The "toxic gossip train" is still in full motion and Colleen Ballinger can't seem to catch a break from all the allegations coming her way. Her book doesn't make her look any better.
All aboard the toxic gossip train! The Colleen Ballinger Saga continues and it seems like the disturbing red flags started to pop up as early as 2015.
That's when her parody of a self-help book "Selp-Helf" was published – a supposedly funny little thing by her character Miranda Sings with the whole "I can't write properly" scheme going on with typos done on purpose, some literal poo humor and other things her target audience of mainly kids may find funny.
Problem is: I'm not sure Colleen Banger actually knows the difference between kids, teens and adults? Which could be directly related to the grooming allegations, but that's actually not the point I'm trying to make.
Let's get into Colleen Ballinger's book and talk about why it's so disturbing.
- I sure as hell won't link to the book right here, so go get your Amazon Prime free trial instead.
Colleen Ballinger Has No Clue Who Her Audience Is
The very first thing to get right is the target audience, and that seems like the very first mistake Colleen made when she wrote this book.
Selp-Helf looks like Miranda Sings' personal diary where she keeps her thoughts or maybe something a kid would gift to another kid for their birthday – just something self-made, even thoughtful. If it weren't for the content.
It looks like it's for kids, and the Amazon reviews of the book show lots of parents buying it for their 8 to 11-year-olds. And I'm certainly no prude, but that book is highly inappropriate for kids with its ongoing theme of "my uncle touches me regularly", sex jokes and helpful tips about how to set stuff on fire.
And even if we don't make the assumption about the target audience being kids: there's a lot of stuff in there that is quite disturbing. Yeah, 2015 was a different time, I get that. Point still stands.
But let's take a look at what I mean exactly, shall we? Thanks to reddit user u/SenS49 for sharing some pictures!
Colleen Ballinger's Book: Worst Of
I sure as hell think Colleen wishes she didn't have this particular joke in her book to resurface eight years later.
Keep in mind: we're working on the premise that this is a children's book. And let's ignore the fun little "my uncle is a pedophile" bit, but: "Do you mind genital warts?" as a first date topic in a book for kids? Marketed towards kids?
And, by the way: it's not like this book is a series of tasteless jokes that would probably fly over kids' heads either way. Because there are some jokes in there that had me noisily exhaling through my nose (not good enough for a laugh, but nice try Colleen!)
A great way to make yourself feel better is to make other people feel worse.
And you know what? That's actually a good one. If you're not facing allegations of bullying, of course.
For an even deeper dive, I recommend Alizee's video about the topic that's heavily inspired this article. Go say hi!