269: The Fine Line Between Apology and Denial: A Case Study of Colleen Ballinger and Matt Rife

Hello, everybody. Sorry I've been gone for so long. I've really missed this. I've missed talking to everyone every single day. Obviously, the last video that I posted on here, it's really embarrassing, to say the least. I was being accused of some pretty awful things and I just was mad. And I should have handled that situation with maturity and empathy, but I. But instead, I just let my ego take over and I'm really disappointed in myself. So here's what I want to say today. Over the last 15 years of my career, there have been moments where I was immature and inappropriate with some of my comedy. And there were times when I did not put enough thought into some of my fan interactions. And because of that behavior, people got hurt. And I am so sorry.

Welcome to the Indestructible PR podcast. I'm Molly McPherson, your crisis communication strategist and your guide through the world of breaking news and pop culture. So join me as we analyze the juiciest moments to extract a valuable PR lesson. So join me now as we go behind the Headlines Two videos responses to online backlash comedian Matt Rife and YouTuber Colleen Ballinger both faced significant criticism last week, but they took two very different approaches to addressing their controversy. Matt Rife causes a little bit of a flare up over a Netflix special. And Colleen Ballinger, well, she's back. Sometimes people ask me how I decide what I'm going to talk about in my podcast each week. And much to the chagrin team and also the producers of the podcast, I usually follow breaking news, you know, what people are talking about and where I usually gauge that is from social media and what people are asking about. And I'm looking at what videos tend to do well. I'm looking at the algorithm and trending stories and sometimes I'm just shocked by a reaction. Case in point, this week I'm straddling right now, I'm doing this podcast last week from the time of this recording, and I had posted a TikTok about Colleen Ballinger. Some of you may have no idea who this person is at all. And full disclosure, when her first crisis came up, you know, around six months ago, I really didn't know who she was either. I had certainly heard the name, but I never really attached it to anyone. But when I dove in, I dove in. And she is, you know, a YouTuber who a lot of people follow, not necessarily everyone, but in that world, they're familiar with her. And Matt Rife is another name that many people may not have ever heard of. But if you are in that online social media, viral realm, you definitely know who this guy is. At the time of this recording, my TikTok about Colleen Ballinger has had 1.3 million views. Million views for a person who. Many people have no idea who Shivan is. It's incredible. And the same thing with Matt Rife. So obviously I'm going to do a podcast about that as well, because there's a reason there when people care about people who they follow. I mean, obviously that's going to create this kind of algorithm, intense scrutiny and also just interest in it. But when people like someone, they like someone. And when people do things to push boundaries, people. People want justice or people want to hear, they need validation. Hey, am I crazy? That's awful what they did. So that's part of the interest as well. Now the reason why I dive in, I mean, yeah, I mean, people are asking me for it, but I want to. I don't know, I kind of want to tackle the issue. If that many people are interested, that means the answer is not cut and dry. It means people really are wondering if they're wondering. I'm wondering too. I don't look at these crises and immediately know, ah, of course. And here's the issue. I mean, many times I can do that, but I need to get into the details and I need to figure it out. Now, after I record this, I'm going to hop on TikTok and I'll do my matt rife TikTok because so many people are asking about it now. We'll see. I may have missed the window for it, but I work full time. And now my content creation is taking more and more time. So I have to be. I have to be a little more judicious on my schedule and how I do it. But for all of you, let's dive into Matt Rife and Colleen Ballinger. I'm not going to spend too much time on who they are. I'm just going to give you just so you get a sense of who they are. And then I want to talk about the response that they did. And, you know, my take on it and why this is so interesting to me is I feel the official response that quote, unquote, okay, I have air quotes that work nowadays are the ones that are not traditional responses. I mean, you know, I have a framework, the instructor PR framework. That's where you take full accountability. But I gotta tell you, full accountability, sometimes you don't need it anymore. I can't even believe I'm saying that. Doesn't mean that it's right. It doesn't mean that it doesn't come with risk. But people are starting to skate through without doing the work. And I'm going to give you two examples of that. Two people who really, really kind of cross the line in terms of their content and in terms of their behavior. Yet I think they're going to, they're just