In her latest YouTube video, Colleen Ballinger says sending lingerie to a teenage fan “was a silly, stupid mistake that is now being blown way out of proportion.”
The video, uploaded Tuesday to her secondary channel Colleen Vlogs (which has 3.06 million subscribers and nets around 15 million views per month), addresses a number of allegations from 17-year-old Adam Mcintyre, who began interacting with Ballinger when he was 13 and eventually became her unpaid social media intern.
Mcintyre uploaded his own video, called Colleen Ballinger, Stop Lying, on April 28. In it, he included a clip from a 2016 live stream where Ballinger opened a box of brand-new clothes from Forever 21, and gave the items she didn’t want away to fans. One of those items was a matching bra and panty set. The clip shows Ballinger reading live replies from the stream’s viewers, and laughing at “sassy” and “rude” tweets from Mcintyre where he comments on how ugly the lingerie is.
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“I’m sending him something,” she tells friend Kory Desoto, who was jokingly modeling the set. “Maybe he’ll want the panties. Although then his parents will be like, ‘You’re not allowed to watch her,’” Ballinger laughs. In her video, Ballinger claims she forgot to send the set, prompting a followup tweet from Mcintyre asking where it was. After that, she sent the set to him–something that made his parents “furious,” he claims.
“I sent a child underwear,” Ballinger says. “And wow, anyone who heard this out of context and was offended, I completely understand, because I would be, too. But in this situation, context is everything.” She makes it clear the lingerie was unworn–except by Desoto, over his clothes–and said that she’s “always given away weird stuff, and so in my mind at the time this was no different than all the other weird stuff I’ve sent to my fans as a joke.”
Other items she’s given to fans, she says, include a taco costume, bobby pins, dirty shoes, and, most recently, a single piece of toilet paper.
“Now, in hindsight, I see how completely stupid of me…I should have never sent that,” she says. “I don’t know what part of my brain was missing at the time where I thought, Oh, this is a normal, silly thing to do. I should have realized and recognized how dumb that was and never sent it to him no matter how much he asked. But it was never a sneaky, creepy, gross thing that I was doing in secret.”
Other allegations
Mcintyre’s allegations go beyond the lingerie. He says he attended two of Ballinger’s live shows–one in 2016 and one in 2018–and that between them, in 2017, he and Ballinger began to talk in private. He says that throughout 2017 and 2018, he offered tweet suggestions for her signature Miranda Sings persona. Ballinger was “aware that the Miranda character had passed its time and that she didn’t really enjoy doing it anymore because she couldn’t really be problematic,” Mcintyre claims, and consequently sought his guidance in creating Twitter content.
In her response video, Ballinger concedes she used “a couple” of his tweet ideas over the two-year period, and says that, “Since then, he has asked me multiple times if he can help me out with social media again. I always thought that was really, really sweet, but most of the time I did not engage in those conversations, until recently.”
“Recently” was earlier this year, when Mcintyre began creating tweets for Ballinger from scratch. Ballinger gave him access to post from her account, and in private messages wrote, “I’ve never done this with anyone. But I’m trusting you. Right now I’m considering you my social media intern. But if things go well we can talk about me hiring you part time for an hourly rate. I don’t like using your creativity and insight for free.”
Then, in March, Mcintyre crafted the now-infamous tweet about Miranda Sings “coming out” as a Meghan Trainor fan. Mcintyre says Ballinger approved the tweet ahead of time, but after she began facing backlash and claims she’d been queerbaiting, he logged out of her account and stopped creating tweets for her.
Mcintyre and Ballinger’s relationship swiftly degraded, something Mcintyre claims led to Ballinger and people close to her “sh*t-talking” him on Twitter. “This has been going on in the background for so long, but it’s gotten so bad within the past three weeks,” Mcintyre says. He concludes that he’s taking a break from social media, and subsequent tweets appear to show his mother is handling his account for now.
Ballinger calls Mcintyre’s overall video “shocking and hurtful,” and said she has “receipts” for her side of things, but doesn’t want to show them because Mcintyre is a minor.
Past videos
Ballinger also uses the video to address years-old racist and fatphobic uploads of hers that have recently resurfaced. She says she believes people who are upset with her for not immediately and publicly responding to Mcintyre are digging them up, and apologizes for their content.
One of the videos is a 14-year-old clip showing Ballinger and her sister Rachel performing a skit as Latina characters, which were “completely based on racial stereotypes,” Ballinger admits. “It’s not funny, and it is completely hurtful. I am so ashamed and embarrassed that I ever thought this was okay.”
Another is a 12-year-old video where Ballinger makes disparaging remarks about a woman sitting next to her on a plane. “I watched this clip and I was appalled and shocked that these things were coming out of my mouth,” Ballinger says. “I am such a huge advocate for women’s bodies and loving every shape and every size and the fact that I talked negatively about someone who was overweight is absolutely disgusting to me.”
At press time, Ballinger’s video has 1.9 million views and is No. 9 on YouTube’s Trending tab.
