Doja Cat is setting the record straight about how she feels toward her fans after multiple controversial statements that led people to believe she didn't care for her base.
Sitting down with Ebro Darden for an Apple Music interview, Doja spoke openly about the discussion surrounding her fanbase and what she's said on social media about not loving her fans. Darden asked Doja about the rumors that she “hates” her fans and if it was her rejecting the assumptions they make about her.
“One thing I do want to kind of set straight is that you'll never see a direct quote of me saying I hate my fans. Not once,” Doja said. “But it's a really big, misquoted thing, where everybody is saying, 'She hates her fans.’ Never said that.”
Ahead of the release of her newest album, Scarlet, in September, Doja Cat went back and forth with fans on social media, which led to her losing more than 180,000 followers. The controversy started after the rapper criticized her fanbase for calling themselves "kittenz," writing in a since-deleted Threads post, “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.” When a fan asked her to say that she loved her fans, Doja Cat replied, “I don't though cuz I don't even know y'all.” Several stan accounts dedicated to Doja Cat also deleted their accounts.
“I do like to play with that, as a meme,” Doja Cat said during the Apple Music interview. “And I know that like, people who get it, get it, and I'm fine with that. I don't need to like, have to explain my sense of humor or explain comedy to anyone.”
The rapper continued: “If people don't see the joke, then they just don't see the joke. And it's not my responsibility to have them understand.”
Doja Cat also said she keeps things very private in her personal life and goes as far as to not follow her friends on social media so that people can't make the connection of who is in her life. She also said she doesn't speak about her vulnerabilities, including anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia, because she is sensitive to how people might respond.
“You're afraid people are gonna use [your vulnerabilities] against you,” Darden said.
“Yeah absolutely. And they will and they have,” she responded.
In an interview for Harper's Bazaar's Icons Issue published in August, Doja Cat shared more about her views on fandom and being a real person and public figure at the same time. “My theory is that if someone has never met me in real life, then, subconsciously, I’m not real to them,” she said. “So when people become engaged with someone they don’t even know on the internet, they kind of take ownership over that person. They think that person belongs to them in some sense. And when that person changes drastically, there is a shock response that is almost uncontrollable… I’ve accepted that that’s what happens."
After the controversial statements, Doja did show up to a Scarlet release party in Los Angeles where she told fans that she does love them using red paint.
