I still remember where I was when every middle schooler’s favorite YouTuber Colleen Ballinger (AKA “Miranda Sings”) addressed the grooming allegations against her via a YouTube video where she sang a semi-apologetic song on the ukulele. Yes, I remember where I was because it happened yesterday. But I truly believe Ballinger’s ukulele bit in which she sings, “I’m not a groomer, I’m just a loser,” will haunt me for the rest of my life.
As I scrolled the video’s cesspool of comments, which included, “Boys buckle up we are witnessing internet history” and “This makes Travis Scott’s apology look like a masterpiece,” I got to thinking what we were probably all thinking: Where does Ballinger’s little performance piece rank among the most batshit celebrity (and micro-celebrity) apologies of all time?
Bad celebrity apologies are impossible to rank, because how do you compare Kanye West “apologizing” for anti-Semitism by saying he loves all people including Hitler to Becky G’s boyfriend apologizing for cheating on her by joining a mental health boot camp for cheaters? How do you compare Roseanne Barr blaming racist tweets on taking Ambien to YouTuber Shane Dawson’s earnest insistence that he’s never fucked his cat? You can’t!
But what you can do is pore through each of these astoundingly cringey gaffes and guffaw, laugh, or perhaps cry from a loss of faith in humanity. And that’s precisely what we did here.
