Best Of 2023: Youtube Superstar Colleen Ballinger's Ukulele-Based Non-Apology Apology Video is a Morbidly Fascinating Train Wreck

I don’t know much about the world of superstar YouTubers because I am a forty-seven year-old husband and father and not a sad, lonely child with unhealthily intense parasocial relationships with their favorite performers. 

A few years back, however, I was assigned a very time and labor intensive article for a publication I was hoping to freelance for that involved watching pretty every motion picture made by a famous YouTuber. 

I watched a LOT of garbage for the article but the editor who assigned it ghosted me. After I had turned it in he explained that he was no longer with the publication so it wouldn’t run and I wouldn’t get paid. 

It was a frustrating experience. My journey through the dregs of Youtube-derived cinema was not a total waste, however. I was able to run the piece on this website and suffering through all those atrocities gave me insight into the weird, often icky world of people who make their living acting a fool on the popular website Youtube. 

Every once in a while I’ll read about a prominent YouTuber, generally after they’ve been accused of sexual improprieties, and look them up on Wikipedia. 

“Wow, that sounds fucking terrible. Like, unwatchably bad. Holy fuck. Kids will watch anything” has been my knee-jerk response to learning the shtick of pretty much every big time Youtuber I have encountered. 

I’m not wrong! That was my response when I subjected myself to the almost surreally irritating shenanigans of Fred Figglehorn, a famously insufferable irritant created and played by Lucas Cruikshank. 

That was also my response to the “comedy” of Shane Dawson, who became rich and infamous, loved and hated for a style of comedy so broad and regressive that it sometimes involved blackface. 

Holy shit did Fred and Shane Dawson suck. And they are the among the most popular YouTubers of all time! 

Everything that I read about Miranda Sings, an intentionally obnoxious, talentless narcissist obsessed with popularity, stardom and success played by Colleen Ballinger made the character seem unwatchable.  

Like Fred, Miranda Sings is supposed to be irritating. She’s purposefully insufferable, a deluded idiot for easily entertained children to laugh at and feel superior to.

The character is child-like and unhinged, a fame monster who does not realize that the world is laughing derisively at her. 

As with Fred and Shane Dawson, Ballinger’s heavy-handed shtick was so popular and her fanbase was so big and loyal that she escaped the Youtube ghetto and attained considerable mainstream success. 

Jerry Seinfeld, who knows a little something about having inappropriate relationships with teenagers, featured Miranda Sings on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and called her, ”a very well-developed character just as funny to me as to my daughter, who is 13. ... [The episode is] one of the best shows of Comedians in Cars we've ever done.”

You can learn all about Ballinger’s many accomplishments on her Wikipedia page, which, unlike the page of seemingly every other celebrity whose career and lives have been filled with scandal, does not have a “Controversy” section, or at least it did not when I wrote this.

The final paragraph of the “Reception” section of her Wikipedia page briefly addresses the controversy as a minor stumble in a life and career otherwise filled with philanthropy, satirical genius and critical acclaim.

Either she has a really good publicist or Wikipedia is slipping because for years she’s been dogged by controversies that are now exploding and threatening her uniquely charmed life and career. 

Ballinger has been accused of being wildly inappropriate and sexual with her vast army of underage fans in livestreams, private chats, DMs and just about any other medium where a famous, rich, powerful adult can interact with children, tweens and teens without parents looking on. 

I am never surprised when a celebrity YouTuber gets into trouble for inappropriate relationships with fans. Everything about the dynamic invites abuse and exploitation. 

I’m not exactly shocked when narcissistic exhibitionists who not only crave but need the intense validation of largely underage fans and play child-like characters abuse their extraordinary power. 

I’m actually more surprised when a YouTuber turns out to not be a predator or an abuser. 

Get a load of this loser!

In a horrifying but also unsurprising turn of events Ballinger has responded to allegations that she misused her power and celebrity by having inappropriate, parasitic relationships with underage fans in the most obnoxious manner possible: by making a ten minute long ukulele song about it.

Ballinger clearly learned nothing from the reaction to non-apology apologies from the likes of Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and John Kricfalusi. 

Like Spacey, Ballinger has puzzlingly decided to turn the tables on a world that would dare to judge her solely because of the awful things that she’s done. 

