Untangling All the Controversy Surrounding Colleen Ballinger

Her YouTube alter ego may sing, but in real life it's Colleen Ballinger who continues to face the music. 

The Internet star best known for her popular, intentionally awkward Miranda Sings persona has found herself embroiled in controversy as of late, facing allegations of grooming and forming inappropriate relationships with underage fans.

On June 28, the 36-year-old mother of three—currently touring with her satirical, red lipstick-wearing, purposefully annoying teen personality— addressed the accusations in a 10-minute ukulele song that Ballinger posted to her personal YouTube account. In the video, Ballinger likened the accusations to a "toxic gossip train" headed for "manipulation station" as the rest of the internet "tie me to the tracks and harass me for my past."

Because this isn't the first time the star, who first created her teenage parody schtick as a 21-year-old vocal performance student, has faced allegations of having inappropriate relationships with minors, first responding to an ex-fan's claims in 2020.

And the Haters Back Off! star's ex-husband Joshua David Evans has also weighed in on the ongoing controversy, which also includes accusations of body shaming and sharing inappropriate images of fellow social media star Trisha Paytas.

E! News has reached out to Ballinger for comment and has not yet heard back.

Here's a timeline of Ballinger's controversies: 

When Colleen Ballinger created the character Miranda Sings as a way to poke fun at teens hoping to be discovered on the Internet, the theater-obsessed, annoying AF alter ego actually turned her into a YouTube sensation.

Soon, the vocal performance major had amassed 10.7 million subscribers and landed a Netflix original series titled Haters Back Off.

The persona was meant to be a joke between the classically trained singer and her friends, with Ballinger admitting she never thought the videos would take off.

"I had begun by posting some videos of my own performances, and then I started seeing these links from girls who would sit in their bedroom and sing into the camera," Ballinger explained to Broadway World in 2010 of Miranda Sings' origin. "I thought it was so stupid, because I didn't think anybody got famous off of YouTube."

Ballinger, now 36, and fellow YouTuber Joshua David Evans, now 39, begin dating after he watched one of her Miranda Sings clips and pursued her.
"He saw one of my videos, and he thought, 'There's got to be more to this,'" Ballinger told ABC News in 2015. "So he found videos of myself with my sister on my Facebook page.'"

Evans proposed in 2014, with their engagement video garnering 2.4 million views. "There's just a lot of eyes," Evans acknowledged to ABC News. There's a lot of people who are interested in different parts of your life."

A year after their 2014 vows, Ballinger and Evans announced they were getting a divorce, each posting a video to their individual YouTube accounts to address their breakup.

"You've watched us date, you've watched us get engaged, you've watched us get married," Ballinger said in her message. "We've shown you everything because we wanted to, and I don't regret any of that, but, you know, we chose to not share with you the hard parts of our relationship. And there were a lot of hard parts of our relationship."

In his own video, Evans stated, "I want it to be known that I am not choosing this divorce. I don't want this divorce. I want her, but I truly believe she thinks she is making the right decision right now."

Ballinger revealed in a YouTube video recap of her year that she secretly married Erik Stocklin, the actor cast as Miranda's love interest in her Haters Back Off TV series.

The couple welcomed their first child, Flynn Timothy Stocklin, that month, and twins Wesley Koy Stocklin and Maisy Joanne Stocklin followed in November 2021. In a YouTube video, the influencer explained that the babies were born more than a month earlier than expected and that she had to have an emergency C-section.

"I'm okay. The babies are both okay," she shared. "They're very little and they're gonna be living in the NICU for a while probably."

Irish Content creator Adam McIntyre—who first began running a fan account for Miranda Sings in 2013 when he was just 10 years old—posted a video called "colleen ballinger, stop lying" in which he accused Ballinger of putting him in uncomfortable situations when he was a minor.

Insisting that Ballinger had begun bad-mouthing him after a series of tweets he'd posted to her Miranda Sings Twitter account received backlash, McIntyre specifically called out an instance in which she sent him lingerie during a livestream.

Ballinger recorded an apology vlog in response to McIntyre's video, acknowledging, among other things, that the underwear incident was "completely stupid" and admitting, "I should never have sent that."

She had been unboxing items that had been sent to her, she explained, and she and her friend were making fun of the underwear and McIntyre asked for it to be sent to him, which she did as a joke. "I don't know what part of my brain was missing at the time that I thought, 'Oh, this is a normal, silly thing to do,'" she continued. "But I am not a monster."

Ballinger continued making content both for her Miranda Sings channel and as a family vlogger.

