Crackhead Barney

About

Crackhead Barney is a protest performance artist, ambush interviewer and internet troll known for her satirical interviews and troll content. Crackhead Barney's name comes from her beginnings as a street performer in New York City, where she would dress in a Barney the Dinosaur costume and harass passersby. She became increasingly well known online, particularly on TikTok, starting in late 2020 for content in which she trolls public events and political protests in a series of videos titled Crackhead Barney & Friends, often targeting conspiracy theorists and right-wingers. In April 2024, Crackhead Barney went viral after posting a video in which she harasses actor Alec Baldwin, calling him a murderer and attempting to get him to say "free Palestine." Later that month she appeared on Piers Morgan's show Uncensored to discuss the incident, trolling Morgan the entire time.

Online History

The earliest known piece of content regarding Crackhead Barney is a YouTube^[1] video uploaded by user Edwin Sanchez on August 11th, 2017, garnering around 750 views in seven years (shown below). In the video, Crackhead Barney dances in the street in a tattered Barney the Dinosaur costume with a baby doll hanging out of the bottom of the suit.

According to a 2021 interview with Inverse,^[2] Crackhead Barney's name comes from this performance and the costume, which was purportedly sent to her by Amazon with "one eye missing." In the interview, she's quoted as saying:

[When] I would finish performing and start to walk away people would be like, "That’s not Barney – that’s Crackhead Barney!” I guess they called me crackhead Barney because I’m skinnier than the real Barney, or maybe because I’m Black. If I was a white woman would they still call me crackhead? I never knew. If I was white they would probably call me Queen Barney.

On August 23rd, 2018, Crackhead Barney was featured on the New York Nico Instagram^[3] page, in which she was interviewed by Nico and filmed doing a street performance piece, garnering over 50,000 views in six years (shown below).

In December 2020, Crackhead Barney began posting interviews and trolling content to the TikTok^[4] account @chbarneyandfriends. Largely, Crackhead Barney's content consists of satirical Channel 5-style interviews with right-wingers and conspiracy theorists as an eccentric, crackhead-like character (viral examples shown below). Her videos regularly gain tens to hundreds of thousands of views, with some garnering millions of views.

Alec Baldwin Ambush Interview / Appearance on Piers Morgan's Uncensored

On April 22nd, 2024, Crackhead Barney posted a video on X^[7] captioned "White devil Alec Baldwin attacked me while I was trying to get coffee" in which she approaches Alec Baldwin in a coffee shop and repeatedly calls him a murderer over the accidental shooting of Halyna Hutchins. She also repeatedly tells him to say "free Palestine," which he refuses, asking a shop owner to call the police on her. At the end of the video, Baldwin attempts to grab her phone. The post gained over 6,500 likes and 3,000 reposts in a week (shown below).

White devil Alec Baldwin attacked me
While I was trying to get coffeee pic.twitter.com/qebME0V4Wl

— Crackhead Barney & Friends (@CHBAF) April 22, 2024

On April 24th, Piers Morgan featured Crackhead Barney on his show Uncensored where he attempted to interview her about the Alec Baldwin video (shown below). The video gained over 848,000 views on YouTube^[8] in five days (shown below, left). On April 25th, Megyn Kelly posted a video to YouTube^[9] asking Morgan's reaction to the interview, garnering over 130,000 views in four days (shown below, right).

Online Presence

Crackhead Barney is most prominent on TikTok @chbarneyandfriends, where she has over 230,000 followers as of April 2024. She also has a YouTube^[5] channel @CrackheadBarneyFriends and an Instagram page of the same name with over 97,000 followers. She also has an X^[6] account @CHBAF.

Crackhead Barney & Friends

Since 2021, Crackhead Barney has run the video series Crackhead Barney & Friends on YouTube and TikTok, a satirical interview series inspired by All Gas No Brakes and The Eric Andre Show in which she attends public events, such as right-wing political protests and rallies, as a "crackhead-like" character and interviews attendees (examples shown below). The interviews are often antagonistic, with Crackhead Barney often attempting to annoy and anger interviewees.

Interviews

In January 2021, Metal interviewed Crackhead Barney about her TikTok presence and street performance art. On June 23rd, 2023, she was interviewed by YouTubers TheHomelessPimp, garnering over 4,000 views in a year (shown below).

Search Interest

External References