- Sup ya beautiful bastards?
Hope you've had a fantastic Wednesday,
welcome back to The Philip Defranco show
on a day that I believe is the first day
I've worn a dress shirt and pants in maybe two months?
Big day for me, thank you for being here
on this momentous occasion.
And a quick note actually before we jump into today's show,
the podcast, A Conversation With,
is officially back over at youtube.com/acw
with brand new content.
And the first guest back is the fantastic Dr. Mike,
which means yes, we do cover some serious stuff.
But a lot of this, just, if
you've been needing escapist content,
you definitely wanna watch and maybe even
be a part of that conversation
after today's show over at youtube.com/acw.
But with that said,
welcome back to The Philip Defranco Show.
Buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into it.
The first thing we're gonna talk about today
is why we have Red Lobster in the news.
So apparently, Red Lobster was the restaurant
of choice on Mother's Day.
With videos and images shared on social media
showing these massive lines of people
waiting to pick up orders at several different locations.
With many customers reporting waiting
between two to three hours for their orders,
while others walked away empty handed, asking for refunds.
And though there were definitely angry customers
at restaurants in New York, Illinois, all over the place,
the angriest of them all seemed to be in Pennsylvania.
In fact, at one location in the state
police were even called to try and keep things calm
after the restaurant decided it had to shut down.
And as you may have already seen online
there was a woman at an East York Red Lobster that became so
angry, there was this whole incident that got violent.
The video opens up with somebody saying,
"Call 9-1-1, somebody."
You then see an employee trying to force
the angry customer out of the building.
The woman then continues to try and push her way back in,
demanding a refund.
- Get my mother (static hissing) money back.
- You don't get it!
- [Philip] Employees start talking about finding a key
to lock the door as she continues to demand a refund.
And at this point there are now several workers
at the front trying to keep her from entering.
At this point they tell her that all they need is
her name to process the refund so she shouts her name.
- Cathy Hill!
- Which, side note, ended up making it even easier
for people on the internet to start doxxing her.
And that back and forth continues, we then see
an employee kind of nudge her away from the door
trying to close it.
At which point then Cathy escalates things even further
when she smacks that employee in the face.
That employee then starts fighting back,
with others trying to step in to try and separate them.
And after that fight's broken up we see Cathy say:
- I was assaulted, and I have a whole crowd to--
- You hit her first! (angry shouting)
- She's been shoving up on me the whole time!
- At the end of the video, we hear someone off camera say:
- [Woman] A paying customer.
You got people out here waiting for three hours for food.
- And so that's the main reason
we're seeing Red Lobster in the news right now.
And regarding Pennsylvania specifically,
under Governor Tom Wolf's orders,
restaurants in Pennsylvania must either be closed
or operate with a take out or delivery system
to minimize social contact during the pandemic.
Also, customers at all establishments that remain operating,
as well as their employees, are all required
to wear masks to enter, which
I will note looking back to that video,
that doesn't appear to be going well.
You see people without masks,
you see people with masks, but not covering
their mouth or nose, or at least just their nose.
But really that's a whole other side issue to this story
and things that we're gonna see in the future.
Regarding Red Lobster and the issues at hand,
we did end up seeing Red Lobster's CEO issuing a statement
on Tuesday apologizing to disappointed customers.
Noting that the chain had received significantly more orders
than they've gotten on a single day
and were unable to keep up.
Also stressing that the company's working on
making sure this never happens again.
Also, in another statement to local news outlets,
a company spokesperson attributed the issues
to operational and staffing changes
as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
And finally, as far as that brawl
at the East York Red Lobster, the company said,
"We do not tolerate violence for any reason
in our restaurants.
We expect our team members treat our guests with respect,
and we expect our guests to treat our team members
with respect in return.
We are grateful our Manager and the guest involved
were not seriously injured in the incident on Sunday."
Which really
is an award winning non-statement, if I've ever seen one.
