Netflix helped popularize the binge-watch. With “Haters Back Off!,” which begins streaming on Friday, it introduces the cringe-watch.  In this eight-episode first season, Colleen Ballinger plays Miranda Sings, an aspiring YouTube singing personality, whose singing and personality are both grating. Armored with an unfounded sense of self-esteem, a buttoned-to-the-neck striped shirt and about five pounds of lipstick, she strikes out to claim the fame she believes is her destiny.  If talent without persistence is a tragedy, “Haters” believes that persistence without talent is a comedy. And, boy, is it a painful one — sometimes hilariously, sometimes just uncomfortably.  Ms. Ballinger has lived the viral dream she skewers here. She created Miranda, a teenager with the yowling voice of a nasal alley cat, for a popular YouTube comedy series. (In real life, Ms. Ballinger is an excellent singer; it takes talent to mimic talentlessness so convincingly.) Recently, she and her husband, the YouTuber Joshua Evans, each announced online the end of their marriage.  “Haters” is following the web-to-mainstream path of HBO’s “High Maintenance” and “Insecure” (which follows in the spirit of “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” web series, created in part by Issa Rae).  Adapting “Haters” is a bigger leap. Miranda’s deluded caterwauling is one thing in short videos. Extended to half-hour episodes, it makes for a lot of concentrated sourness.  “Haters” builds Miranda’s story out, drawing on the web videos, giving her a family, friends — well, people she knows — and an arc. Her creepily doting Uncle Jim (Steve Little, “Eastbound & Down”) has an equally deluded dream of managing Miranda through a “five-phase plan for fame.”  Her hypochondriac mother, Bethany (Angela Kinsey, “The Office”), indulges her, to the consternation of Miranda’s levelheaded sister, Emily (Francesca Reale), while her smitten, sweetly dim neighbor Patrick (Erik Stocklin) lets her use him as a servant. Miranda hasn’t achieved fame, but it has already ruined her.  Making Miranda the despot of her tiny kingdom keeps “Haters” from feeling downright cruel to her, but it’s still harsh. There are reminders here of other comedies of the grotesque: “Strangers With Candy,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” the character spoofs of Chris Lilley, the more vicious bits of “Glee.” (Miranda is a little like a twisted voodoo-doll version of Rachel Berry.)  The season is scattered with inspiredly weird set pieces, like a fan-fic production of “Annie” in which Daddy Warbucks and his orphan adoptee are romantically involved. Like Miranda’s performances, “Haters” can be terrible and transfixing at the same time.  Some viewers who are not already committed Mirandites may not stick around for more than a few minutes. The beginning episode opens with Miranda mewling out a cover of “Defying Gravity,” which she immediately uploads to YouTube, mistitled “My Fist Video.” The performance is an off-key warning siren: This series is not for everyone.  But it’s striking how Ms. Ballinger commits to Miranda’s hunger and histrionics. (“Like the Lord said to Noah after he built the ark,” she screams during one tantrum, “You’re going to regret this!”) She contorts her face silent-movie-style, drooping her mouth into a clown’s grimace, arching her eyebrows with cunning.  The episodes sometimes veer into contempt for the characters. There’s a deeper pathos to Miranda’s situation, but the season doesn’t delve deeply into that until late, by which time haters will have long since backed off.  There’s a lot in “Haters Back Off!” to gratify Ms. Ballinger’s YouTube fan base. For anyone willing to acquire the taste, I might suggest the opposite of a binge — an episode at a time, with frequent breaks. Beyond the winces, there’s something human in its comedy of internet thirst: the insatiable drive to put a piece of oneself out into the world and hit refresh, refresh, refresh.  A version of this review appears in print on October 14, 2016, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Streaming at the Top of Her Lungs. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
A critic recommends a sort of reverse binge-watching: taking in tiny bites at a sitting, with frequent breaks.