Sophia Michaels
Doja Cat’s ongoing controversial social media antics have landed her in hot water with some of her fans. A July Threads rant, in which she berated her fan base for calling themselves “Kittenz,” resulted in her reportedly losing more than 500,000 followers on Instagram over the last month, according to BuzzFeed — a loss Doja welcomes with open arms, according to her latest Instagram Story. But first, how did we get here?
On July 23, Doja posted on Threads that she’s not cool with her fans’ chosen name, Kittenz (not unlike Swifties, the BTS ARMY, or Directioners). “My fans don’t name themselves sh*t,” she wrote in the now-deleted thread screenshotted and circulated on Twitter (which Elon Musk recently rebranded to X). “If you call yourself a ‘kitten’ or f*cking ‘kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.” One fan asked, “What should I change my name to since you don’t like the term kitten,” to which Doja responded, “Just delete the entire account and rethink everything it’s never too late.” She told another fan whose username was a play on the star’s real name, Amala Ratna Zandile, “You making my government name ur sn is creepy as f*ck.”
The final straw came when a fan asked Doja if she would tell them she loves her fans, to which Doja responded, “I don’t though, cuz i don’t even know yall.” When a fan responded to Doja by reminding her it’s the fans who have made it possible for her to reach the level of success she enjoys in 2023, the singer responded, “No one forced you idk why you’re talking to me like you’re my mother b*tch you sound like a crazy person.”
Doja’s posts were met with fans demanding she treat them with more respect as the star deactivated her Threads account. Many fan sites even took the rapper’s advice and deactivated their pages. Other fans, however, believe Doja’s string of combative posts are actually all part of an act. After all, she recently introduced the world to her new alter ego, Scarlet. Considering the fact that on July 20, Doja happily tweeted that she loved her fans as she announced her Scarlet tour, it’s certainly possible her erratic behavior is performance art.
But, clearly, a sizable portion of Doja’s fans aren’t down with her behavior either way. As for the rapper-singer, who released her second single off her upcoming “Scarlet” album, “Paint the Town Red,” at the beginning of August, she’s not all that concerned with the mass exodus of fans from her Instagram followers list.
In a new Instagram Story post shared on Aug. 16, Doja wrote, “Seeing all these people unfollow makes me feel like I’ve defeated a large beast that’s been holding me down for so long and it feels like I can reconnect with the people who really matter and love me for who I am and not for who I was. I feel free.”
Doja does have a point. Even after the loss of half a million followers, her Instagram follower count still sits comfortably above 25 million. On top of that, the social media backlash doesn’t seem to be impacting her musical success. “Paint the Town Red” debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated Aug. 19. So perhaps the singer is right that the people who truly love her for her (and her controversial social media antics) are still in her corner.
