YouTube star Colleen Ballinger has finally responded to fans’ allegations that she interacted with underage fans in ways that were toxic and exploitative. Rather than put out a written statement or somber apology video, however, the comedian pulled out a ukulele and played a trite song—against the stated wishes of her “team” who she reveals “strongly advised” her not to “say what I want to say.”
“I recently realized they never said I couldn’t sing what I want to say,” she adds with a smile.
Fans including Adam McIntyre, now 20, allege that in private group chats, Ballinger behaved inappropriately when they were teenagers. In a YouTube video, McIntyre has shared screenshots in which Ballinger asks the group questions such as “Are u a Virgin?” and “What’s your fav position?” The allegations against Ballinger and others in her circle have made headlines in outlets including Rolling Stone and HuffPost.
ADVERTISEMENT
McIntyre first spoke out in 2020, and at the time, Ballinger posted an apology video in which she denied being “a groomer” or a “monster.” She also admitted to mailing McIntyre, who was 13 at the time, an unused lingerie set “as a joke” during a livestream giveaway.
Ballinger hadn’t posted on YouTube for weeks following the allegations, even as she reportedly lost at least two of her sponsorships. On Wednesday, she finally came back to address the allegations—but not in the way her former fans likely hoped.
Seated on her couch with her uke in a video simply titled “hi.”, Ballinger sings from the jump: “Hey, it's been a while since you saw my face. I haven’t been doing so great, so I took a little break. A lot of people are saying some things about me that aren’t quite true. Doesn’t matter if it’s true, though... Just as long as it’s entertaining to you.”
“Right?” Ballinger snarks, as if communicating with an audience at a live show. “You guys having fun?”
In another pantomimed interaction with her audience, Ballinger begins to explain why she believes it’s important to take accountability before stopping to say, “Oh, you don’t care? Oh, okay.”
In messages, HuffPost reports that Ballinger appears to have shared body shaming comments with fans, as well as details about her romantic life. HuffPost also reports that Ballinger appeared to participate in gossip about her own fans. The chorus of her song, however, decries the “toxic gossip train—driving down the tracks of misinformation.”
“Tie me to the tracks and harass me for my past,” Ballinger sings. “Those rumors look like facts if you don't mind the gaps. I won’t survive in the crash, but hey. At least you're having fun.”
Ballinger claims that she messaged her fans “not in a creepy way like a lot of you are trying to suggest,” but rather in “more of a loser kind of way, where I was just trying to be besties with everybody.” She further compared herself to a “weird aunt.”
“I’ve been sharing my life online for over 15 years,” Ballinger said. “I’ve poured my heart out to you, and because of that, I feel like I’m talking to my friends. But in the beginning of my career, I didn’t really understand that maybe there should be some boundaries there.”
Ballinger claims that over the past few years, she’s changed her behavior and taken accountability. “But that’s not very interesting, is it?” she sings.
At multiple points in her song, Ballinger compares the loss of her reputation to death. Beyond the train track metaphor, she also sings later that those who believe the allegations might one day “realize that the train is made of lies, and the person you despise maybe didn’t deserve to die.” Later on, she challenges her supposedly perfect audience to criticize her—“bring out the daggers made from your perfect past and stab me repeatedly in my bony little back.”
As Ballinger herself predicts in her own song, the comments on her song claiming her accusers made their allegations up “for clout” have not been kind. Some users balked at her choice to apologize in song, while another pointed out that much of her video appears to be “textbook manipulation!! everything from making it about herself by saying “im not doing well’ to victim blaming by saying ‘its all rumours made for clout.’”
“But what do I know?” Ballinger says at the end of the video. “Fuck me, right?”
McIntyre and other former fans have already begun responding on Twitter. “she did this to me in 2020,” McIntyre wrote. “i can deal with this again but i just can’t believe how truly evil this woman is, i’m so upset.”