They essentially said, "We are against bad things
and people doing things that we do not agree with,
but we are glad that nobody got hurt."
Now as far as everyone else's reaction to this incident,
we saw people kind of in two camps.
You know, some people saying,
we don't know what happened inside.
Obviously if you're waiting for
your food for two to three hours
and maybe the staff isn't properly informing you,
you're gonna be outraged.
Also as far as who started what,
on this side you have people saying, you know,
essentially pushing her outta the store
was the first act of aggression.
But on the other side of this,
and it appeared at least on social media to be the majority,
a lot of people just found this woman to be in the wrong.
Right, arguing with the employees
want to give her her money back,
but she's being belligerent.
She actually swings at an employee,
escalating the situation.
A number of people calling her an angry Karen, which
I will say, that name is ridiculous.
If anything, she's a Red Lobster Laura
or at the minimum a Cheese Biscuit Betty.
And as far as my opinion on this
based off of what we have publicly available right now,
I end up feeling more sympathy for the employees here.
We're living in weird times
and I think we have to pull back on how entitled we are
and understand that everyone's kinda
just trying to do their best.
All right, if I was in this situation
and I was having to wait
two to three hours to get a Red Lobster order
I'm just canceling that order and getting my money back.
I'm leaving.
And when I looked at Twitter and I see there was an example
of a Red Lobster employee tweeting,
"Today was probably the craziest day at Red Lobster,
we had 212 orders at once.
People don't understand how busy we were today.
18 people called me a dumb ass.
9 people flipped me off.
13 people told me to hurry the fuck up."
I can't help but sympathize with the employees here.
Especially as someone that used to work at restaurants.
It's also part of the reason I truly believe
that you get to know who a person is
based off of how they treat restaurant staff.
But hey, that said, that's the story.
Some of my personal opinion based off of what we've seen
and of course I pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
But from that, I wanna share some stuff I love today,
and today in awesome brought to you by Drop.
And you know, if you're looking for ways
to stretch your dollar, especially right now,
you gotta check out Drop.
It's the free app that's giving away
millions in cash rewards every single day.
With 300 plus brands to earn from,
it is the fastest, easiest way to be rewarded
for the shopping that you're already doing.
Also if you're not already using Drop,
maybe you've heard me say it and you're like,
"Yeah, I'll get around to it."
Now is specifically is the time to join
because from now until Sunday
Drop is running its Boost Week campaign.
Meaning, you'll earn bonus cash back
on select offers when shopping with Drop
and this includes brands like Apple,
Sunglass Hut, Sam's Club, and many more.
Also, for the next 72 hours Drop is giving y'all
10000 points, which is 10 dollars when you download the app
on the app store or Google Play, with code PHILDEFRANCO.
Right, you do that and your bonus will be deposited
into your account once you earn
your first 1000 points on the app.
So with that said, head on over to earnwithdefranco.com
or click that link down below to download the Drop app
and then make sure you use code PHILDEFRANCO
to kickstart your earnings today.
The first bit of awesome today is
I made a Tik Tok because I needed another place
to shitpost other than Twitter, I guess.
So if you'd like to follow me there,
to enjoy and/or mock me,
I don't really care, it's all equal.
My username's simple, it's just Philip DeFranco
and you can just click that link down below.
Then we had Daniel Radcliffe and Ellie Kemper
entering the New Yorker's cartoon caption contest.
National Geographic gave us alien oceans.
Allure gave us a fitness instructor's entire routine
from morning meditation to training
so we could tell ourselves that we'll do it,
but then ultimately will not do it.
We had Troye Sivan collabing with Bon Appetite.
We had the fantastic Swoozie giving us
the Every Girlfriend Ever Video.
And the final bit of awesome is we got the full documentary
for Dude Perfect Backstage Pass.
And I will say, once again, I'm so happy
that YouTube Originals are now not behind a paywall.
And if you wanna see the full versions
of everything I just shared, the secret link of the day,
really anything at all, links as always are
in the description down below.
