Name: Colleen Ballinger: Power Dynamics in Parasocial Relationships
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T16:59:27.000Z
Duration: 13 min 46 s
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I want to talk about Colleen Ballinger and the dangerous power dynamics in parasocial relationships.

Basic passive voice

Now, if you haven't heard, Colleen Ballinger was accused of grooming children, so she wrote a children's song.

Adverbs of degree

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.

I've seen some horrible apology videos in my day, from Laura Lee's Waterworks to Sienna May's interpretive dance to Logan Paul's PR campaign.

this is the first time that I've seen someone with serious allegations bust out an ukulele.

If you don't know who Colleen Ballinger is, congratulations.

Everything I have learned about this woman has been against my will.

Colleen is known for her character Miranda Sings, who is this parody of untalented theater kids who have delusions of stardom.

She's got nearly 20 million followers across multiple YouTube channels, created the Netflix series Haters Back off and was even in the Broadway musical Waitress.

Now, if you've never seen the Miranda Sings comedy, once again, congratulations.

I don't get it, but I'm also not the demographic for it because the audience is predominantly underage.

Now in 2020, very serious allegations came out against Colleen by 17 year old Adam McEntire with various claims of sexually inappropriate behavior, emotional abuse and manipulation.

According to Adam, he was a fan since 2012, but

he developed a more personal relationship with Colleen in 2016 and that by the following year they became good friends.

Now keep in mind, Adam was 13 while Colleen was already in her 30s.

During this friendship, Adam's video outlined several allegations, but

for the sake of this, I only want to address the most serious ones, primarily that Colleen was emotionally manipulative, abusive and groomed him as well as other children.

Adam as well as other underage fans were a part of a private group chat called Kalini's Weenies.

Now he said that Colleen would enter the chat and talk about her sex life emotionally dump on the Weenies during her divorce, basically using a group of children as her own personal therapy as well as mobilized all of them to harass her ex husband who she privately accused of abuse.

Adam also states that when he was around 14 or 15, she had sent him lingerie in the mail and what she insists was a joke and completely stupid.

To support these allegations, Adam provided screenshots where Colleen would ask him are you a virgin or what's your fave sex position?

When he was doing a Q and A There's also a screenshot where Adam mentions that they felt their ass looked good that day, and

Several former fans said that when they were minors, they would video chat with Colleen as often as five times a week for several hours at a time, and

that often these conversations were about her ex husband.

Now, shortly after the accusations in 2020, Colleen did make a public apology video called Addressing Everything.

This was positively received by the public because she acknowledged some of Adam's accusations as well as these other instances of racism and bigotry from past videos.

And she did seem to take accountability using language like, this is all my fault.

That was completely stupid and it was okay.

But in the last few years, Adam has remained vocal that despite Colleen's public behavior, she has privately tried to silence him, refused to give him a personal, private ap and that this behavior is not isolated to just him, but

Several former fans have come out and shown support for Adam and cited very similar experiences with Colleen.

Now, the mass media really caught onto this story to the point that Colleen's silence for four weeks and an uncanceled tour was really creating mounting public pressure for a response, which is when she released.

Before I can get into the unhinged content of this denial video and dive into the power imbalances of parasocial relationships, I really.

I really first just have to point out to have serious accusations against yourself, you, a mother of three, about grooming and being sexually inappropriate with other children, to then think and decide to respond with, let's see.

I could write a song that's insane to address something as serious as being a predator with like, a quirky, Zooey Deschanel esque ukulele.

The writers for this season, they gotta go because I watched this video and all I could think about as a content creator is how long it took her to make message.

Sometimes children say you gave them lingerie.

Not only did she write this song, but it's in one take.

So she had to rehearse this and memorize it.

It's even more insane when you consider this performance is 10 minutes long.

The not too well performance also included a fake out and several dramatic pauses that she clearly wrote in.

She then had to transfer the footage to her computer, watch the various takes.

She did choose one and upload it to YouTube.

She could have put this much thought into just like, I don't know, reflecting on her own behavior.

Colleen even acknowledges in this that she she's going against the advice of her team.

My team has strongly advised me to not say what I want to say.

I recently realized that they never said that I couldn't sing what I want to say.

And at no point during this process and monumentous effort did she stop and think maybe some of her opinions were not it.

You're chugging down the tracks of misinformation.

Kalina insists that she's only gonna address the facts, but

the facts are the minors coming out have screenshots of her saying explicit things to them.

So I'm not sure what world she's living in where this would classify as misinformation.

One of the most infuriating parts of her non apology is that the whole thing during the entire 10 minutes, she's constantly positioning herself as the victim in this scenario.

Many years ago, I used to message my fans, 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.

She completely disregards and downplays the power dynamic that she had over a group of children who idolized her.

And she also like invalidates all of their feelings about her actions.

She dismisses this behavior as someone who just overshared and didn't know boundaries, as though those things cannot exist in the same reality as the allegations.

Even more infuriating, Colleen claims that everyone's just bringing stuff up from her past for clout to ruin her reputation.

She even ends with the audacious line, what do I know?

It is really giving me flashbacks to Kevin Spacey's Let me be frank.

Of course, some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all.

I know you wanted me to say that I was 100% in the wrong.

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Colleen Ballinger: Power Dynamics in Parasocial Relationships

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