American internet celebrity, blogger, songwriter, recording artist and former YouTuber and pornographic film actor, formerly known as Chris Crocker. In August 2021, Cunningham came out as a transgender woman and changed her first name to Cara. Cunningham also said she would be beginning feminizing hormone therapy.
Cunningham first gained international fame in September 2007 from his/her viral video “Leave Britney Alone!”, in which she tearfully defended pop singer Britney Spears’ comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards; her video had over four million views in two days. The video received international media attention, hundreds of parodies and criticism for Crocker.
Producing and acting in his/her own videos, Crocker is a self-described ‘edutainer.’ In almost all of his/her adolescent works, he/she presents him/herself as an openly gay and effeminate Southerner in a “small-minded town” in the Bible Belt. Using “Crocker” as a stage name, he/she kept his/her exact location private due to safety concerns and death threats in response to his/her YouTube and Myspace video blogs and profile until he/she was no longer a teenager. According to his/her Myspace profile, Crocker lived in Los Angeles as of January 2008. In May 2010, he/she returned home to Tennessee, and now travels to Los Angeles for business.
Crocker’s work consists mainly of short-form, self directed monologues shot in his/her grandparents’ home. As of October 2010, his/her videos have received a combined 50 million plays on MySpace, and his/her vlog channel on YouTube was the 100th most viewed of all time in all categories, with over 205 million video views, before Crocker closed his/her YouTube account in September 2015. Crocker’s detractors and critics have accused him/her of narcissism, melodramatics, histrionics, and using Spears’ personal shortcomings to bolster his/her own fame. Others have accused Crocker of acting in the “Leave Britney Alone!” video, although he/she insisted it was genuine on a September 2007 appearance on Maury Povich’s Maury show. Both Crocker and the video were parodied in the South Park episode “Canada on Strike,” with a cartoon Crocker running around in a fight between various Internet memes, telling them to “leave the others alone.”
Link to Wikipedia biography