Hello everyone! Welcome to this video. I just thought I'd do something a little different
today, something to get myself out of this video essay rut that I'm in with YouTube.
So today it's gonna be something totally new and different, I'm just going to be sharing my
slightly scripted thoughts with you on something I've been thinking about for a while, something
that I've wanted to make a video about but then decided not to because I was tired of
chasing the YouTube algorithm but as a YouTuber this topic really does you know concern me and
I want to share my thoughts on it. So before we get into that topic though I just want to give
a shout out to my patrons. This video wouldn't it be possible without them so if you'd like
to support my work please go and donate to my patreon. It keeps the channel going. My patreon
is Cheyenne Lin. Let's get into the meat of this episode. This episode I'm going to be
talking about Colleen Ballinger and the horror of OG YouTube, so without further ado let's go.
So Colleen Ballinger is the real name of YouTuber Miranda Sings. Miranda is Colleen's Alter Ego if
you will, it's her stage name and the character of Miranda made Colleen famous. Colleen Ballinger
herself is a currently 36 year old woman and her Miranda Sings channel has over 10 million
YouTube followers and over 2 billion views and that's not including her Vlog Channel as Colleen.
According to her wiki page Colleen created this character of Miranda in 2008 to mock
people doing covers on YouTube who were in her opinion not very good singers.
To quote Wikipedia "the character is the satire of the many YouTube videos featuring bad, but
egotistical performers who film themselves singing as a form of self-promotion despite receiving the
realistic or cruel comments of haters. Ballinger based the character partly on young women that
she knew in college she told the times of London there were a lot of cocky girls who thought they
were really talented and they were so rude and snotty. Then I saw all these girls trying to make
a career out of putting videos on YouTube of themselves singing in their bedrooms clueless
to the fact that they were terrible. At first the Miranda videos were meant to be an inside joke
among Ballinger and her friends. In March of 2009 however a Miranda video called 'free voice lesson'
quickly became a sensation. The video consists of bad advice about singing technique." Colleen's
character of Miranda also has a speech impediment which is played for laughs. So basically Colleen's
character of Miranda is a bad singer who thinks that she can sing and who wears exaggerated red
lipstick and also has a disability that's again supposed to be seen as funny. I didn't understand
Miranda's appeal despite being like a 13/14 year old when she was coming up on YouTube, but she had
like a huge fan base of millions of kids mainly because she was supposed to be a kid like them, as
in her 2016 Netflix show Haters Back Off Miranda I think is like a child. I've seen trailers but
I've never actually watched an episode, and I guess that makes her funny and relatable to her mostly
child audience. But she started off as a cruel joke to make fun of people for posting covers
on YouTube and because Colleen saw herself as above the other girls from her courses she felt
the need to make fun of them, but ironically her satirical take of these girls online made
her famous, not only the character of Miranda but Colleen Ballinger the real life person. Besides
just being an off-putting character, Colleen as Miranda has done blackface and also did a parody
of Oppa Gangnam Style where she basically just says ching chong for the entire thing.
She also didn't want people of color in her Netflix series because that would be unrealistic
for some reason, not only that but because her character is a naive child she thinks it's funny
to put the character in sexual situations that they don't understand because isn't that funny
and adorkable? There's a scene in haters back off again you know her Netflix show where she has a
creepy Uncle character which I think is part of her whole shtick and they make like this
joke about like white cream and buns and it's supposed to be funny because she's a kid and
that's her uncle and that's creepy, but she also doesn't understand it because she's a kid. It's very
it's very weird. And you might be thinking okay so what? A white woman Millennial YouTuber got caught
making off-colored Politically Incorrect jokes in the 2010s. Who cares what OG YouTuber hasn't done
this before? What makes her so special? Well that's not the only stuff she's done actually. Up until
recently she has basically used her fan base as free labor either to vent to, to go after her
ex-husband or even to make her relevant again on social media. Not only that but she sent underwear
to a minor, abused parasocial relationships with fans, sent nudes to her underage fans, and
basically exploited them for her own benefit. Watch Adam McIntyre's YouTube videos to find out more,
he's the brave soul who blew the whistle on this whole thing a few years ago but only in these past
few months has he been taken seriously. Seriously go check out his videos if you haven't already,
they're really important. In addition during her live comedy shows she would bring child fans on
stage and say that they were dressed like porn it was just very weird, like who- like I don't even
know like what goes through someone's mind when they do this, but apparently it was all in the name
of comedy. She did truly heinous things to actual children. She was in constant contact with minors
through group fan chats and again it's just like so much like why are you doing this? And at the end
of the day she was called out specifically again by Adam McIntyre a few years ago but Colleen's
fans defended her at that time again I think this was in 2020 and she came out with a response video
like a serious one saying that she's moved on and changed etc etc this is all water under the bridge.