going to skate right by. There's going to be some damage. They'll take collateral damage on it, but I think they're going to get by. All right, first one, Matt Rife. Now he is known, best known for self produced comedy. So he is the digital age comedian, if you will. He has comedy specials called OnlyFans Walking, Red Flag. And he is also part of the whole sketch improv world. But he's also a part of a new group of bro culture comedians. And they embrace this whole humor that is, you know, it's, you know, people argue about this, but I see it at least as deliberately exclusionary. There is always an in joke with this group. It's like they're all bros and they want to be a small group of young males. Like that's usually what bros are. So you have, you know, you have lacrosse bros and you have frat bros and you know, you have surfer bros. Like there's in just life, there's all these like bro groups. But now in the world of popular culture and acting and popular figures, there's more of that type of bro brand. So think Matthew McConaughey. Think from, you know, the reality world and television world. Like think Brody Jenner from the Hills way back when. Yes, he's a part of that whole Kardashian Jenner clan, but he's kind of the OG of it. Dane Cook, John Mayer, the singer, Joe Rogan, the top podcast. I mean, that's the bro culture that's out there right now. Another comedian would be Theo Vaughn. That would be another example of it. Now I'm familiar with it and I'm familiar with these guys because I have a 19 year old son. And I remember a couple months ago we were talking about Theo Vaughn and I know he liked him and he was going on tour and he wanted to see him. I said, show me Theo Vaughn. Give me something. And so Theo Vaughan's type of humor is this. And I quote, quote, I am quoting Theo Vaughan from a Rolling Stone article. Quote, I feel like, especially as a white male. Okay, right is your unquote. Right now you know where this is going. Okay, back to the quote. I feel like Especially as a white male, to raise your hands to ask a question is like, you're that nervous kid in the back of the class. Okay, so that is the type of comedy. You know, where he's going with that. So is it, like, absolutely on the edge and over the edge? Yes. Is it on the line, Crossing the line? Yes. This is that brand of humor. And the young guys, not saying that women don't like it either, but it's really young bro culture humor. It is an entirely different type of humor, you know, and comedians, you know, in general, like, depending on how old you are and what genre you are, you know, you're gonna have your clean cut comedians, you're gonna have the Dana Carveys of the world. And what he's going through right now with his, who died of an accidental drug overdose. It makes you wonder if, you know, he's taking a break now, and he had a podcast, Fly on the Wall with David Spade come in. Another comedian who I love, that kind of straddles the bro culture, but not really. So he's funny. There's always been comedians like the Jerry Seinfeld, you know, they're always kind of in that safe space. You know, they don't swear. But then you have the other ones, you know, that. That did do that. Like Sam Kinison, he was always kind of edgy, you know, Richard Pryor. You know what I mean? Like the two. But if you're not familiar with this bro culture and this bro comedian culture, their whole brand is crossing the line. That's what it is. And it's important to say this because of this particular PR crisis. Now, what's interesting, too, about Rife and this Theo Vaughan, they both came into popularity because of TikTok. Not just social media, but specifically TikTok. They are TikTok comedians. That's where people saw them. That's where people brought them the prominence. Like Matt Rife, like, he was someone who couldn't get hired. Theo Vaughn, he was in reality shows, he couldn't make it happen either. But it is because of TikTok and the TikTok crowd that they found their success. And for Rife, it was during the pandemic that he started to come out with these shows, and he was, you know, kind of performing around with another buddy. But then once Matt Rife, who's very good looking, that's part of it too. He's got, you know, the Look. Then once the look met with the algorithm on TikTok, well, then he exploded. He absolutely exploded. One clip in Particular earned him over 1 billion views. Okay. And it gave him 16.3 million followers just from one clip. I'm gonna play that clip, and you're gonna get a sense of who he is, and you're gonna know exactly what I'm talking about in the response. Take a listen.

I've only been to Baltimore one time. I ate lunch there, and the hostess who, like, seats you at the restaurant had a black eye, a full black. And it wasn't like, what happened? It was pretty obvious what happened. We couldn't get over the fact that we were like, this is the face of the company. Like, this is. This is who you have greeting people. And my boy who I was with was like, yeah, I feel bad for her, man. I feel like they should put her in the kitchen or something where nobody. Nobody has to see her face, you know? And I was like, yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn't have that black eye.

