44 Final Paper Case-Study: Miranda Sings/Colleen Ballinger Fandom

Introduction

In June 2023, an explosion of discourse began on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and News outlets addressing an incident involving Youtuber and media personality Colleen Ballinger and her online persona Miranda Sings. In early June, News reports from CBS, and CTV released articles that specific teenagers within the fandom came forward to speak about Ballinger and her boundaries with fans. CBS news published, “another TikTok user accused Ballinger of making her feel “sexually violated” when she called her up on stage during one of her live shows when she was 14 years old” (O’Kane, 2023). The purpose of this analysis is to understand ‘cancel culture’ and how thousands of fiercely loyal fans began to insult Ballinger’s reputation. The purpose of this is to address the differences between fandom and anti-fandom along with understand how fandoms can create hateful and toxic discourse. In terms of timeframe, the incident I will be addressing is the participatory culture of her fandom uploading videos on YouTube, TikTok and actively commenting on her platforms to better understand the audience’s affection and perspective. The specific incident that will be addressed is Ballinger’s 10-minute apology video which created thousands of fan reactions and was uploaded 5 months ago. This video currently has a staggering 16 million views on YouTube. The scope that will be addressed in this analysis consists of fan creation, participation, and more specifically platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. The fan range consists of young teens to early adults mostly loyal fans from 13-20 years old. The sources listed above generated the most media coverage and traction in terms of this incident. The timeframe begins June 2023 and ends in August 2023, creating over 2 months worth of discourse, memes, parodies, and comments. This analysis is being conducted to understand how anti-fandom and toxic fandom are similar and better understand fans affection towards Ballinger. This analysis will investigate what type of fans this event created and how passion, politics, affection, and parasocial relationship has become intertwined within this fandom.

Background

Ballinger’s backlash began when her live Miranda Sings shows was cancelled due to fans online saying that she had inappropriate relationships with her fan. Old videos came to the surface on media platforms of the Youtuber inappropriately harassing a fan on stage at one of her live shows. The fandom went even further in Ballinger’s past to discuss blackface allegations during a live performance as well. The 36-year-old Youtuber began facing intense backlash within her loyal fandom due to the political nature of the allegations. On July 28, 2023, Ballinger decided to respond to the criticism in song via YouTube which many labelled “insensitive” and “tone-deaf” due to the nature of the situation at hand and the seriousness of sexual assault allegations towards children. The song includes satire and sarcastic lyrics about how social media is the spread of misinformation and includes talk of her saying her haters are jumping on the “toxic gossip train.” This sparked even more internet hate and allegations labelling the media personality a “racist,” “groomer,” and “manipulator.” Her fans started digging through her past and addressing it via YouTube videos, stitching clips of live shows, and multiple DM messages from a group chat she had with her underage fans that got leaked online. These messages are discussed in Adam McIntyre’s video talking about his personal relationship with Colleen. Adam is one of the underage fans news channels are discussing that started this discourse towards Ballinger, the hour-long video is labelled “my relationship with colleen ballinger.” Within the video he displays messages Ballinger and him exchanged within this group chat that include topics of virginity as well as Ballinger asking for “pics” of fans bodies, outfits, etc. This video along with the apology video were both uploaded 5 months ago in late June and resulted in serious death threats towards Colleen. The Colleen Ballinger fandom displays tendencies of “cancel culture” due to the parasocial relationship within the YouTube space that uses participatory culture to create anti-fandom, audience commodity and content.

Case Study

Ballinger’s Fandom has been loyal for over 2 decades contributing to buying tickets for shows, consuming content posted on her YouTube and following her other channels like her online alter ego Miranda Sings. Audiences have raised many controversies and conspiracies over many media influencers over the years for similar situations. For example, In 2019 YouTuber James Charles was “cancelled” over the same rumours having messages of him and an underage boy being leaked where Charles is engaging in inappropriate behaviour with a minor. Lewis et al. (2022) outlines how “beyond the world of YouTube drama, the concept of “cancel culture”—which refers to distributed online campaigns that seek to address abuses of power, typically on social media platforms (Jackson et al., 2020)—has become a widespread and fraught issue in the media landscape.” The author theorizes that “cancel culture” could be a result due to the #MeToo movement in 2017 making audiences more aware of sexual assault and harassment within the media space. These “callouts” seem to stem from audiences holding elite influencers accountable due to their racist, homophobic, and sexists’ actions/comments.

