The 'Traumageddon' Reckoning

Issue #144 | June 20, 2023

Youtuber Colleen Ballinger is currently facing an onslaught of allegations of grooming and inappropriate behavior from former young fans and employees. Though the situation, known as “traumageddon,” may seem like niche influencer drama, it’s actually indicative of how creators have come to hold each other accountable.

I’ll sum it up for you. Over the past few weeks, several people have come forward with allegations about past inappropriate relationships with the creator behind Miranda Sings, a character with overlined red lips and an off-key singing voice with an army of young followers. The deluge of accusations was initiated by a now-removed video from YouTuber KodeeRants. That’s a pattern we often see in pop culture: One person comes forward with allegations, which in turn inspires others to speak out about similar experiences.

What’s particularly unusual about the situation, though, is that KodeeRants wasn’t the first to come forward. Adam McIntyre, who was 17 at the time, accused Ballinger of grooming him back in 2020. His “colleen ballinger, stop lying” video launched his career as a drama YouTuber, and in turn, he was accused of clout chasing and making false allegations for attention.

Since then the video from KodeeRants, screenshots of inappropriate messages Ballinger sent her young fans have emerged from several different accounts. One person came forward to speak about how Ballinger made them feel uncomfortable on stage at a show.

Instead of standing by and accepting the validation of public opinion finally swinging in his favor three months later, McIntyre rehashed his childhood trauma multiple times to make comprehensive videos about the allegations against Ballinger on his channel with more than 200,000 subscribers.

Around the time McIntyre first released his video about Ballinger, the YouTube landscape looked different. So-called “drama” often involved beauty influencers beefing over personal disagreements and issuing tepid apology videos. Months earlier, Tati Westbrook released a video full of hearsay that turned the world against James Charles, only for him to maintain an immense amount of power. Mainstream media barely covered YouTube in-fighting.

Not much has changed. A small part of this is because of what I’ll call the “Baby Gronk” effect—it’s hard to make an audience care about new characters, especially if they make them feel old, even if said characters start an important conversation about the relationships between creators and their underage fans.

Since so much of the creator economy is openly an exchange of attention, it’s easy to dismiss people as clout-chasing—even when they’re talking about very serious allegations. Often, drama is all about keeping attention on you. This makes it even more difficult for survivors to come forward with allegations, given that part of their goal is to bring attention to someone’s bad behavior.

So what’s actually different about this situation three years after the original allegations? Screenshots. Lots of them.

McIntyre has always had evidence to back up his claims against Ballinger—for instance, he showed footage of Ballinger saying she wanted to send him lingerie in his video. But after the Kodeerants video, several people came forward with screenshots of troubling and uncomfortable messages with Ballinger. In the court of public opinion on YouTube, that’s irrefutable. If you aren’t still a stan, anyway.

As YouTube’s commentary channels attempt to hold the platform’s celebrities accountable without the resources or training of the mainstream media, screenshots are the social currency. Screenshots are what solidified the allegations of James Charles talking to underage fans, and they’re igniting a reckoning for Ballinger as well.

Turns out that the rise and fall of crypto and NFT was distracting us from a new form of digital currency with a longer shelf-life. The era of the Bored Ape is over. Long reign receipts!

– Kelsey Weekman, Passionfruit Contributor

FANDOM STRIKES BACK

Former Fans Speak Out About Inappropriate Relationships With YouTuber Colleen Ballinger

The YouTuber also known as Miranda Sings is accused of crossing the line with underage fans, exploiting parasocial relationships to do so.

By Steven Asarch, Passionfruit Contributor

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THE COMMENTS SECTION

“Spotify layoffs, Athletic layoffs, Reddit blackouts, Twitch trying to change ad rules, the WGA strike — they’re all the same story. Creators and the people who enjoy them are important, not the platforms. Until companies stop burning us for quick money, they’ll keep failing.”
—Twitter user Eric Silver (@El_Silvero) on wage theft

IN THE BIZ

Some of Reddit’s most popular forums have turned into John Oliver fan accounts, as mods of r/pics and r/gifs find a creative workaround to the platform’s crackdown of their blackout protests.
In a move straight out of Musk and Zaslav’s playbook, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has doubled down on an unpopular decision to charge exorbitant fees to the third-party APIs that help keep the site active. The company also sent letters to moderators threatening to replace the free volunteers if the blackout wasn’t lifted.
Again, moderators work for free and APIs help them do what is essentially a full-time job. It’d be like taking away an intern’s computer and then threatening to fire them for not being able to update your spreadsheets for you. Although most internship programs don’t usually end with a hacker collective threatening to release sensitive information on your company unless you pay them $4.5 million…or, alternatively, just giving interns back their damn computers.
In its annual Social Media Safety Index, GLAAD said that all major social media platforms do a poor job of protecting LGBTQ users safe from hate speech and harassment. Twitter was labeled the “most dangerous platform” and was the only platform that saw its scores decline from the previous year. “That’s weird, wonder why?” asked Twitter’s last remaining employee.
Disgraced influencer Andrew Tate will face trial in Romania on charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Despite being under house arrest since March, Tate still enjoys all the privileges of a free man compulsively live-streaming to make up for the fact that his Father’s Day cards were always marked ‘Return to Sender.’
CNN is looking back on Tumblr’s cultural influence and the memorable DashCon event that left a lasting impact on social media in the 2010s. Tumblr notably being one of the few things from the 2010s David Zsalav hasn’t found a way to ruin yet.
According to a poll done by the University of Michigan, the number of teenagers expressing a diminished sense of enjoyment in life has doubled, prompting contemplation on the potential influence of social media on their overall well-being. “Cowabunga it is.”
Portland, Oregon-based radio station Live 95.5 dared to clone one of its hosts into an AI DJ, only to face a lackluster response from social media; another crushing blow to the developers over at Delos Inc., Tyrell Corp., and Weyland-Yutani.