Now let's talk about what he did. So let's come up to last week. It was all over the news in one day. If you were to Google it, you were going to see this article. So he ignited controversy with a Netflix special. It's called Natural Selection. There you go. Came out on November 15th on the streaming service. The reason why it sparked backlash was due to one specific joke, even though, I mean, there's plenty in there. But this one joke is the one that made it to the social media, you know, viral realm, and it's about domestic violence. So you can imagine that a joke like that is not going to go over that well with a segment of the population. Now, the day that this ignited, I went on to. I did a TikTok live that night. Sometimes when I have so much work to do and I know I have more work to do, I'll just slip in a TikTok live, just to cleanse the palate, if you will. But also it gives me some information on, you know, what's happening out there. And I knew Matt Rife would come up, and I knew I was going to do a post on him, so I wanted to get a sense. And so many people on TikTok were disgusted by it. You know, I think a lot of them are women, though. I don't know necessarily, you know, based on their. On their username. But I had said, like, I don't know, I think he's gonna get by on this one. And, you know, some people on that live were saying, molly, how could you condone domestic violence? And are you saying you're okay with domestic violence? Like, well, obviously I'm not. I mean, clearly I'm not. But I don't talk just for my opinions. And what I think I'm doing it from an educated, kind of seasoned professional point of view. I mean, my lens is public relations. I'm not giving you my opinion of the joke. I'm giving you my opinion on the response to the joke and if he's going to survive it. And my prediction, I'm recording this the day after the big blow up. I absolutely think he's going to survive it. You could be listening to this next week or not next week, my next week, Our future now in the present. And maybe the special was pulled. Maybe the special, the clip was taken out of the special. Maybe there was some type of blowback that has damaged Matt Rife. But I'm going to say this right now, I don't think that happened. I think you're listening to this podcast right now and absolute nothing happened to Matt Rife. Now, worse than the joke itself, I'm not surprised by that joke. I think it's completely out of taste. I think it's awful. But it's part of the bro culture, comedian culture. It's part of their brand. But I think what's just as bad, it's a bad joke, it's not even funny. So that's why him as a comedian, he's huge because of TikTok, but I don't think he's funny. I think he has more hype just because of the TikTok. I really. Because some comedians are funny because of clips. Now, Nate Bragazzi is another example of, in my opinion, like a TikTok Instagram viral comedian. His popularity soared because of social media, but he's a clean comic. You know, he, they just had him on SNL and he killed it on snl. He's different because he's clean, he talks about his family. But these guys, you're not going to have them on snl. It would be really, really difficult because you're just going to court controversy on that. In fact, another bro comedian is Shane Gillis. And I talked about Shane Gillis in my book Indestructible. He was someone who's bro culture. He was going to be on the SNL season a couple years ago. I'm just throwing out 2017. I don't even know if I'm right on there. I'll have to fact check on that. But he was announced for the SNL cast and then he was pulled because people just went back to a podcast episode where he was talking about Asian people in a very derogatory way, and he got yanked. So that's the reason why these guys are TikTok famous and they go on the road and they sell out these huge, huge venues, but you're not going to see them on the main stage, if you know what I mean. Now, the blowback for Rife was not simply because of the joke, the bad joke. It was because of the response to the joke. It was a twofer. His response to all of the backlash, was it an apology? Now, we would not call this an apology. What he did is he linked a Matt Rife critic, say comedians, you know, effing atrocious, non apology for a domestic abuse joke is desperate and sad. So he says, if you've ever been offended by a joke I've told, here's a link to my official apology. And this was in the Instagram story response. So it's not on the grid. It was in the story that lasts for 24 hours. The link went to a website to purchase helmets that I believe was, you know, labeled under autism helmets or helmets of, you know, for people who have very specific needs. That gotcha joke prompted even more outrage because not only are you offending females and you're talking about domestic violence, now you're getting into ableism, now you're making fun of disabled people. More outrage, more outrage. But what came of it, I don't think anything, I don't think this guy's ever going to do an actual apology for it at all. But we'll see. That's Matt Rife. Moving on to controversy number two, Colleen Ballinger. She is in the news right now because she released a