One of the most maligned tropes of the social media age is the infamous apology video. Whether it be blackface, showing a dead body to children, posting racist tweets, a convention gone wrong, or texting minors, there have been plenty of apology videos posted in the last decade of YouTube’s popularity.
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The formula is pretty much the same across the board. Step one: YouTuber/influencer is caught doing something dangerous or exploitative or discriminatory or racist or in poor taste or shady or manipulative. Step two: Said YouTuber/influencer goes silent for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks while the hype blows over. Step three: YouTube/influencer makes an awkward, overly-long video typically explaining away their actions and commenting on the state of the world or “cancel culture,” while half-heartedly apologizing for their alleged wrongdoings. Step four: YouTuber/influencer takes a step away from their platform indefinitely in order to further dodge accountability or any aftershocks that may emerge.
Influencers have been unwittingly playing a game of one-upping each other for the worst apology video, and things came to a head last week with Colleen Ballinger. Ballinger—also known by her character Miranda Sings—was accused of exploiting and grooming minors via group chat throughout her career, with several of the accusers being members of said group chat. In what may be the worst apology the internet has ever seen, Ballinger took to her YouTube channel with a ukulele to explain away and deny the allegations in a video that has been mocked across the web since its publication on June 28. But Ballinger was not the first “worst” apology video—there was a long road paved by the pioneers of YouTube.
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