The Colleen Ballinger controversy and ukulele apology song, explained

polygon.com:

Colleen Ballinger, a popular YouTuber and comedian known by the character name Miranda Sings, shocked fans with a video posted on Wednesday. The video was released amid several allegations that the creator used her celebrity to allow for toxic, exploitative, and hurtful interactions with fans, as described in reporting at Rolling Stone and numerous other outlets. Instead of a traditional apology video, however, Ballinger instead pulled out her ukulele and gave a defense of herself in an original song.

Ballinger began the video with a spoken introduction: “Hey 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 they never said that I couldn’t sing what I wanted to say.”

While apology videos are a dime a dozen in a culture where creators with online fandoms have often been accused of abuse, this one stood out — if not only for the haphazard dismissal of serious allegations and the stated disregard of her own team’s apparent advice, but for just how cringe-inducing it is to address these allegations through a corny song. The video captured the attention of the wider internet beyond Ballinger’s own fan base, and it inspired both longtime fans of hers and skeptical viewers alike to go to social media to drag the video. The 10-minute video racked up over 3 million views in a day.

In the end, the video propelled the controversy to new levels of notoriety, but there’s a lot behind Ballinger’s response to the allegations and the larger controversy itself. So no matter what level of familiarity you have with Ballinger and her character Miranda Sings, we’re here to explain everything behind the controversy