And then let's talk about this story
that's easily one of the most requested
non-COVID stories we've seen of late.
And at the center of this story we have an entertainer
who among other things, has really been a YouTube staple
over the past decade, Colleen Ballinger AKA Miranda Sings.
Now part of the reason this has been so requested
by so many different people is because
the accusations that have recently come against her
include a number of things.
Accusations including racism, fat shaming,
joking about putting her dog down,
which notably did happen when she was a child,
but all of these accusations also seemed to surface
after she was accursed of something much more serious,
which was grooming a child.
And that child is now 17-year-old Adam McIntyre.
According to Adam, he used to be a huge fan
of Ballinger, in fact he said that he used
to run fan accounts on Instagram and Twitter.
But a couple of weeks ago we saw him post a video
titled Colleen Ballinger, Stop Lying.
And in this video he says that he first met Colleen
back in 2016, at a live show when he was 13.
Saying he met her again at a show in 2018.
And between this time, he says the two became good friends.
He says they were talking a lot on social media
and notably, during this time she started
to tell him private details about her divorce
with Joshua Evans in 2016.
Adam saying that his parents were originally supportive
of Colleen interacting with him because he was such a fan.
Then, saying they started to become cautious,
wondering why Colleen, who was 30 at the time,
was sharing such private information with a minor.
After that, Adam says that his relationship
with Colleen turned into one where he was asked
to look at drama channels to find out
what they were saying about her,
Evans, her ex-friends, and her fans.
Also saying that his name ended up getting thrown
into a lot of those situations,
and that he ultimately faced cyber bullying because of it.
Adam claiming his parents encouraged him to distance himself
also saying that he did several times,
but that he would always get sucked back in
because Colleen would be nice.
- I try not to be upset with myself
because I was 13 to 15 during this time.
I'm still really young now, I'm only 17, but looking back
it's hard to not get, like,
ah, fix yourself!
You know, stop engaging in that, you're being used.
- Also connected to this story,
there was another incident between the two.
And that is back in 2016, Colleen sent him
a pair of women's lingerie.
And this specific story starts with a livestream
where Colleen and her friend, Kory DeSoto,
were showing off ugly clothes they bought at Forever 21.
And in that DeSoto puts underwear on
over his clothes as a joke.
They're promising to send them to fans.
One of those fans ends up actually being Adam.
- Yeah, Adam let me know what you want.
He's in Ireland.
Hi, Adam, I love you.
Okay.
I'm sending him something.
Okay, maybe he'll want the panties,
although then his parents will be like,
"You're not allowed to watch-- (laughing)
Who is sending you panties?"
(laughing)
(mumbles) "Mom, don't worry I watched
a boy wearing them online first."
(laughing)
- And it would seem that even though she was joking
about Adam's parents being mad, they were furious.
Adam saying they took the underwear right away,
but apparently they kept it because in his video
Adam says that he asked his mom to try to find them.
She does, and he shows them as proof
that she actually sent them.
And notably with this whole lingerie situation,
it's a very large point of this story.
It's something that Colleen has faced a lot of criticism for
and it's something we're gonna come back to in a minute.
But first, I wanna hit on one
of the last points that Adam makes.
And that is that not only does Adam say
that Colleen asked him to lookup information
about her ex-husband and her ex-friends,
but according to Adam, she was also asking him
for ideas to post to social media.
With this allegedly including both her main accounts
and her accounts as Miranda Sings.
And he says this is because
she didn't enjoy doing the Miranda character anymore,
since she couldn't be problematic as the character now.
After that he then says he stopped for awhile,
but said that he started giving more ideas
on March 25, this year.
According to Adam, she then
starts tweeting some of his ideas.
And with that, Adam says that he pitched
about 15 different tweet ideas.
One of those including a tweet where Miranda Sings
comes out as a Meghan Trainor fan.
With Adam saying that she was initially confused about it.
Saying that she wasn't sure what
he was trying to say about Meghan.
