Red lipstick, messy hair, and a weird accent. Who comes to mind when these three things are said? That’s right; Colleen Ballinger, also known as her iconic character, Miranda Sings, on YouTube. Ballinger was recently called out, and exposed for her past behavior. Some examples are texting minors, acting out inappropriate things with children while performing on her tours, sending someone else’s inappropriate pictures to fans, and many more unfortunate actions.
Ballinger has as many as 8.43 million subscribers on Youtube, solely just by filming her life, and sometimes planned out content. She has recently lost thousands, maybe millions of followers due to her actions. Her following contains a wide range of ages; young children, teenagers, and even adults. People watch her for her personal channels, Miranda Sings, and family updates. Considering how long she has been around on social media, myself and others are very surprised to hear of the allegations put on her. These allegations were alleged for a while, but people/victims have shared their stories on social media, exposing the Youtuber. One of the victims is her friend and popular Youtuber Trisha Paytas.
Paytas is a longtime Youtuber and friend to Ballinger. The two women have known each other for years, and have formed a tight knit bond. Of course when someone is your friend, you think you can trust them. Things didn’t work out for this friendship, as Ballinger went around, sending inappropriate, revealing pictures of Paytas to fans. Because of this, Paytas and Ballinger no longer talk, and all trust is lost between the two.
On her tours, Ballinger portrays her made up character, Miranda Sings. Miranda is known for being a singer, songwriter, actress, etc; she believes she is good at everything she does. She is silly, illiterate, and doesn’t know what she’s talking about most of the time. At these shows, there is video and picture proof of her acting out inappropriate, mature things with her fans on stage. Lots of these fans are children, so they don’t really realize what has happened to them until they are older, which means she was grooming the children.
Due to these allegations, Ballinger responded with an apology video on Youtube. She handled the situation very immaturely by sharing a video of her playing the ukulele. She sang her apology, saying that all of this is just gossip, and it’s not that big of a deal. She claims that she never groomed these fans, and that she was just joking around and trying to be funny. Ballinger also said that she was “trying to be friends” with her fandom to try to get closer with them. After the video was put out, fans and fellow Youtubers responded quickly, furious with Ballinger. She obviously was not taking the situation seriously, and made everything worse for herself.
Paytas responded to Ballinger with her own video explaining her side of the story, explaining all of the things she did to her and showed proof.
Ballinger has fans all over the world and multiple go to our school, Wayne Valley High School. Acting as Miranda Sings plays one of the main roles in this situation. Senior Gabriella Destefano tells us, “I don’t think she knows who she is, so her character gave her something to be, and it went in the wrong direction.”
Another senior, Sara Goldberg, says, “I think she thought it was funny at first, but really, it just wasn’t funny.” The consensus is mostly that Ballinger should apologize in the right way.