video, strategically timed video, which was a video response to her backlash from a previous video response. Now, who is Colleen Ballinger? For those of you who do not know, she was known as Miranda sings on YouTube. She had two personalities. There was Colleen Ballinger, the person who was a singer, a trained singer. She had a background in singing and acting. But then she also had a character, Miranda Sings, Think Paul Rubens and Pee Wee Herman, but not really. But Miranda Sings was kind of this goofy character on YouTube, incredibly successful. Another, you know, another act coming out of the pandemic. You know, using digital media, people at home, she was able to create a very strong, fervent fan base. She had her stands, you know, people who loved her. She made a lot ofmoney on YouTube, a lot of money being someone who, you know, created this brand about Being someone online and building community online, well, it's with that community that brought her trouble. So she was accused of inappropriate behavior in some of her videos. I mean, she definitely, again, boundaries not really there, Crossing them lines, moving up to them and then crossing them. Kind of cringy. But what appalls people also draws people in. You get what I'm saying? So younger people loved her brand. Older people would look at her and say, I don't get this, but younger people loved her brand. One person in particular, Adam McIntyre, he was a fan from Europe, Irish, but lived in England. He was a young teenager when he found her a passionate, passionate fan. Eventually, the parasocial relationship became a real relationship where they communicated offline. And Adam McEntire eventually came out and said, you know, that she was very, very inappropriate to him, but also to other young fans. It just really, really crossed the line on the discussions were around sexuality. There's something about, you know, underwear that she received and she wanted to give it to them and taking photos. There's just all these allegations there. So when this came to light, if you were to Google it, you would see the keywords grooming. Miranda SINGS Colleen Ballinger FANS inappropriate like keywords that you do not want attached to you in the middle of a crisis. And this Adam McIntyre was very vocal about what she did to him. And like a lot of crises out, when you can pinpoint victims, like specific victims, when you have a name and you have them speaking out, that creates a problem for people in the public eye for celebrities is when there's an actual victim with a name. And in her case, she had one. So he's been very vocal about his experiences with Ballinger since 2020. So then when this happened, she came out with a video. The video response, she thought, I'll be clever. I'll be too clever by half. Here, I'll do a video response. But she didn't just do a video response, like an apology, where she sits down and apologizes. No, she kind of did one earlier. But this one is when everything kind of blew up and she was in mainstream press. She chose not only video response, but she sang a video response. She composed a song. And you may have heard this or this term with Colleen Ballinger, which is ukulele. She brought out a ukulele. She had this very serious face and brought out a ukulele. So I am going to play just a few chords. I'm not going to give you the chorus because that will stick in your head like it's a small world. And it will never escape it. I'm just going to give you a little bit of the chorus in the beginning. Take a listen to the beginning of this video and you will get a sense of exactly why this video bombed spectacularly.

Hey, it's been a while since you saw my face. I haven't been doing so great, so I took a little break. A lot of people are saying some things about me that aren't quite true. Doesn't matter if it's true, though, just as long as it's entertaining to you, right?

You don't even need to hear the rest to know exactly what she was going after, what the tone was, and where that apology would land. And that would land in the non apology pile. Okay, she received a lot of backlash. A lot of backlash. And that drove her off of YouTube. But she appeared again last week titled Fall Vlog. She addressed the backlash to the backlash. She expressed regret, you know, over that video and the fan interactions. That's the point of this video. But I'm going to play again just a bit of the intro for you to get a sense of how this video apology went down.

Hello, everybody. Sorry I've been gone for so long. I've really missed this. I've missed talking to everyone every single day. Obviously, the last video that I posted on here, it's really embarrassing, to say the least. I was being accused of some pretty awful things and I just was mad and I should have handled that situation with maturity and empathy, but instead I just let my ego take over and I'm really disappointed in myself. So here's what I want to say today. Over the last 15 years of my career, there have been moments where I was immature and inappropriate with some of my comedy. And there were times when I did not put enough thought into some of my fan interactions. And because of that behavior, people got hurt and I am so sorry.

