What Ever Happened to Colleen Ballinger?

The Ukuleleing of A Career

I can’t, as a PR, tell you firmly enough, not to address rumours of pedophilia, revenge porn, grooming, and inappropriate contact with children via ukulele. Please do not write a song and perform it, refusing to apologise, to millions of enthralled, horrified views. I hope you don’t need to pay me for saying that. But there’s a lot of ‘do not’s in this story that we probably need to unpack here. Because the Ballinger Effect reveals something fascinating about how we engage with an Icarusian fall from grace.

Wait, what happened?

For those of you who don’t know, Colleen Ballinger is a YouTuber, best known for her character Miranda Sings. If, like me, you were a tween or child in the early 2010s, you can probably remember a heavily lipsticked woman singing popular music comically badly. That was Colleen. She was massive. Huge. Huge that is, with children.