The Colleen Ballinger fans are not alright
Miranda Sings' schtick unravels as the allegations mount.
Keep scrolling for Caroline Calloway’s ultimate grift.
Fans built Colleen Ballinger an internet empire… now they’re tearing it down
In a new exposé for Rolling Stone, journalist CT Jones dives deep into the recent Colleen Ballinger scandal — interviewing several former fans about their inappropriate experiences with the YouTuber and exploring parasocial relationships between early internet stars and their followers.
Over the past three weeks, Colleen has been accused of “abusing her power and engaging in toxic parasocial relationships with fans.”
The allegations also claim that her friend Kory Desoto, her ex-husband Joshua David Evans, and her brother Trent Ballinger have all used Colleen’s fame and access to message underage fans.
While the allegations aren’t criminal, Sacha Judd, a tech executive, writer, and expert on fandom, spoke with Jones about the “emotional power” that stars “within insular subcultures like YouTube fan groups” can hold and how quickly that power can be abused.
“Within the subcultures that arise from fandom, there’s this idea of capital that’s associated with access,” Judd tells Rolling Stone. “You know that you have increased cultural capital within the community that you’re a part of. So whenever there’s an opportunity to actually be in contact with the object of your fandom, that’s just sort of ripe for a really unbalanced power dynamic. Because the fan is nobody to the famous person and the famous person is absolutely everybody to the fan. And that can produce some pretty giant red flags.”
Jamie Cohens, PhD, an assistant professor of digital culture and media at Queens College, notes that the allegations against Colleen are consistent with how early YouTubers sometimes built relationships with fans, given the novelty of this medium.
“The earliest YouTubers had no real guidance,” Cohen says. “They were these mostly white kids that were basically saying, ‘Oh, we’re fighting back against the gatekeepers’, essentially inventing the platform as it went. They made their own rules. Early on, the comment section became the place that dictated how content was created. And it developed into a strange competition, where fans themselves felt like if they were noticed by the creator, it gave them power. And at some point [YouTubers] learned that parasocial relationships are their success model.”
Jones spoke to several former fans who said that Colleen and Kory cultivated relationships with minors by “talking about their emotions, feelings, and experiences.”
“They treated us all like they were our older siblings, like they cared about us,” one fan told Jones. “It was a weird dynamic, but it felt like a very tight-knit family.”
Read the full expose via Rolling Stone.
Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk agree to fight each other in a cage match
Tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are ready to brawl over their precious baby egos after it was revealed that Meta is set to launch a Twitter competitor app called Threads. Welcome to the peak capitalist hellscape!
Plans for Threads were first reported back in May as Meta’s “response” to demand from users for a version of Twitter that is “sanely run.” Meta will allegedly allow users to transfer followers, verification status, and their handle to this new platform.
On June 21st, Elon Musk replied to a post about Meta’s plans to launch a Twitter rival, joking that everyone on earth “can’t wait to be exclusively under [Mark Zuckerberg’s] thumb with no other options.”
He followed up by challenging the Meta founder to a cage match after a user warned Musk to “be careful” because Zuck does jiu-jitsu now.
For weeks, Musk has been taunting Zuck with tweets like “Zuck my 👅.”
Zuckerberg put a screenshot of Musk’s cage fight challenge on his Instagram stories writing, “Send Me Location.”
Read more about this battle of the egos via BBC.
Why David Dobrik is going all in on Snapchat
Kaya Yurieff for The Information’s creator economy newsletter explores why mega-influencer David Dobrik has “quietly” moved to Snapchat over the past 18 months.
David has quickly become one of the top creators on Snapchat, posting between 80-100 times a day to his 7.4 million subscribers.
“It’s a sign of how Snap has been able to court some more well-known personalities as it expands a revenue-sharing program designed to encourage creators to post more on its flagship app,” Yurieff writes.
During an interview at Cannes Lions this week, David explained that as a creator, Snapchat is the “easiest way of continuing what I was doing on YouTube and sharing my day-to-day life, but not edited.”
He went on to explain that vlogging on Snapchat doesn’t disrupt his daily life, as he can do it all from his phone without having to carry around equipment.
It’s unfiltered, real-time content without the production.
David’s embrace of Snap comes after he was “cancelled” for fostering a toxic environment within the Vlog Squad that led to dangerous, and sometimes illegal, behaviour going completely unchecked in the name of content.
The Vlog Squad was a collective of YouTube creators that filmed content together. David was at the helm.
On David’s decision to prioritise Snapchat over TikTok (which he doesn’t frequently post on), he notes that TikTok’s algorithm pushes content to anyone and everyone, which is a lot more pressure.
