Doja Cat can’t stop beefing with her own fans

Doja Cat is no stranger to controversy; in fact, she often seems to court it. She is perhaps the first true Gen Z pop star, in spirit if not strictly in age. She’s an organic celebrity, self-made, a product of the Internet at large and chat rooms she might’ve been a bit too young for in particular. She’s been called an “edgelord” and a master shitposter, which makes it hard to tell, sometimes, when the sparring with her fans is ironic or sincere.

Such is the case with her latest online kerfuffle, which took place mostly on Instagram Threads as well as the platform formerly known as Twitter. “[My] fans don’t name themselves shit. If you call yourself a ‘kitten’ or fucking ‘kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house,” she declared in a since-deleted post. To a “kitten” who asked what they should rename their profile, she snarkily replied, “just delete the entire account and rethink everything it’s not too late” (via Page Six).

It’s not immediately clear whether Doja was trying to be playful with her fans or not, but a good number of “Kittenz” took offense. Some large fan pages shut down their accounts, while others pointed out that she had endorsed the name in the past. After all, it’s a cute connection to her own stage name. But the rapper, whose birth name is Amala Dlamini, isn’t necessarily thrilled with the stage name she got stuck with. Sure, she showed up to the Met Gala in full cat cosplay, but according to a Rolling Stone profile, she’s tried to change the name multiple times over the years. In this latest spat with fans, she claimed she chose it when she was an “alcoholic teen.”

Doja’s prolific posting tends to blur the lines between genuine emotion and joking around. Earlier this year, she put fans through the runaround by tweeting “i quit music,” then “jk,” then “no I’m serious I quit music,” then, “jk I’m not. Relax,” then, “jk i quit I’m done with this music shit it’s only making me sadder every day. i can’t take it anymore,” then, “[jk] ima finish this album yall dont worry.” Her digital strategy is almost purposely confusing: she told Rolling Stone in 2021 that she prefers not to be serious online, but if she was to say something meaningful, she’d have to undercut it with a joke. “[Honestly] I think it’s better to tweet the shitpost than it is to tweet anything that means anything, because who fucking cares? Nobody cares,” she said.

So maybe her posts antagonizing her fans aren’t that deep, but maybe she’s hiding some truth in there, too. Her posts over the weekend emanated frustration over the lack of boundaries in stan culture. “[You] making my government name your [screenname] is creepy as fuck,” she replied to one fan. When another asked if she’d say she loved her fans, Doja responded, “i don’t though cuz i don’t even know yall.” Admonished by yet another user who argued that Doja owes her career to her fans, the artist clapped back, “nobody forced you idk why you’re talking to me like you’re my mother bitch you sound like a crazy person.”

Doja Cat is still navigating her relationship with her fans

Doja pushing back on boundaries is particularly interesting given the distinct lack of boundaries she’s maintained online. Her career started on MySpace back in the day, while in recent years she’s been known to spend long periods of time livestreaming on Instagram. Some of this reticence might be related to her reported romantic relationship, which has garnered criticism from fans. It might also stem from a desire to separate her pop star persona from her actual personal life. “I don’t like to just parade personal experiences through my music because everybody has something to say about me and they think they fucking know me,” she explained in that Rolling Stone profile. “That kind of turns your life into this big, big Broadway show.”

That might be the real reason Doja can’t stop picking fights with fans: a resentment towards the fame machine that she still hasn’t learned to comfortably navigate. In 2022, after catching heat for not greeting fans outside of her hotel in Paraguay, she posted, “it’s gone and i don’t give a fuck anymore i fuckin quit i can’t wait to fucking disappear and i don’t need you to believe in me anymore. Everything is dead to me, music is dead, and i’m a fucking fool for ever thinking I was made for this this is a fucking nightmare unfollow me.” On another occasion, she posted about not being happy because she was burnt out: “Im never not working. Im fucking tired. [I] just keep agreeing to shit I dont wanna do in the future. Its my own dumb ass fault. And then im too tired to put any effort into this shit. Cuz im so run down from everything else.”

In her Rolling Stone interview back in 2021, Doja Cat claimed she’d “backed away from” social media—which obviously wasn’t fully the case. It’s not easy to disconnect for someone who is a child of the Internet, and especially for someone who owes a lot to the Internet for her homegrown success. Yet there’s another clue, in that profile, as to what triggers a Doja tirade: she said she’d backed off social media unless “I’m lonely or alone, and then I go on Twitter and fucking fire off tweets for two hours straight.”

It follows, then, that Doja’s most antagonistic posts (“you know this is a death threat right? no matter how funny you think this is because you think it’s some kind of meme it’s actually considered a death threat so I don’t know if you realize how bad this makes you look,” she fired off on Thursday) come from a less-than-healthy mindset. It’s also clear that while fans’ lack of boundaries is a source of frustration, she hasn’t yet constructed her own in figuring out how to interact with them.

Doja ended her social media spree with what might qualify as more shitposting. On Instagram, she shared some creepy out-of-context images that are presumably visuals for her upcoming album, mixed with weird memes and the lyrics to The Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror.” On Twitter, she posted, “Can’t wait to go on tour! Love you guys! Feeling blessed. <3” You can decide for yourself whether that’s the meaningful post itself or the joke to undercut the genuine sentiments that preceded it. Maybe it’s both.