On June 28, 2023, Ballinger posted a video to her personal YouTube channel ‘Colleen Vlogs,’ The video is captioned ‘hi.’ and is a 10-minutes long video of her addressing these rumour and accusations towards her morals, reputation, and character. The song includes talk of a ‘toxic gossip train’ and ‘how rumours look like facts if you don’t mind the gaps.’ This video now has 16 million views 5 months later and started an explosion of backlash having audiences make fun of, recreate, and comment upon the video on YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts about the insensitivity and ignorance of the video. Gupta (2023) outlines that “the video reportedly amassed 3.7 million views in 24 hours, and the overall response to the video was one of bemused horror.” She specifically states in this video that her actions were due to being a ‘loser’ and messaging her fans because she thought they were her friends. Ballinger expressed how her team “has strongly advised me to not say what I want to say” (Colleen Vlogs, 2023). She further states that her haters are spreading ‘misinformation’ and she decided to clear this up through a song she wrote accompanied by a ukulele. She commented on her video stating “I do not condone or support any kind of online bullying or hate towards anyone. ever.” I will now discuss post-apology video texts that I have collected to understand this fandoms behaviour and affection. The most common response to the apology video by fans and supporters were by recreating this video. One creator @georgiawiggins, posted a TikTok making a similar video in an iconic and sarcastic way to recreate a ‘Colleen Style’ apology video also captioned ‘hi.’ The influencer received backlash for not tagging a creator for an idea credit and ended up receiving 30,000 views on that TikTok.

Participatory culture takes active audiences and shifts them to interactive with the use of fan recreation, memes, and videos. This clip shows how prosumers become prousers in similar situations to display feelings on the topic. “The apology was roundly mocked—especially on YouTube, where parodies have already gotten millions of views” (Quintina, 2023). Another example of participatory culture through textual and audience commodity is MeatCanyon who is known for recreating pop culture moments made a cartoon version of Ballinger’s apology video of her singing with other cancelled Youtubers such as Logan Paul, Shane Dawson, Jeffrey Star, and James Charles. This was an example of ironic audience commodity by using their video to shame these cancelled Youtubers and promote their MeatCanyon merch. Many of Ballinger’s fans commented under the post, one wrote “this makes the apology bearable” (A2 Image) expressing that this version of the song was better than the original due to it being funny. These comments are very similar to the comments posted under her original apology video where viewers stated that the video is ‘painfully millennial’, and she is ‘brave for having the comment section on’ (A1 Image). Most of her fandom wanted her to take “real” accountability for her actions instead of replying via song when talking about such deeply political and morally wrong issues.

The discussion of the incident did not stop on TikTok and YouTube, Many famous influencers put in their opinion such as Jeffrey Star who has also faced controversies on social media which started as a Reddit thread and lead to fans posting clips on YouTube Short and TikTok. Star recommends certain influencers ‘rethink their actions’ and ‘musical choices.’ Tana Mongeau and Trisha Paytas also discussed this on a Podcast where Mongeau states ‘apologizing for anything with an instrument is hilarious’ clowning Ballinger’s actions. Along with her fandom responding, Adam McIntyre who was one of the alleged victims of Colleen posted multiple videos including a ukulele response also labeled ‘hi.’ where he says that she made his life ‘hell.’ This is an example of textual productivity due to being a direct response of Ballinger’s video engaging and furthering the backlash online. The comments under this video agreed and sided with McIntyre with one comment stating “adam had the chance to do the funniest thing possible and he did” (A3 Image).

Analysis

The Ballinger/Sings fandom started to become an anti-fandom through ‘cancel culture’ actions and backlash. Anti-fandom is a concept to explain the passion and highly charged viewers of a fandom. Fans cannot be apart of an anti-fandom without knowledge due to the high volume of views and comments under Ballinger’s apology video. This means that her fandom in bodies anti-fan practices through cynical and visceral hatewatching. Even though the fandom actively hates her and participates in participatory culture over a controversy they do not agree with, they still watch and keep up with her. This is due to cynical hatewatching, watching her apology video and Reddit threads because it is so bad, like a car crash; something you know is terrible, but you cannot look away. This also could be put into the category of visceral hatewatching because majority of the audience is watching it but deeply upset, frustrated and angry at the same time. This is due to the expectation that Ballinger would make a heartfelt response to the backlash due to the sensitivity of abusing children, but she did make an apology but the mode she packaged it in was highly upsetting towards viewers making them feel the apology was insensitive and satire. Not only does her fandom have very deep-rooted feelings towards how this incident but is extremely vocal in expressing it with comments such as gas lighter, groomer, racist, and other generational terms related with negativity such as “old” and “millennial.” The fandom used their voice causing serious change within Ballinger’s reputation and occupation. After the backlash, Colleen’s podcast “Oversharing” only having a total of three episodes was cancelled due to the fandom incident. A content creator also came forward to post clips that started to resurface of Ballinger wearing blackface in one of her shows from 2009. This sparked a highly political debate on Twitter labelling her a racist on top of the groomer allegations. “On July 5, content creator Paige Christie suggested on Twitter that Ballinger might have donned blackface in a Miranda Sings performance of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” which several media outlets reported on” (Chery, 2023). Abate (2019) explains that “these features add to ongoing discussions about the insidiousness of racism and the lingering legacy—as well as popularity—of racially denigrating modes of entertainment in the United States” (p. 134). Ballinger’s team responded, “they noted Ballinger had instead painted her face green modeled after the witch in the Broadway hit Wicked before she performed Single Ladies” (Rios, 2023). Trisha Paytas (former friend) and Joshua David Evans (ex-husband) took to social media due to the negative engagement of fans to extend sympathy towards the victims and their families along with publicly state they do not agree with Colleen’s actions. This is an are example of politicized fandom being Trisha Paytas, Joshua Evans, Tana Mongeau who are not politicians chose to speak out on the politics of sexual assault, harassment, grooming and racism.

