Colleen Ballinger’s “Toxic Gossip Train” is still chugging along. Weeks after multiple fans came forward alleging that the YouTuber and others in her circle formed toxic, emotionally exploitative relationships with them as teens, NBC News reports that her upcoming live shows have been canceled.
Ballinger had been on tour as her alter-ego, Miranda Sings, since April, and had been scheduled to play about a dozen shows in the U.S. this summer, including dates in Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis. Now, most of her tour dates contain a “Cancelled” tag on Ticketmaster. The stops listed through partner sites also seem to link out to broken or “Cancelled” pages. Tour links on Ballinger’s website also come up canceled, broken, or with no dates listed.
At the same time, Ballinger’s recently released, not-so-apologetic apology song, “Toxic Gossip Train,” has popped up on streaming platforms including Apple Music and Tidal, leading some fans to speculate that the YouTuber is attempting to monetize the song. Ethan Klein, whose H3 Podcast recently ran an episode about Ballinger, has alleged on Twitter that she has uploaded the song to music distributor CD Baby and is “claiming” the show to profit from its use.
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A source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast that the song was uploaded to streaming platforms without Ballinger’s authorization.
Earlier this summer, multiple former Ballinger fans came forward alleging that she’d formed toxic relationships with them while they were teenagers. None of the former fans alleged that Ballinger solicited sex from them, but they did allege that she spoke with them for hours on end in group chats, in which she allegedly made inappropriate remarks and leaned on the teens for emotional support.
One former fan, 2o-year-old Adam McIntyre, first spoke out against Ballinger in 2020. He told The Daily Beast in a recent interview that at the time, “Absolutely no one wanted to hear me out. No one wanted to hear any take that wasn’t the popular one—which was her take.”
Ballinger posted a response video back then, in which she denied being a “groomer” or a “monster” but did admit she made the “silly, stupid mistake” of sending a 13-year-old McIntyre unused lingerie “as a joke” after a live-streamed giveaway.
This time around, Ballinger responded to fans’ allegations with a 10-minute song uploaded on June 28, accompanied by a ukulele performance. The YouTuber trilled about the “toxic gossip train” allegedly trying to run her over and insisted that she would not admit to “lies and rumors” that she claims were “made up for clout.” At one point in the song, she sings, “The only thing that I’ve ever groomed is my two Persian cats. I’m not a groomer, I’m just a loser.”
News of Ballinger’s tour cancellations has already swept Twitter. McIntyre’s response? A clip from Family Guy where Peter and Brian grab beers from the fridge while Peter’s daughter, Meg, weeps uncontrollably.
Ballinger’s tour isn’t the only project of hers to have fallen apart in the wake of this year’s controversy. Trisha Paytas, who launched the podcast Oversharing with Ballinger this year and recently addressed the allegations that Ballinger shared and ridiculed her adult content with fans, also confirmed Saturday that their collaboration is no more. In a YouTube video posted to her channel, Paytas said, “When I say I’ve never wanted a chapter in my life to be over faster than this, even though it was a really small, quick chapter, I mean it.”
