Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
When Colleen Ballinger first got started on YouTube, the platform was still brand new. “All these kids started making videos of themselves singing in their bedroom alone,” she said in a 2013 episode of MTV’s True Life. “I just posted a video kind of making fun of them to make my friends laugh.”
That’s how Ballinger’s world-famous character, Miranda Sings, was born, she said at the time. “And now, she’s a monster.”
Ballinger’s True Life episode captured the YouTuber at an inflection point in her career, when she was working overtime to scratch out a different, more durable kind of fame. A decade later, multiple ex-fans have come forward to describe the allegedly inappropriate contact they shared with Ballinger and other members of her circle.