Memes were created on Twitter to commemorate her post comparing the bad apology to Logan Paul’s famous apology video (A4 Image) along with a SpongeBob meme of Squidward in complete shock (A5 Image). The fandom engaging with different influencers and asking for their opinions, leaving comments, sharing memes, and creating videos serves as participatory culture and audience commodity creating not only a platform of ‘cancel culture’ but a deeply politicized anti-fandom that feels like they are directly affected by this influencer’s actions. Now I want to address why this happened and why fans were so deeply upset. This incident creates a fandom that feels directly related to the issue covering specific themes such as morals, values, human decency, and sexual assault survivors. This fandom uses ‘affect’ one of the four key dimensions of politicized fandom. Fans use feelings of understanding, empathy, and accountability that affect their emotions towards Colleen due to her being an active part of fans lives for over 2 decades by posting media content. This significant length of her digital footprint creates a betrayal and disappointment within fans who genuinely believe they know her and feel as if they are friends.

Aw et al. (2021) outlines how the more frequent an influencer posts the stronger the parasocial relationship is due to their consistency online. “For instance, celebrities are able to reduce interpersonal uncertainty and engender more intense parasocial relationships through higher posting frequency” (Aw, 2021). The fandom is acting as an affective public due to the strength of the parasocial relationship they have with the Youtuber. “Through mass media, such as TV and radio, these personalities foster ‘intimacy at a distance’, whereby audience members feel they know them in an intimate and profound way, despite the relationship being one-sided and non- reciprocal” (Mardon, 2023). Mardon et al. (2023) describes parasocial relationships as feeling like they know and have intimacy with the person they are watching through the consumption of their content. The parasocial relationship between audiences and viewers cause audiences to relate to viewers and think they have similar morals than them. When this is not justified within their behaviour they resort to “cancel culture” and anti-fandom practices. This emotion is based on shared experiences of consuming the content Ballinger has been posting. Fans producing memes, making comments, and recreating her videos is a form of audience commodity, participatory culture, and expressing meaningful feelings communicating through the mode of social media that comes out as a form of ‘cancel culture.’ This interactive fandom shifts ‘fan identity’ from a loyal parasocial relationship to a toxic anti-fandom that spreads hate and name calling. The now anti-fans collectively believe and feel as if Colleen’s brand and franchise along with textual products such as posts, content, merch, and tickets are all uncredible. Feeling deep emotions of betrayal is not because they have been betrayed but are rooted within trust. Celebrities exclude this ‘trust’ to sell brand deals and gain followers maintaining a happy fan base. Chung et al. (2017) argues that “the relationship between social media interactions and source trustworthiness is mediated by parasocial relationships.” Since Miranda and Colleen are the same person but with different ‘brands’ they still received the same hate due to sharing accounts and connected morals. This is very apparent that fans are projecting a “personal is political” mentality being personally offended and having deep feelings about the sexual assault allegation from a place of empathy towards the victims.

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to better understand the tendencies of fans when they dislike/hate an influencer. This matters because understanding the parasocial relationship between audiences and creators can help us to identify emotions and reasons for this strong anti-fandom. Anti-fans are important to help keep influencers, celebrities, and creators accountable for their actions especially when they are politically incorrect. This case study was used to identify why fans who dislike Ballinger are still reposting, engaging, and recreating her content when they are outspokenly apart of her anti-fandom. The findings I have uncovered due to the texts and research I have referred to above is that you cannot hate someone or something if it is not relevant, not only has Colleen been relevant for decades on the internet but most of her younger fans 12-13 years old, do not remember a time on the internet where she was not relevant. The combination of her digital footprint strengthens the connection between fans to believe that they are, as she states in her video “besties.”