And basically what happened with Adam is that she not only used him for free labor because he
was just a huge fan of hers, but after she used him for her free labor to basically manage her
Twitter account you know she's letting a child manage her Twitter account let me repeat that
um she ghosted him when she couldn't take responsibility for her own actions, when everything
came crashing down. So essentially she again hired Adam as a social media manager to manage
her Twitter account but never paid him, and then when he got approval for her to make an "I'm
coming out as a Meghan Trainor fan" video and post Miranda Sing slash Colleen Ballinger got a lot of
hate for it for being homophobic even though she did sign off on this post and on this video kind
of idea and people thought that she was going to be coming out you know as part of the lgbtq
plus community and it was this whole thing. And she got really mad at Adam for it even though she
again gave the okay and was like letting him use the Twitter account for months again, was using him
as free labor to get the Miranda Sings brand off the ground again, you know after it kind of fell
off for a while I guess. And rather than just owning up to these mistakes she actually just
totally ghosted him and made him go into an actual depression as he again was a huge fan of hers and
wanted her to succeed. His favorite person in the world was mad at him and again he was an actual
teenager he was doing all this for her and she was the adult and she should have been managing
her own social media, why are you letting a child handle your social media? Anyway in the end he
came out again this year trying to get people to listen and this time they did and other people in
Colleen's group chat like other fans corroborated his story so people were starting to listen again
and you know as the internet does pile on Colleen, which again I'm sure isn't fun but you know these
are real accusations that she needs to respond to and she just has been pushing it away and of
course in Colleen's mind she's already addressed this, she's already made an apology video or in her
mind an apology video, a response to all this. So this coming back a few years later is just
probably really annoying to her because she's not taking this seriously, but everyone else is,
and she doesn't understand it. So in order to address the accusations rather than making a
level-headed response video or just not saying anything at all which was apparently the advice
of her counsel, she decided to sing about it. So on June 28th of 2023 she posted a 10 minute song
about the accusations which again included harm to minors and titled it hi. So there is no apology or
even just an acknowledgment of the accusations like saying I know you know this happened this
is my side of the story, she basically took out a ukulele, like she literally took out a ukulele, and
started singing about cancel culture how we all love to watch someone get canceled and that's why
we're doing this to her because again in her mind she's done nothing wrong and that she's already
moved on and passed this and blah blah blah, and in her mind you know she's a good person why is
everyone accusing her again, people are just doing this to ruin her life, again this isn't her mind.
And in the end I find it really ironic how someone who was mocking a talentless hack actually turned
out to be a talentless hack. Her response to the drama is basically to make herself look
as innocent as possible, she takes out a ukulele she tries channeling some early 2010 Zoey Deschanel
quirky Vibes, like why are you guys attacking me like it's very weird. And it fails miserably
and just comes off as really cringy, like a cringy millennial, and she even checks the camera at the
10 minute mark to make sure that the video is long enough for YouTube ad Revenue believe it or not.
But what I personally take away from Colleen's story is just how similar late 2000s YouTube was
to late 2010s Elsa gate or specifically 2016 Elsa gate just totally unregulated comedic content for
kids being made by creepy adults looking for the fastest way to make money and not caring
about the ethical implications of their videos. Like Colleen's early work is just a mix of odd
fetishistic content for creepy adults that also mixes in things for children like funny voices
and faces and bad singing and the lowest common denominator racial humor for maximum engagement.
She tried to appeal to the two demographics who spend the most time online - creepy adults
in kids spaces and actual kids - and then went on to actually be a really creepy adult herself with a
child fan base, almost as if this is all part of a master plan though I doubt she had that much
foresight. Similarly to Elsagate, OG YouTube mixes the most wild things ever to get kids
attention and was totally unregulated where weird adults could just do anything for money because
they could and they targeted children specifically because they spend the most time online and also
are the easiest demographic to trick. I will say though that there were children and teens on
early YouTube who also were wannabe comedians and were able to get off YouTube and pursue careers
outside of the YouTube video format for example I really liked Fred AKA Lucas Cruikshank when I
was a kid and of course there was um Bo Burnham. I think the only difference is that with Elsa gate
I don't think they were like actual personalities trying to become famous comedians or famous people
on like OG YouTube where people unabashedly just show their face because people weren't thinking of
the implications of YouTube back then. YouTube as we know it today wasn't even like a
speck in people's minds you know? Like we in the 2000s couldn't even fathom what YouTube would
later become. People on YouTube when monetization was just about views and clicks did anything it
took to get them it wasn't until watch time was introduced like in the mid-2010s that actually
watching a video mattered. It wasn't until post Elsa gate that children's content became regulated
that's why thumbnails and titles were so wild and why people weren't afraid to show their faces
there were no consequences. Not to mention again that this more adult and unregulated content for
kids made by adults made kids feel more adult and grown up and in on the joke, and made them like it
even more even if they didn't understand it. Just typing in the number 69 or you know spelling come
like c*m made them laugh, like Colleen's group fan chat was literally called Colleenie's weenies like
like what the [ __ ] and she actually misspelled words to be sexual innuendos in the chat and on
her Twitter and social media at the time, and she's very weird you know. She realized how easy it was
to make kids like her if she made them feel as adult as her and it's again really
freaking weird. And as a side note as a YouTuber I don't get people who need to cultivate like a cult
of followers or who want a large following like that I understand wanting to create Community to
a degree, but as a YouTuber myself I never really wanted people to feel that attached to me you
know? But there are a lot of people out there who really want to have that following and I
just never got that. Colleen's fans did protect her from the backlash for a while until people
started believing Adam and more fans came out, but it's hard to do that when you know this person has
been a part of your life for so long it's hard to speak out against them, so I really do admire all
the victims who have come out and said something and you know it's hard to talk about someone
who you have positive memories with but who also you know did really bad things to you. I'm really
glad that we gave YouTube regulations even though YouTube is still broken and that Colleen is being
called out, but honestly you know she'll probably be fine at the end of the day. She has money, she
has family and a support system, but at least her victims are being believed and listened to and you
know don't forget to check out Adam McIntyre on YouTube and Twitter you know he's really at the
Forefront all this and he's really you know taking the brunt of it, so definitely support
him and that's it for this one. Again this video was made possible with the support of my patrons
so if you want to become a patron go to my patreon here I'll put the link here and yeah
that's it so thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this more casual style video and
um I look forward to reading your comments I'll see you in the next one bye~