YouTuber Colleen Ballinger’s controversial ‘Gangnam Style’ parody resurfaces amid backlash
By Bryan Ke
July 11, 2023
YouTube star Colleen Ballinger is being accused of mocking Koreans after her parody video of PSY’s 2012 hit “Gangnam Style” went viral amid intense backlash.
Key details: The now-deleted video was uploaded to Ballinger’s channel in 2012. It shows the content creator singing PSY’s international hit with a gibberish Asian accent as her online character “Miranda Sings.”
Ballinger also inserts several Japanese words into her parody’s unintelligible lyrics, such as “Tamagotchi” and “sudoku.”
The 2012 parody video purportedly received over 6.7 million views before it was taken down, as seen in a clip uploaded to Twitter by user @nyalkilmer.
Not the only one: Ballinger uploaded another controversial music video two years later — a parody of Jason Derulo’s 2013 song “Talk Dirty,” which she titled “My Family.”
Derulo’s “Talk Dirty” intro includes an Asian woman giggling and calling the singer by his first name. Ballinger mimics the intro in her parody, with her sister Rachel saying her name in a fake Asian accent while wearing a stereotypically Asian outfit, Rolling Stone reported.
The offensive intro reportedly remained in the parody video before it was scrubbed from her channel, as seen in the Wayback Machine.
First accusation: Adam McIntyre, a former Miranda Sings fan, first accused Ballinger of taking advantage of him using her stardom and got him to work for her for free in a video uploaded in April 2020 titled “Colleen Ballinger, Stop Lying.”
In an apology video titled “addressing everything” posted a month later, Ballinger admits she sent McIntyre a pair of unused lingerie “as a joke” and, in hindsight, notes at around the 6:43 mark that she “should have never sent [him] that.”
The issue continues: New information regarding Ballinger surfaced on June 10, three years after McIntyre’s initial video, in the form of a now-deleted video from KodeeRants, another former fan of the YouTuber, confirming the existence of a Twitter group chat called “Colleeny’s Weenies,” where Ballinger allegedly sent inappropriate messages to her minor fans.
Although KodeeRants’ now-deleted video corroborated McIntyre’s claims about the chat group, some screenshots of the messages have been on the internet since August 2022.
Other accusations: Ballinger was also accused of exploiting a minor’s body when she called a fan onstage at one of her live shows, only to spread her legs and embarrass her in front of the audience.
Apology backlash: Ballinger eventually issued another apology video on June 29 in which she sang her message accompanied by a ukulele, igniting further backlash.
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