“On Snapchat, people have to find you on there. So, they really want to see the little minute details of your day,” he said. In contrast, on TikTok he believes, “you’re going to be in front of a lot of eyes quicker, so you just want something to be more polished and more exciting.”
Snapchat’s dedication to providing a more private user experience is appealing to creators, especially ones who have faced public scandals in the past.
Read the full story via The Information.
Caroline Calloway isn’t actually a scammer
Ashley Hamilton and Claire Parker of the Celebrity Memoir Book Club podcast recap Caroline Calloway’s highly-anticipated “memoir” in a two-hour episode that lifts the veil on the influencer’s alleged grift.
Caroline gained Instagram fame around 2013 while in her final year at the University of Cambridge.
Her photos served manic-pixie-dream-girl accompanied by multi-paragraph captions that “conjured up a fairy tale of spires and garden parties,” writes journalist Becca Rothfeld for The Washington Post.
In 2014, Caroline sold a proposal for a memoir called “School Girl” for a 6-figure sum. By 2017, she withdrew from her book deal, confessed to an Adderall addiction, and began selling “creativity workshops” to her followers for $165 that never eventuated.
In September 2019, writer Natalie Beach published the essay “I Was Caroline Calloway” in New York magazine. Natalie was Caroline’s former bestie. Her essay detailed their toxic friendship and exposed Caroline’s alleged grift— claiming that Natalie had ghostwritten much of Caroline’s work. The essay went viral and the lore of Caroline Calloway was well and truly solidified.
Throughout their review, the CMBC hosts recap her self-published memoir while unraveling the truth hidden within Caroline’s stories.
Though Caroline insists this is a memoir, Ashley and Claire argue the book is more what Caroline wishes her memoir could be— which is also part of the lore.
The podcast hosts suggest that this memoir is part of the Caroline Calloway character and that Caroline develops her character based on what other people project onto her.
Natalie accused her of being a grifter, so Caroline self-published a memoir called ‘Scammer.’
Vanity Fair called Caroline and Natalie’s friendship “gothic lesbian”, so Caroline wrote suggestively about their relationship as if it were romantic. (It was not.)
Ashley and Claire assert that above all else, Caroline is a liar rather than a scammer. Being a grifter is her grift and this memoir is just another instalment in the story of Caroline Calloway, the character.
Listen to the full episode via Spotify.
YouTuber Lewis Buchan accused of “grooming” teenage fan
In the wake of the manipulation and grooming allegations against Colleen Ballinger, internet users have watched as another YouTuber faces a similar fate. Commentary creator and member of the beloved Chaos Crew, Lewis Buchan, has been accused of grooming a fifteen-year-old girl when he was nineteen.
Earlier this week, a TikTok user named Megan posted a video alleging that a YouTuber had taken advantage of her.
Megan soon revealed that the YouTuber in question was Lewis Buchan. She went on to share screenshots of their messages as “proof” along with other evidence of their relationship — showing that Lewis followed her social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
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Throughout the messages, viewers can see Lewis complimenting Megan on her appearance, saying she is “gorgeous” and calling her “darlin’.” According to the screenshots, the creator even asked Megan to clarify her age, writing, “you’re sixteen now, aren’t you.”
“Lewis randomly followed me on Twitter in around March 2018 when I was 15… It became apparent he only randomly followed me as he had clearly seen my avi / selfies and decided that as a 15-year-old, I was attractive,” she begins. “He formed a friendship with me at the age of 15, so the second I turned ’16 and legal’ (the definition of grooming lol).”
She goes on to explain how Lewis added her to a group chat on Twitter full of “13 to 16-year-old girls” — something she described as “extremely questionable.” Megan also notes that the “worst” moments with Lewis were their conversations on Snapchat, claiming that he attempted to “sext her.”
Since Megan has made these claims against the creator, internet users and fellow YouTubers have criticised Lewis. Members of the Chaos Crew, like Alex Elmslie and Arthur TV, have posted statements saying they will no longer be working with Lewis.
Some fans of the Chaos Crew have been hesitant to condemn Lewis, arguing that he was only three years older than Megan and that this age difference should not be considered grooming.
Read the full story via Centennial World.
The rise of “anti-woke” influencers
This week’s infinite scroll podcast dives into the rise in "anti-woke" influencers. We first explore how and why there's been a recent uptick in "anti-woke" personalities online and how Trump's presidency played a major role in setting the stage for catapulting these influencers into the mainstream. We then look at how they make money, how their business model differs from the more "traditional" scams we see from influencers, and finally, we look at why scammers and grifters are so prevalent in the influencer space.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.