Also like Spacey, Ballinger asks us who the REAL monster is. It it someone accused of doing seriously inappropriate things with teenagers who have proof and receipts, as the kids say, or people inclined to believe negative things about her due to a preponderance of evidence? 

Unless we believe Ballinger, and defend Ballinger, and find her completely innocent even of the stuff she admits to, then aren’t we all, by definition, gossiping, clout-chasing little liars out to kill her and her career for our own sick benefit and amusement?

I’m not terribly well-versed in the gossipy, insular world of popular Youtubers but I am fascinated by unhinged narcissism wedded to a complete lack of self-awareness, which is the morbidly fascinating combination at play in Ballinger’s video. That’s a type I wrote about over and over again in my book The Joy of Trash and one I never get tired of dissecting.

Ballinger begins the video with several moments of silence and the sad face that children get when they want adults to think that they’re sorry about something they have done wrong and are rightly being punished for but actually could not have less regret about.

How appropriate! 

Then Ballinger picks up a ukulele and starts strumming insistently. 

“Hey! It’s been a while since you’ve seen my face/I haven’t been doing so good so I took a little break/There are a lot of people saying things about me that aren’t quite true” she begins before pausing dramatically and, with barely controlled bitterness, quipping angrily, “Doesn’t matter if it’s true though, as long as it’s entertaining to you.” 

Right out of the gate Ballinger establishes herself as the real victim of this whole controversy and the evil folks ostensibly being entertained by sordid gossip/genuine revelations as monsters out to destroy her for no damn reason at all beyond, of course, all of the legitimate reasons that they clearly lay out. 

“Right? You guys having fun?” Ballinger taunts people who would dare judge her, a wealthy and successful Youtuber who knows Jerry Seinfeld personally and is much better than you. 

If Ballinger wasn’t better than you would she nobly take full accountability for the things she didn’t do, and also even if she did, it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal? 

How many million of Youtube subscribers do you have? How many live tours have you done? I thought so. 

“All aboard the toxic gossip train!” Ballinger implores sarcastically on what I suppose qualifies as the song’s chorus. 

“You’re traveling down the tracks of misinformation, the toxic gossip train! You got a one way ticket to manipulation station, the toxic gossip train” She continues, really belaboring that metaphor.

But she still somehow isn’t done. “Tie me to the tracks and harass me for my past/Rumors look like facts if you don’t mind the gaps/and facts won’t survive in the crash but hey…at least you’re having fun.” 

At this point the entire railroad industry is begging Ballinger to leave them out of this. They’ve been through so much. Don’t they deserve a little compassion?

The metaphor-mangling Manic Pixie Dream Girl from hell then starts talking while still strumming that damn ukulele. 

“Hi everyone! I’ve been wanting to come online and talk to you about a few things even though my team has strongly advised me to not say what I want to say, I recently realized that they never said I couldn’t sing.” she talk-sings in a manner that she clearly finds adorable. 

When you’re trying to connect with the masses, nothing works better than telling the public that your manager, and your agent, and your publicist, and your literary agent, and your personal assistant and your booking agent and all of the many other people who work for you and with you, a self-professed “loser”, didn’t want you to do something but you went ahead and did it anyway. 

Also, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that her management definitely did not want her to sing her thoughts either if this was going to be the result. 

They did not want her to commit career suicide with a single video but she clearly knows better than people whose job it is to keep famous people from destroying their lives and livelihoods. 

Puffed full of self-righteousness, Ballinger says she’s only going to deal with facts and hopes that we’ll listen. 

“Many years ago I used to message my fans, but not in a creepy way like a lot of you are trying to suggest, it was more in kind of a loser sort of way. I was just trying to be besties with everybody. It was kind of like a family gathering and you know there’s a weird aunt there, and keeps going, ‘hey girl! What’s the tea?” and you’re like, ‘uh!” That was me, but in group chats with my fans. It was weird.” Ballinger explains. 

Ballinger helpfully states that she most assuredly did NOT behave in a creepy way before describing a dynamic with fans that sounds very creepy. Weird, yes. Creepy no. There is an important distinction between the two that apparently only Ballinger seems to understand. 

Ballinger herself seems a little creeped out by her own actions but nevertheless insists that they’re NOT creepy. The cognitive dissonance is strong. 

The Youtube superstar acknowledges that in the beginning of her career she didn’t understand the need for boundaries with fans. 