She expressed that the video was wrong. She addressed that her past behavior was inappropriate and that the video response to it, the ukulele video, she attributed to her ego to immaturity. But what was missing was an explicit apology or acknowledgement or any type of atonement for what she did to her fans. She was simply explaining what the blowback was about. And instead of apologizing, she said, you know, I was immature. But she was referring that to the video response. So she touched on it, but she glossed over it. But then this video, which was so interesting, so you can tell how it began, it was very calm, very casual. She's sitting in a bedroom you actually see the first second of the clip where she's turning the camera on. So it's that very first person reaction. It's very intimate. Dress casually. It's just you and her and you're in her bedroom. Interesting choice, but it's supposed to be calm, it's supposed to be casual. You hear a lot of ums. You're supposed to get the impression that she's riffing off the top of her head, but she's not. This video, also linked in the show notes, clearly was a strategic move. It was part of working with a team. She. And the reason why I know she has a team, I mean, I don't have proof on it, but I can deduce this because one, she hired a crisis management type lawyer out of Hollywood who's worked with a number of celebrities who have really gotten into trouble. Okay. We're talking like Prince Andrew level. So it's interesting that he has all these male celebrities and people in the public eye and he is Colleen Ballinger. So that will tell you what type of client he has and what he gets into and what Colleen was dealing with. It was authentically scripted. It was scripted in a way to appear that she was just talking to you. It was just her and you. But what she said, and more important, what she didn't say is almost what absolutely confirms that it is a script. Because no lawyer is going to allow her to riff in a video, especially when there's liability. Now, she's probably settled everything and everything's fine now. And that's why this video has a glossed over apology and there is no acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Also, what is strategic is the release date. It was time to come out on November 18, which is a Saturday. Was that meant to be the day that the video was supposed to come out? You know, if you listen to this podcast, follow me on TikTok. You know, I always talk about the Friday news dump, where I'm always looking for the Friday news dump. I only talk about it when it's happened and it happens a lot. This was a Saturday morning, so it pretty much is in that same time frame. This video came out, though, at the same time that Taylor Swift was dealing with all her blowback from the death of a fan. I deduced, you know, I said this in my TikTok, that I wonder if this video was set to release on last Friday, which was the Friday after Thanksgiving, like Black Friday, when everybody's shopping, everybody's thinking about the holidays and post Thanksgiving and traveling, they're not going to pay attention to this video. Yeah, some people on social media are going to pay attention to it, but it is the ultimate Friday news dump day that Friday. But I think maybe someone saw an opportunity there with Taylor Swift, which I got to tell you, is a great move. It was a great move because it got completely swallowed by the Taylor Swift story and the Matt Rife story and what I've called this, I've dubbed it the Fallon. Jimmy Fallon. Same thing happened to Jimmy Fallon. He got squeezed between Ashton Kutcher and Drew Barrymore. His buddy Drew Barrymore. The crisis boom went away. So same thing happened with Colleen Ballinger. So the timing of the release, brilliant in terms of getting it right under everybody's nose there. I also feel that the drop was timed for monetization because this time of year, highest adsense period. So she's going to get people back and she's going to get people back with money. And because she knows that so many people like me are going to watch this video, they're going to use this video. So she's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Also under the video, the negativity, the negative comments, scrubbed. They're not there. They are not there. There might be one or two that kind of slipped through, but it's all positive. Also the ukulele video, if she were truly remorseful, that video would be gone. But no, no, no, no. That's up as well because she wants more views to that video. And what she's doing is she's just kind of, she's hinging on at least the click rate of these two videos because even if the apology doesn't work and no one, at least she's going to do bang up job with the money. She's going to make money off of it. But I also think she's doing it that because she knows that people who hate her and will never go back to her, she knows they'll never go back to her. She's not trying to court the people who she lost. No apology probably will bring them back. So that's another reason why she glossed over it. She didn't need to apologize because she doesn't. She's lost those people and she knows it. She's trying to find new people, people likely. Miranda Sings is gone. Okay, that would be foolish of her to bring Miranda Sings back, but now she wants to bring back the Colleen Ballinger, the vlog, the influencer, the products. She has a huge audience. She has people who follow her and she is going to get more people who don't really even know what happened, because all of this happened when she was Miranda sings, even though that's Colleen Ballinger. But Miranda sings is gone, so now it's just Colleen. So maybe Colleen can come back as a different brand. It's a strategy. And will it work? I don't know. I actually think it will. I actually think it will. Okay, so let's look at