Cara Cunningham

Profile Overview

Cara Cunningham (formerly Chris Crocker; born December 7, 1987) is an American internet personality, recording artist, YouTuber, and former pornographic film actress. As of October 2010, Cunningham's videos had received a combined 50 million plays on MySpace, and her vlog channel on YouTube was the 100th-most viewed of all time in all categories, with over 205 million video views, before Cunningham closed her YouTube account in September 2015. Her work consists mainly of short-form, self-directed monologues shot in her grandparents' home.
Cunningham gained fame in September 2007 from her viral video "Leave Britney Alone!", in which she tearfully defended pop singer Britney Spears' comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards; the video received over four million views in two days. The video gained international media attention, hundreds of parodies, and criticism for Cunningham, which included accusations of narcissism, melodrama, and histrionics, and using Spears' personal shortcomings to bolster her own fame. Others have accused Cunningham of acting in the "Leave Britney Alone!" video, although Cunningham insisted it was genuine on a September 2007 appearance on Maury Povich's Maury show. Cunningham produces and acts in her own videos, and is a self-described edutainer.
In most of Cunningham's early works, she presents herself as an openly gender non-conforming person and effeminate Southerner in a "small-minded town" in the Bible Belt. During her teenage years, Cunningham used "Crocker" as a stage name in order to keep her identity and location secret, due to death threats she received. In 2014, Queerty stated that with thousands of Facebook and Twitter followers, Cunningham is "one of those self-invented social media icons".