“There were times in the DMs when I would overshare details of my life, which is really weird to me. I haven’t done that for years, you see, because I changed my behavior and I took accountability” Ballinger sings. 

Ballinger may have once sought approval and validation from 13 year old fans but now she’s super rich and famous and receives approval and validation from her even richer, even more famous friend Jerry Seinfeld. 

“But that’s not very interesting, is it?” Ballinger seethes. If we reject Ballinger’s take then we are, by definition, bad people who should be ashamed of our actions, not her. 

The haters are DEFINITELY not backing off.

It’s a very Kevin Spacey move. The reasonable people in Ballinger’s life urged caution and sensitivity but she has such a powerful connection with us, her dear friends/adoring public that she can do an end run around PR professionals and win us all back with the most powerful weapon of all: truth! And also the ukulele!

I had hoped that Ballinger was done with the train metaphors but she goes on to further torture them by singing that on the toxic gossip train, “the locomotive’s fueled by hateful accusations!/Steamroll right over someone’s reputation! Hop onboard but close your eyes otherwise you’ll realize the train is made of lies/and the person you despise/maybe didn’t deserve to die but hey, at least you’re having fun!”

You monsters are KILLING Ballinger with your toxic gossip! She’s being murdered! She’s dead, you evil fucks. Is that what you want? To dance on her corpse?

It’s sort of like how a child having a tantrum will yell at their parents that they want them dead when really all they want is for them to brush their teeth or stop watching television and go to bed. 

Once again pointing an angry finger in our direction Ballinger rages, with a poetry slam inflection, “Your goal is to ruin the lives/of the person you despise/while you dramatize your lies/and monetize their demise.” 

Ballinger then gets meta as she anticipates and dismisses the very legitimate criticism her god-awful video is destined to receive. Putting herself in the mindset of her haters, Ballinger sneers, “I feel like I can already see the comments on this video. ‘She’s gaslighting! She’s manipulating! She’s a narcissist and a rat, I would never make a mistake like that! Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that all of you are perfect so please criticize me/bring out the daggers you made from your perfect past/and stab me repeatedly in my bony little back.” 

Ballinger makes an excellent point. Nobody is perfect so consequently no one has the right to criticize her. 

Once again anticipating the feedback she’s destined to receive she whines, “I’m sure you’re all disappointed in my shitty little song/I know you want me to say that I was one hundred percent in the wrong/Well I’m sorry I’m not going to take that route of admitting to lies and rumors that you made up for clout.” 

The public doesn’t want Ballinger to say that she was one hundred percent wrong. They just want her to show real remorse and not luxuriate in self-pity, bitterness and rage. 

I’ve never seen anyone be so angry while playing the ukulele. I wasn’t even aware that was possible. 

Ballinger responds to accusations she groomed her young fans by joking, “The only thing I’ve ever groomed are my two Persian cats/I’m not a groomer/I’m just a loser who didn’t understand that she shouldn’t respond to fans and I’m not a predator although a lot of you think so because five years ago I made a fart joke.”

Throughout the video she will stop, as if overwhelmed by the gravity of a situation she has chosen to deal with through a ten minute ukulele ditty overflowing with non-righteous anger and self-righteousness. 

Ballinger wants us to see that she’s suffering, that the words she has been called have scarred her deeply. 

Overcome with emotion Ballinger pleads,“I never had any bad intentions. But I do feel like shit.”

Don’t worry, Ballinger is extremely beautiful and conventionally attractive. She only plays someone unattractive and awkward on Youtube.

This leads to the part of the song-like thingy where she argues that people should be able to make a mistake without being eviscerated for it. That’s true but what she’s accused of is much more than a small mistake. 

“But what do I know? Fuck me, right?” Ballinger ends, closing a uniquely passive-aggressive tune with more accusations, defensiveness and bad vibes. 

It’s amazing that Ballinger was able to play the ukulele, that most precious of instruments, considering that in the video she essentially climbs up onto a crucifix and angrily complains to the whole online world that she is being crucified.  

We can all agree that what Jesus endured in the pounding sun with nine inch nails penetrating his hands was nothing compared to the loss of reputation, income, subscribers and sponsorship deals Ballinger may experience on account of all the creepy shit that she did with kids. 

Ballinger didn’t just lie to us. She lied to us through song. As The Simpsons illustrated, that is the worst kind of dishonesty. 

Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco 

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