The main emotion behind why fans are now upset and causing this incident to occur is due to trust and now feeling like that trust was broken. This caused a reaction of anti-fans that quickly turned into toxic-fandom. I realized not only does the Colleen Ballinger fandom have tendencies of ‘cancel culture’ but they rightfully claim that label. This fandom believes that even though these actions happened to specific children and not the entire fandom that they should be the ones who rightfully hold her accountable through death threats, vile comments and agism. This suggests that if a fandom believes a person is bad, they will treat the person as if they were bad to them. This also signifies that even at a distance the audience’s reaction will be just as if a friend were to betray them harbouring resentment and hate. This could be partially due to the responsibility the fandom feels for making this person relevant in the media space and than feeling betrayed when they do not use their platform as they intended to. This displays how moral and values that align between fandom and influencer are more important that the actual content being consumed.

In conclusion, the Colleen Ballinger fandom not only is an example of cancel culture, audience commodity, participatory culture, and anti-fandom but also displays specific friendship tendencies, expectations and emotions that can become increasingly ugly and toxic. These emotions and feelings of ‘untrustworthiness’ manifest into videos, recreations, trolling, clowning, and hateful comments portraying participatory culture and audience commodity. The influence of this fandom and their actions was so drastic that shows were cancelled, tickets were no longer sold, and podcasts were cancelled. This made a difference especially revealing how strong fans feelings towards accountability and politics are post #MeToo movement. Another specific reason why this is significant not only to the Ballinger fandom but for future fandoms is due to relation; the way we relate to others specifically people we watch on platforms. The demographic for her fandom is 10-20 years of age which is a highly influential group of people, Colleen being in her thirties although she never claimed to be, is a role model through her age and relevance making a big impact on young minds. Fans look up to people they think they are alike and when that is wrong, they act out by forming a strong anti-fandom. Lastly, the biggest challenges writing this was due to the massive influx of text and comments especially being only 5 months ago, the digital footprint of Miranda and Colleen is over 2 decades worth of content which was hard to figure out what is important and what is not. If I could explore this incident further, I would like to touch upon the reaction when these influencers try to ‘come back’ after being cancelled and how fandoms feel when that happens. It would be interesting to understand grudges and why forgiveness in the social media space in terms of fandom is so important.

References

Abate, M. A. (2019). “The New Millennium Minstrel Show”: Blackface Elements in Seinfeld, Parks and Recreation, and Miranda Sings. The Journal of Popular Film and Television, 47(3), 132–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2018.1540394

Aw, E. C.-X., & Chuah, S. H.-W. (2021). “Stop the unattainable ideal for an ordinary me!” fostering parasocial relationships with social media influencers: The role of self-discrepancy. Journal of Business Research, 132, 146–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.04.025

Chery, S. (2023, July 12). Colleen Ballinger cancels tour amid ‘grooming’ and racism allegations. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/07/12/colleen-ballinger-miranda-sings-grooming-allegations/

Chung, S., & Cho, H. (2017). Fostering Parasocial Relationships with Celebrities on Social Media: Implications for Celebrity Endorsement. Psychology & Marketing, 34(4), 481–495. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21001

Gupta, R. (2023, July 3). A timeline of the allegations against YouTuber Colleen Ballinger. Junkee. https://junkee.com/colleen-ballinger-allegations-timeline-grooming-racism/352390

Lewis, R., & Christin, A. (2022). Platform drama: ‘cancel culture,’ celebrity, and the struggle for accountability on YouTube. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/zpukg

Mardon, R., Cocker, H., & Daunt, K. (2023). When parasocial relationships turn sour: Social media influencers, eroded and exploitative intimacies, and anti-fan Communities. Journal of Marketing Management, 39(11–12), 1132–1162. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257x.2022.2149609

O’Kane, C. (2023, July 10). Colleen Ballinger Faces canceled live shows and podcast after inappropriate conduct accusations. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colleen-ballinger-miranda-sings-cancelled-live-shows-trisha-paytas-ends-podcast-inappropriate-behavior-minors/

Quintana, A. (2023, July 19). How the miranda sings/Colleen Ballinger scandal went off the rails. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/miranda-sings-colleen-ballinger-explained

Rios, E. (2023, July 10). YouTuber Colleen Ballinger loses shows over alleged inappropriate behavior. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/10/youtuber-colleen-ballinger-shows-canceled-alleged-inappropriate-behavior