Crisis Public Relations

A Public Relations Perspective on Colleen Ballinger

     Scandals happen all around us. Typically, we as "normal" everyday joes, probably do not even consider what happens after a scandal. I can probably name about 8 celebrities right this second who have been canceled through allegations concerning their actions that they may or may not have conducted. Scandals result in negative publicity. As described by Law Insider, negative publicity "Negative publicity means information which has been made public that has caused, or is reasonably likely to cause, a decline or deterioration in your reputation or the reputation of one or more of your products or services." In response to negative publicity, many famous individuals will take it upon themselves to try to solve this backlash through some sort of apology. Throughout this text, I will speak about a YouTuber who happened to take a unique approach to her apology video. 

    Colleen Ballinger is a very famous YouTuber. She is not only a Youtuber, but she is also a comedian, actress, singer, and writer, and has been featured on Broadway. She is someone who I would consider to be one of the OG Youtubers who made YouTube what it is now. She became famous mainly through her Miranda Sings character. Miranda sings as a character who has a very strange attitude and behavior. This character can only be described as quirky, satirical, cringe, and funny. This character put her on the map. Through her character Miranda Sings, she went on tour, had a television show, and a movie. Right now, she currently has 10.6 million subscribers, and 3.25 subscribers on her other youtube channel. She has the channels; Colleen vlogs, and Miranda Sings. The video titled, “Free Voice Lesson” gained her lots of traction on YouTube, and caused her to catapult into fame. Although her Miranda Sings channel only covers the character Miranda Sings, her other channel shows an inner glimpse into her life as a wife, and a mother of twins. 

    The controversy around her started early this year. The allegations came from a YouTuber known as; 20-year-old Adam Mcintire. He claimed that she had inappropriate behavior towards him, groomed him, and sent him her underwear through the mail. He made a series surrounding her and what she had done to him when he was a child. Colleen's ballinger ex, Joshua Evans spoke about how she hadn't truly loved her fans but instead loved the benefits and attention that having fans had reaped. Multiple videos came out about her actions on stage with minors while she was on tour. On one of her tour dates, she brings a young man named James on stage. They are having a pretend date, and at the end of the date, colleen asks young James to pull a snack out of her pants. The other video that came up after these allegations was a video showing colleen as Miranda Sings having a young girl pretend to be birthing a child. While the child is lying on the ground, Miranda grabs her legs and spreads them. Colleen as Miranda says comments, such as "she smells fertile", and in this skit, she was also pretending to be the girl's uncle, and stated that she liked little girls."

 

There have been lots of differing claims from YouTubers surrounding her concerning her character towards children. 

    Trisha Paytas is a very famous YouTuber who speaks about how Colleen had inappropriate behavior around her. She speaks out about how Colleen had sent out naked photos of her to minors. Whenever she confronted Colleen, Colleen said that she had never sent Trisha's photos out, but instead, she stated that photos were sent to her by a fan who was obsessed with her. She also spoke about how she was friends with Colleen and had first trusted her, and then she heard about personal testimonies and claims about Colleen's actions towards minors. Colleen and Trisha had a podcast titled Oversharing. This podcast was immediately shut down after the allegations around Colleen had begun. Also, after all of this information went public, Trisha said that Colleen had called her apologizing stating that she had indeed sent out Trisha's naked photos to minors and that her bullying of her and sending out the photos was cowardice of her. 

    Jojo Siwa is another individual who I would like to mention. She claims that Colleen had nothing but appropriate behavior towards her. She speaks about how, being a Youtuber and a character, such as Miranda Sings, is difficult because some comedy that was completely okay years ago, is not okay anymore. She states that the work Colleen Ballinger has done is incredible, and that her character Miranda Sings is also incredible. Jojo Siwa and Colleen Ballinger had made videos together, whenever Jojo Siwa was very young and close with Ballinger. 

    Not only did the original video made by the YouTuber, Adam Mcintire cause a stir in her audience. But, she then responded in a completely different take of what we would normally call a standard Youtube apology video. This video is titled, “Hi”. In this video, we see Colleen playing the lyrics while singing about the claims that she groomed children. The title of the song is called: "Toxic Gossip Train." 

Some parts of the song that should be highlighted include; 

• "I've been wanting to come online and talk to you about a few things Um, even though my team has strongly advised me to not say what I want to say. I recently realized they never said I couldn't sing what I wanna say, so."
•  "Many years ago, I used to message my fans. Uh, but not in a creepy way like a lot of you are trying to suggest. It was more of a loser kind of way, where I was just trying to be besties with everybody." 
• "I've ported my heart out to you, and because of that, I feel I didn't really understand that maybe there should be some boundaries there." 
• "The only thing I've ever groomed is my 2 persian cats." "I'm not a groomer, just a loser."

This video was extremely insensitive. Some lyrics that she wrote that display how tone-deaf she actually was regarding these very serious allegations. 

Aftermath

    There were of course many videos made in response to this making fun of her Toxic Gossip Train song. Many skits show individuals pretending to be PR representatives and her manager cringing and cursing while she continues singing her catchy song claiming that she may or may not have groomed children back in her hay day of fame. Also after her original post, she put it on Spotify to monetize some of the profits. This is extremely cruel to the now-grown individuals whom she had been alleged to have groomed. Many YouTubers also commented about how she probably shouldn’t have tried to make profits off of an apology video. After her apology video, she lost a total of 190,000 subscribers. Many old fans of hers have posted about how it's a shame and horrible that she reacted the way she did to this very serious claim. She also has not been active on social media at all since her apology song video was released on YouTube, Apple Music, and Spotify.