YouTuber apologizes for years' worth of controversial videos
Colleen Ballinger, better known as “Miranda Sings,” apologized to her followers for a series of videos she made over the course of a decade.
In a video titled “addressing everything,” the YouTuber expressed remorse over a series of jokes she made in the past, starting with a video she and her sister made pretending to be Latinx women.
She admitted that the characters they played were “completely based in racial stereotypes.”
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“It is not funny, and it is completely hurtful. I am so ashamed and embarrassed that I ever thought this was okay,” she said. “I was a sheltered teenager who was stupid and ignorant and clearly extremely culturally insensitive.”
A year after uploading the post, Ballinger deleted it. Some alleged she did it to avoid controversy, but she said she didn’t want anyone to be “hurt” by it.
Ballinger also apologized for fat shaming a woman she sat next to on a flight 12 years ago.
“That is not the woman I am today,” she said.
Additionally, Ballinger said sorry to anyone offended when she “insensitively” joked about having to put down a dog that bit her when she was a child.
“Still to this day as a 33-year-old woman,” she said she feels guilt for the dog’s death.
She then issued a sweeping apology for handling difficult topics with humor instead of sensitivity over the years, admitting that she didn’t think about how it would affect others.
“To anyone and everyone who was hurt or offended by the statements I made when I was younger, I am so, so sorry,” she said. “I hope you all can see that the person I am today is so far from the person I was a decade ago.”
Finally, Ballinger addressed a controversy that started just a few weeks ago when 17-year-old fan Adam McIntyre alleged in a YouTube video that she didn’t pay him for the content he shared to her Twitter account.
He also accused the YouTuber of sending him underwear and bras in the mail.
She denied McIntyre’s claim that she ignored him, saying she did not immediately speak out about the concerns “to respect the wishes” of the teen’s mother.
Ballinger said McIntyre only had access to her Twitter account for one day as a “test run,” admitting that one of the tweets about “coming out” as a Meghan Trainor fan was an oversight in the approvals process.
“I let him know that I loved him, he did a great job. It was my fault, not his,” she said.
Ballinger confessed that she did send the fan a bra and underwear, but insists they were new and it was nothing more than a joke well documented on a public livestream.
“In my mind at the time, this was no different than all the other weird stuff I send to my fans as a joke,” she said. “Now in hindsight, I see how completely stupid of me. I should have never sent that.”
Closing out her video, Ballinger said she will “continue to learn” from her mistakes and grow as a human being, but asked that cyberbullies learn that words have power, just as she has.
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