He then says he explains the joke,
she gives him the green light.
Giving him the login info for
the Miranda Sings Twitter account.
Saying that she still trusts him, and then,
Adam posts that tweet.
Now following that tweet going out,
you had a lot of fans and others on social media
accusing Colleen of queerbaiting.
Right, essentially accusing her of making fun of how scary
and hard it is for so many LGBTQ+ people to come out.
And Adam says that after that Colleen sent
him a message saying that she wasn't mad,
just paranoid because "everyone always gets mad at me
and I always have to apologize."
We then see Colleen delete that tweet,
privately telling Adam that it wasn't his fault
and that she was just too sensitive.
Later Ballinger messages him again,
saying she felt overwhelmed by all the backlash
she was getting for that tweet.
And that she still didn't know what to do.
Colleen also telling him about how she apologized
to one person, saying, "The thing is, I agree with them.
Queerbating is not a joke.
I'm super sad I've upset so many people."
Now with all of that said,
that's just how this situation started.
Following this incident we started seeing the backlash
and outrage against Colleen piling up.
In addition to people sharing this,
we also saw people starting to dig up her old videos
including one where she and her sister
pretended to be two Latina women.
In that video it appears that they've darkened their skin,
they have fake eyebrows on.
Also in it they sing about crossing the boarder,
working at Del Taco, making burritos.
People also sharing a separate video
where they accused her of fat shaming
because of how she talks about an overweight woman,
who sat next to her on a plane.
Also in another clip making the rounds,
you had Ballinger telling a story
about how when she was three
she dug her nails into the family dog.
It yelps, bites her in the face, it was then put down.
All right and so in this she kinda jokes
about how she murdered the family dog.
Right, and those were the three biggest videos
that resurfaced, that were making the rounds.
A number of them, years old, I mean,
for example, that video of her pretending to be Latina
is actually 14 years old.
Right, so you have all these different things.
Shots coming in from a lot of different sides.
And then, it ultimately brings us to yesterday
because Colleen addressed a lot of these accusations.
And in this video she starts off
with the claims that she was racist.
- And the characters are completely
based on racial stereotypes.
It is not funny, and it is completely hurtful.
I am so ashamed and embarrassed
that I ever thought this was okay.
I was a sheltered teenager,
who was stupid and ignorant.
- Also saying that she went on
to actually delete that video from her channel
a few years ago after it was posted.
Following that apology, she apologized
for fat shaming that woman on the plane.
Also explaining that she's a huge advocate
for body positivity now
and accepting and loving of all body types.
After that she goes on to clarify her comments
about that incident with her family dog.
Saying that a doctor told the family
that legally the dog needed to be put down
and this actually made her very upset at the time.
This even though the video in question appeared
to show her being insensitive about it.
So you had her addressing those three things,
but the meat of this video really seemed to be
her addressing that video with Adam McIntyre
and the backlash that she's seen because of it.
Now as to why she didn't address this sooner,
she said that McIntyre's mother reached out to her
asking her not to speak his name.
But now she said that it's gotten to the point
where she felt that she needed
to tell her side of the story.
And with that she talks about the context
of why she sent McIntyre women's underwear when he was 13.
- And in this livestream, I did a giveaway.
I was giving away clothes that were unused, tags still on,
brand new, that I had just bought that I did not want.
One of the items that was in this box
was a really ugly pair of underwear.
As soon as we pulled them out,
Kory and I started laughing
and joking around about how ugly they were,
why did I buy these ridiculous underwear?
It was so stupid.
- She then notes how people started asking for them.
Adam then asks for the underwear.
And note, the original video
does appear to backup that claim.
With Colleen going on to say that she actually
forgot to send them and so Adam asked again over Twitter
and that's when she sent them.
And while she does know that she's
always given away weird and random items,
she says that she does now realize
how inappropriate the whole situation was.
- I've given away weird stuff.
And so in my mind at the time,
this was no different than
all the other weird stuff I send to my fans,
as a joke.
