Doja Cat clarifies that she never said she hated her fans.
Doja Cat created controversy over the summers when she refused to tell her fans she loved them. However, she is trying to make amends by explaining that her words were misconstrued at the time as she attempted to set the record straight in a new interview with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden.
She explains, “One thing that I do want to set straight is that you’ll never see a direct quote of me saying, ‘I hate my fans.’ Not once,” adding, “But it’s a really big misquoted thing where everybody is saying, she hates her fans.” In July, a fan from a Threads account asked the “Paint The Town Red” singer to say “I love you,” to her fans, after which she seemingly replied, “I don’t though cuz I don’t know y’all.” She called her fanbase “Kittenz,” and as a follow-up, several popular Doja Cat fan accounts deactivated their pages at the time.
Doja said, “I never said that, but I do like to play with that as a meme. It’s definitely something, and I know that people who get it, get it, and I’m fine with that,” adding, “I don’t need to have to explain my sense of humor or explain comedy to anyone,” she continued saying, “If people don’t see the joke, then they just don’t see the joke. It’s not my responsibility to have them understand.”
After a month of this controversy, Doja spoke in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she spoke about her fandom, stating, “My theory is that if someone has never met me in real life, then, subconsciously, I’m not real to them. So when people become engaged with someone they don’t even know on the internet, they kind of take ownership of that person. They think that person belongs to them in some sense,” adding, “And when that person changes drastically, there is an almost uncontrollable shock response… I’ve accepted that that’s what happens.”
In September, around the time of her new album Scarlett, the “Woman” singer held a listening party in Los Angeles. She created a painting that read, “I do ❤️ u,” which seemed like a way to repair the damage she made over the summer.