the solution. What did they do? What were their steps, the actionable steps that they took to get through this crisis? Colleen Ballinger, everything that I just mentioned, I think was set up in that way, Knowing she was going to court a lot of bad publicity. She was going to get a lot of people talking about her again, but then it would go away because people aren't going to go back to her. She's looking for new people, and that's why I think it's going to work. She will probably never be at the height that she was at Miranda sings. And she may, I don't know, introduce some new Persona down the road because she is talented, she's clever, she can play the ukulele, she can play music, she can write music. She is an entertainer. The world is her oyster. She can do whatever she wants with it. So she'll probably do these more calm, calculated vlogs. There could be a holiday one, a winter one, whatever it is. But I think we're going to see this, like, slow launch relaunch back into Colleen Ballinger. And I think it actually might work for her. She's not being authentic, but she's being strategic. And sometimes strategy does work. And she understands that she's offending people. There's sensitivities to an audience out there that feel that she crossed the line. So she's not going to cross back over the line to bring them back. No, she's just going to draw a new line and stay within those lines. The same thing that Matt Rife is doing, he is doubling down. The double down in official public relations response is when you're weighing the risk and you're deciding to take the risk and you are going to go again with the same thing that you did. The double down is saying a joke about domestic violence and then following up with an ableism joke. That's the double down. That matches bro culture. It matches a comedian in that realm. If he apologized, that would be the end of his brand. Or he'd have a hard time having the admiration of his bro fans, of his young bro fans. He would be yesterday's news. He would. That's why he really had no choice. He had to double down. He had to double down on the brand. Will it work? I think it will. I really do. Now, you could be listening to this podcast on Tuesday this week at some point, and maybe the Netflix. Maybe Netflix pulled the special. It was number two in one press report. And now he was saying that it was number one. I guess I could just log in and I could check myself. I based on we're going to do this in real time. I'm going to base this on my crisis communication knowledge right here. I like to predict these things and I am going to predict that it's number one. Because if it's number one. Oh, I got it wrong. The crown. I forgot the crown is out now. I have to watch the crown. But he's number two. He's number two. So everybody's watching the crown right now. Everybody's gonna watch the crown over Thanksgiving, too. I think I'm gonna watch the crown over Thanksgiving. But there's Matt at number two, right next to Princess Di in the royal family. He ain't going anywhere, folks. And now I'm gonna go on TikTok to say the same thing because the playbook has changed. It has absolutely changed 100%. Now, I am by no means saying that if you do something wrong or someone does something wrong, they don't have to take it, you know, they don't have to take accountability for it. No, I'm not saying that at all. But you have to know what your audience is. You have to know what it is and who it is. What is it made up of? And the question that I ask all my clients when I work with them for the first time and they're going through a crisis, I asked them what's at stake. Tell me what's at stake. Who is the community? Who are your stakeholders? What is the risk here in terms of your response? And then we create a response to that. And I'll admit, like, I had a client who was in this kind of matt rife space and a lot of things said there I was like, I've had a couple of them, actually, where I'm dealing with people who have done things that I don't like and I don't like it at all. But in both of these cases, they took the steps to make it better. Like, they did the right thing, they got help. There were other mitigating circumstances that I felt that they deserved a second chance, and that's why we worked with them. But one of my responses was just go into the bro culture response. It's just like Matt Rife. Believe me, I didn't say to say anything inappropriate. I would never do that. But to explain the side of the story in that realm, because go to your audience who's going to listen to you and understand it and get a sense of it. All right, everyone, in every episode, I leave you with one indestructible PR tip. It's a practical takeaway to help you build that indestructible reputation. And here it is in crisis communication and a PR crisis. Sincerity and genuine acknowledgment are key. You want to avoid trivializing serious issues with insensitivity or humor because it can significant, significantly harm your reputation. That is, unless it's your brand. And, you know, even if you have to double down with your brand because those are the people who are going to support you, you have to understand it's going to come with risk, and it also is likely going to come with problems down the road. You may not get like, Matt Rife. He's not going on Saturday Night Live anytime soon. There's going to be a lot of doors shutting down for Matt Rife. But will he be canceled from Netflix? No, because, people, he probably has more cred now because he did the joke and because he doubled down on it. As for Colleen Ballinger, she's going to look for her new fans. Will she be able to be at the heights that she was? Unlikely. Unlikely. But she's still doing what she wants to do. But she's just doing it in a different brand. All right, everyone, that's all for. For this week. Bye for now.