In a since-deleted video titled "why I left the colleen ballinger fandom…", YouTuber KodeeRants shared screenshots of an alleged text exchange between Colleen and her followers, accusing the comedian of forming inappropriate and exploitative relationships with underage fans.

Per NBC News, the unverified group text was named "Colleeny's Weenies," with the performer allegedly asking her fans their "favorite position" during one conversation.

KodeeRants has since deleted their YouTube and Twitter accounts and NBC News was unable to verify the screenshots.

On June 7, McIntyre responded with a series of videos on his own YouTube channel, recalling a time the then-31-year-old planned to spend the day with him in Dublin ahead of a June 8, 2018 show. He said they only ended up meeting for five minutes. He also claimed Ballinger grooms her fans emotionally. Ballinger has yet to directly respond to his claims.

Despite sharing that her team advised her to not publicly comment on the allegations of grooming and forming inappropriate relationships with underage fans, Ballinger broke her silence in a musical vlog.

While playing the ukulele and singing, Ballinger compared the accusations to a "toxic gossip train" headed for "manipulation station" while the rest of the internet "tie me to the tracks and harass me for my past." As she put it, "the only thing I've ever groomed is my two Persian cats. I'm not a groomer. I'm just a loser who didn't understand I shouldn't respond to fans."

Explaining through song, she said that she was attempting "to be besties with everybody" by sending messages to fans earlier in her career. Though she added there were "times in the DMs when I would overshare details of my life—which was really weird of me—and I haven't done that in years because I changed my behavior and took accountability."

McIntyre, now 22, took to Twitter shortly after Ballinger posted her video to react to the grooming allegations and her musical response.

"im glad her video did ONE thing," he tweeted June 28," show you all EXACTLY the type of evil woman she is, that a lot of us have experienced over the past few years behind the scenes, the mask has slipped…everyone meet the REAL colleen ballinger."

After Colleen issued her statement via song, her ex-husband Evans shared his thoughts on the controversy.

"This behavior was my reality anytime I spoke up & disagreed with her actions & rhetoric during 2009-2016," the actor tweeted on June 28. "I was gaslit too. I was made to feel like I was always the problem. Any pain I felt was an inconvenience and was belittled."

The former YouTuber, who split from Ballinger after just over a year of marriage, then posted a follow-up, clarifying his intention for speaking out.

"I have no desire to use this as a catalyst for a YouTube comeback," Evans wrote. "It's not a safe place for me. I'm past that. My voice is only here to help validate those that are hurting, nothing more. I have no need to make any money off of this. That is gross & not in my heart, whatsoever."

Trisha Paytas, a fellow YouTube star who co-hosts the Oversharing podcast with Ballinger, was pulled into the controversy after one of Ballinger's former fans alleged that she had sent NSFW photos and videos from Paytas' OnlyFans account to him

Johnny Silvestri posted several unverified screenshots to his Twitter on July 3 of a few of the interactions between him and Ballinger, going on to claim that she would host "viewing parties" to make fun of Paytas.

In a July 3 video, Paytas responded to Ballinger's alleged behavior, saying she does "not condone, at all—sending unsolicited nudes to anybody, sex worker or not."

"I think using someone's nudes as a way to hurt them, make fun of them, make light of them, be mean, is the lowest form of human," Paytas continued. "These weren't a long time ago. This is someone well into their 30s who just gave birth, sending nudes. And a month prior, I was in [Ballinger's] house, meeting her newborn and doing a Mukbang with her."

Paytas then explained she reached out to Ballinger over the photo allegations, but that she denied them.

"I did ask her about these a couple of weeks ago," Paytas claimed. "She assured me that she had never sent photos of me, [and] that this one fan who was underage at the time would send photos to her."

Paytas concluded her video by saying, "I will never speak on Colleen again. She just does not exist to me anymore." Ballinger has not publicly responded to Paytas' video.

After YouTuber Paige Christie posted a clip of Ballinger performing Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" as Miranda Sings with dark paint smeared on her face, Ballinger's team responded.

According to law firm Berk Brettler, Ballinger had actually painted her face green to look like Wicked's Elphaba while performing tracks from the hit musical.

"She painted her face green like the witch," the law firm said in a statement to NBC News. "After that number, she went right into 'Single Ladies' (while still wearing the green makeup). At that time, she closed all her shows with that Beyoncé number—it was one of her most popular bits."

This was not the first time Ballinger faced accusations of racist behavior. In the same 2020 video she used to address McIntyre's claims, the content creator apologized for employing "racial stereotypes" in a decade-old video in which she and her sister pretended to be Latinx women.

"It is not funny, and it is completely hurtful," Ballinger said at the time. "I am so ashamed and embarrassed that I ever thought this was okay."