Now, in hindsight I see how completely stupid of me.
I should have never sent that.
I don't know what part of my brain was missing at the time,
that I thought, "Oh, this is a normal, silly thing to do."
It was never a sneaky, creepy, gross thing
that I was doing in secret.
It was a silly, stupid mistake
that now is being blown way out of proportion.
- Colleen also saying that
she always believed McIntyre's mother
was always very supportive about her interactions with Adam.
And adding that if she had known
his mother was uncomfortable with the situation
that she would have cutoff contact.
And after that Colleen goes on to clarify
her relationship with Adam.
And why she allowed him to tweet for her.
Noting that she has for years publicly asked fans
for advice on what to tweet.
Then saying that she used some
of Adam's tweets a few years back.
Saying that after that Adam asked her multiple times
if he could come up with ideas for posts.
Saying that most of the time
she actually didn't engage in those conversations
until recently when he sent her a folder full of ideas.
And after that, giving him what she described as a test run.
Saying that if it went well she wanted to hire him.
Notably here, because you know, there was kinda
a conversation about guilt in Adam's video,
she says that while he posted the tweet
that it was ultimately her fault in the first place
because she didn't look over those ideas closely enough.
- And when he posted it, I put zero blame on him at all.
It was my fault.
I knew better,
then to let someone else tweet for me.
I should have reviewed closely every single thing
that was going to come out of Miranda's mouth.
I let him know that I loved him, he did a great job,
it was my fault, not his.
- With Colleen ending her video
by saying she doesn't blame Adam, she wishes him success.
And that she hopes everyone can move on from this situation.
- No, I should have never sent a fan underwear.
How stupid am I?
No, I definitely should have never given
him access to my Twitter account.
And no, I shouldn't have talked to him as often as I did.
But I am not a monster.
I am not groomer.
And I shouldn't kill myself.
- And in general, following all of this,
the response to Colleen has been overwhelmingly positive.
People in general finding that
she provided much needed context.
While also at the same time, owning up to past behavior.
Which I will say, one of the standouts from her video
to me, was when she was kinda talking about
the ignorant stereotypes she's done in the past.
It should not negate her talking about racism now.
- People were saying how dare I talk about racism
when I said these things 14 years ago.
And to you I say, that is the exact reason why
I should be talking about racism.
And why I should be standing up against it.
Because I was one of the dumb ones
who said that stupid thing,
and grew from it, and learned from it,
and realized how hurtful it could be.
And now I wanna right my wrongs and make a difference
so that other people don't make the same mistakes
that I made when I was a kid.
- And that was something that really stuck out to me
because I don't think someone's past,
especially something from 14 years ago,
that it should lock them in a box,
preventing them from their own personal growth.
You know, it's a thing I kinda bring up
from time to time, unprompted.
I hate who I was before, I would punch that guy in the face.
And kind of also like Colleen said,
I feel like I've very much grown because
of the conversation I've had with my community.
Yeah, ultimately that's where we are
with this story right now.
Though I will note, this story is
just now starting to really, really blowup.
As we're filming today's show,
Colleen's video hit number one on trending.
We're starting to see the news articles come out.
Yeah, this might end up being an interesting one to watch.
But with that said, of course I do wanna
pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts around this whole situation?
And that is where I'm going to end today's show.
And hey, as always, thanks for watching, liking,
being a part of the conversation.
Maybe even sharing.
Also, if you're new here you wanna be a part
of these daily dives into the news.
Be sure to hit that subscribe button.
Maybe even tap that bell to turn on notifications.
Also, if you're looking for more to watch,
I definitely recommend you check out
that brand new podcast I did with Dr. Mike, or
maybe you just missed yesterday's show, you wanna catch up.
You can click or tap right there
to watch either of those right now.
But with that said, of course as always,
my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been Philled in.
I love yo' faces and I'll see you tomorrow.
- I hope you like the video.
Subscribe if you like it.