depraved.) Her Sings tour has since been canceled, her profession abruptly stalled. When reached for remark, Ballinger’s lawyer replied in an e-mail that VF’s inquiries had been “merely a regurgitation of the baseless and unsubstantiated claims that different media retailers and people on social media have reported beforehand.”
The fact of a few of these claims, and in flip, the broader narrative round Ballinger, stays murky. Varied allegations stay unverified, left to endlessly flow into as they fall underneath that ever-expanding umbrella of “inappropriate habits.” In a way, this can be a acquainted story for the social media age. However Ballinger’s downfall is exclusive. She introduced teenagers into an grownup world and made it really feel prefer it was theirs, then noticed these followers flip in opposition to her. It’s the product of a specific period of YouTube stardom, of a digital persona in a position to domesticate a feverish and savvy fandom that’s been skilled to reverse course—and possibly, search payback—with the primary spilling of tea.
You could possibly be forgiven if you happen to had been one of many hundreds of thousands who, again in the summertime of 2020, allayed some COVID nervousness by diving into the YouTube drama unfolding between Ballinger and her former fan, Adam McIntyre, a then 17-year-old from Brighton, England. Ballinger was his idol; her merch may very well be seen throughout his bed room, the place he recorded his personal movies. He was an aspiring influencer himself, making candy, low-stakes YouTube content material about his life. On June 22, McIntyre posted a video to his channel titled “colleen ballinger, cease mendacity.”
In it, McIntyre instructed a number of seemingly unrelated tales. One recounted the time Ballinger despatched him lingerie within the mail, to his mom’s horror (the lingerie was new and unworn and Ballinger has since apologized for sending it). One other was supposed to debunk the rumor that he was secretly behind some anti–Miranda Sings social media accounts that Ballinger had gotten wind of. A 3rd involved the fallout of a tweet that Ballinger allowed McIntyre to submit—as Miranda Sings, from the character’s Twitter account—that led to him by no means posting on her behalf once more. He’d been thought of her “social media intern,” he mentioned, with hopes of being employed by her sooner or later in that capability. (Ballinger says he solely had entry to her account for sooner or later, and that if all went effectively, she had deliberate to rent him formally.) The tweet in query was seized upon as queerbaiting by Miranda’s fandom (she “got here out” as a Meghan Trainor fan), and led to intense backlash.
It would sound unusual to listen to that Ballinger had put a fan accountable for her character’s Twitter to start with, however that entry went in keeping with her public picture. Ballinger was carefully aligned along with her most devoted (younger) viewers. For her to take away that entry, as McIntyre skilled, felt painful. McIntyre felt that Ballinger was guilting him, selfishly preoccupied along with her popularity slightly than his emotions. (After the backlash, she apologized for the tweet. Later, she denied ever blaming McIntyre and mentioned she ought to’ve reviewed his tweets extra fastidiously.)
Then got here the YouTube response to McIntyre’s YouTube accusation—a traditional backwards and forwards. (If the names James Charles and Tati Westbrook imply something to you, you get the thought.) Ballinger, 33 on the time in her response to a young person, posted a traditional apology vlog. She revealed screenshots of Instagram DMs she’d despatched to McIntyre and one which McIntyre’s mom purportedly despatched to her, which gave the impression to be Ballinger’s approach of assuring viewers of what “actually” occurred, a technique not not like McIntyre’s. In a DM, she accuses him of going “too far,” supposedly in response to him asking her to think about her new child son being taken benefit of in the identical approach he felt he had been. She additionally elaborated upon the lingerie incident: Throughout a reside stream giveaway along with her followers, Ballinger defined, McIntyre had requested for the article of clothes. In keeping with her, he’d even ship pictures of himself jokingly posing within the underwear to group chats that included Ballinger and her most famous followers. Ballinger painted a seemingly correct portrait of the Miranda Sings neighborhood: a foolish place for teenagers like McIntyre to belong, wanting as much as an more and more well-known and highly effective public determine. “I’m not a monster, I’m not a groomer, and I don’t should die,” Ballinger mentioned within the video, alluding to the chance that she’d obtained loss of life threats.
