Doja Cat’s fandom is in shambles, and she couldn’t care less. Throughout her career, the rapper has maintained a bizarre relationship with her fans online — one that embraced their support but harshly rejected anything beyond that, including their inquiries into her life outside of music. She’ll go into the booth and record the songs, but her loyalties seemingly end there. When a fan on Threads (on which Doja Cat has since deactivated her account) asked the musician to declare her love for her fanbase, she wrote back: “I don’t even know y’all.” Now, they feel like they don’t know her, either — but she’s shown them her cards before.
Doja Cat’s attitude toward her fans can, at times, be off-putting, especially prior to the release of her latest single, “Attention.” Earlier this year, she ranted on Twitter about her pop-leaning projects Planet Her and Hot Pink being “cash grabs,” then she hammered her point by insulting fans for falling for it. And when she clashed with fans last year after being criticized for not stopping to say hello to them outside of her hotel in Paraguay, she tweeted: “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.” It’s nothing fans aren’t used to at this point.
From the fandom’s point of view, their own loyalties encapsulate purchasing concert tickets, defending her online, and streaming her songs millions of times. Meanwhile, Doja Cat doesn’t think she owes them shit because she never asked them to do any of that in the first place. During the most recent clash, she criticized her fans for adopting the collective fandom name “Kittenz.” When a fan asked for a replacement name since she had vetoed that one, the rapper wrote back: “Just delete the entire account and rethink everything it’s never too late.” (Representatives for Doja Cat did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)
Some of her fans have come to see her apparent disrespect as a violation of an unspoken social contract (read: entitlement) through which they provided her with the platform and fame she has since weaponized against them. Now, they’re doing what she asked. Over the weekend, multiple Doja Cat fan accounts with tens of thousands of followers each, like Doja Cat News and The Kittens Room, have deactivated their accounts on Twitter. Other pages on Instagram have shared that their own departure is imminent.
“It is with great sadness that the DCBR team announces an indefinite break from the page for the first time in 3 years! We thought a lot about how to say this to you and there’s no other way: Doja’s latest pronouncements on social media left us kittenz very disappointed…. if we can call ourselves that, since even Doja doesn’t seem to like the name of the fandom she herself created,” the Instagram account for Doja Cat Brazil wrote. “Every day, we put our sweat on this page to keep it active and it is with great pain that we see the end approaching. What we hope is that Doja rethinks her actions as an artist and has the least amount of consideration for the fans who have been with her since the beginning, supporting and motivating her… because without us, she wouldn’t be where she is.”
But it goes far beyond lack of fan appreciation. The rapper has recently come under fire for her rumored relationship with J Cyrus, a popular online streamer who has been accused of alleged grooming and sexual misconduct by multiple women. (Cyrus did not immediately reply to a request for comment.) Before disabling her comment section on Instagram, Doja Cat replied to a fan stating that people were beginning to “unstan” her in light of her comments and controversies, writing: “I don’t give a fuck what you think about my personal life I never have and never will goodbye and good riddance miserable hoes.”
Some stans are committed to supporting Doja Cat through yet another controversy — having weathered the previous drama surrounding her involvement in a leaked video from a Tinychat room rumored to be associated with white supremacists. In it, the rapper could be seen saying the n-word while rolling around on a bed. They’ve done it before and are willing to do it again. But for others, once is more than enough. “Imma say this shit right now and idgaf. If any of y’all so called kittens agree wit the shit Doja been doing lately y’all need to get a fucking mind of your own and stop trying to please her all the time to get a fucking notice,” the user Dojasson wrote in an Instagram Story. Other fans have reported that the rapper has blocked them across social platforms, including Threads, Instagram, and Twitter.
Some remaining fans have offered an alternative, if implausible, theory: the introduction of Scarlet, a bloody alter ego she began teasing with “Attention.” The Twitter fan account Hellssmouth wrote: “Doja does love us, but she is now playing the role of Scarlet, they are two different characters … she doesn’t hate us, but Scarlet does since she’s evil.” Leaning into any theory that would justify allegedly blocking abuse victims as part of an elaborate publicity stunt requires a conscious and deeply unserious level of delusion. If that’s the one true last resort here, maybe it’s best to not go down with what appears to be an inevitably sinking ship.
“So sad to see how bad this has all gotten with Doja Cat and her comments,” the Doja Cat fan Dojaverse wrote on Instagram, announcing that they would be shutting down their account on the app, as well as on TikTok and Twitter, once and for all. “It was fun while it lasted.”
From Rolling Stone US
