Miranda Sings to Santa Barbara

If Napoleon Dynamite and Katy Perry had a kid, it’d be Miranda. Half immature oddball, half diva singer, Miranda’s YouTube character was created in 2008 by Santa Barbara native Colleen Ballinger to poke fun at some of her meaner college classmates. Skip forward a few years, and those Miranda Sings videos — in which Ballinger belts out comically bad renditions of show tunes and pop hits and offers personal advice and commentary full of judgment and malapropisms — have grown into a YouTube channel powerhouse with more than 850,000 subscribers and millions upon millions of views.

Ballinger, 27 years old and a San Marcos High School graduate, parlayed her Internet success into a full-on stage career and is in the middle of touring the country with a comedy act. She’ll stop by the Lobero Theatre on March 7 and spoke to The Independent last week from Los Angeles about what it’ll be like to perform in her hometown, how a person makes a living on YouTube, and if there’s anything good about online comments.

I get the feeling Miranda is high school age. What were those years like for you? I had some great memories at San Marcos, but kids always have a little bit of a hard time. I was homeschooled for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, so it was jarring when I transferred. I was super sheltered and felt young, weird, and out of place. I actually ate lunch behind a bush. Theater and choir were really the only places I felt accepted. But Miranda is timeless. [Laughs.] Everyone can relate to her in some way. I don’t want to put her in an age bracket.