Doja Cat Continues to Beef with Her Fans

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | July 25, 2023 |

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | July 25, 2023 |

With every passing day, it’s becoming more and more evident that Doja Cat has a problem with her fans (sorry, Doja vs. Will from Stranger Things is sooo last year). Back in May, the 27-year-old tweeted that her last two albums were “cash-grabs, and y’all fell for it.” She said it was time for her to “disappear somewhere and touch grass,” and ditch pop music for rap. Her followers were free to “weep for mediocre pop.” Now, this was hardly Doja’s first run-in with fans. In March 2022, she butted heads with them over a canceled festival performance in Paraguay. At the time, Doja tweeted that her humility was “gone,” she wanted to “fuckin quit” showbiz, and everyone was welcome to unfollow her. She even went so far as to change her Twitter bio name to “i quit.” Obviously, she didn’t make good on her threats.

Last month, Doja released “Attention,” the lead single from her upcoming fourth album. Like the prophecy (her May tweets) foretold, “Attention” is decidedly more rap-centric than Doja’s past hits. At the end of the song’s first verse, she raps, “Talk your shit about me, I can easily disprove it, it’s stupid / You follow me, but you don’t really care about the music.” In the music video, the star is surrounded by flashing paparazzi cameras and desperate fans reaching out to touch her. At one point, Doja stands totally naked, covered in blood: “Look at me, look at me, I’m naked / Vulnerability earned me a lot of bacon.”

This past weekend, Doja’s beef with her fans intensified. In a series of messages on Threads (ooh, another celeb made the leap!), Doja targeted several fan accounts that used the moniker “Kittenz” (think Beyoncé’s “Beyhive” or Nicki Minaj’s “Barbz”). Doja Threaded:

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.

Some fans reminded Doja that she’d used the term “Kittenz” before, in a promotional tweet for her 2019 single, “Say So.” They also pointed to a 2020 Twitter poll where the artist asked her fans what they’d like to be called, “because I don’t feel morally right pet-naming you guys.” The results were as follows: 74% for “Kittens (Litter)” and 26% for “Cubs (Pride).” One fan told Doja that the Kittenz were only “using the name YOU gave your fans.” She responded, “when i was an alcoholic teen.”

One fan account, @thekittenzweb, asked Doja what she thought they should change their name to. Here was Doja’s helpful advice: “Just delete the entire account and rethink everything, it’s never too late.” Other fan accounts, including Doja HQ the Kittens Room and Doja Cat News, followed her orders and deactivated their pages. Doja doubled down on her thoughts, writing, “My life my rules my style my attitude.”

According to screenshots reposted to Twitter, one fan wrote that they wanted Doja to admit she loved them. She replied, “i don’t though cuz I don’t even know yall.” Another fan Threaded that Kittenz have supported her “through thick or thin,” and she’d be “NOTHING” without them: “you’d be working at a grocery store making songs on fucking garage band miss high school drop out … ” Doja responded, “nobody forced you idk why you’re talking to me like you’re my mother bitch you sound like a crazy person.” She also went after an account that used her birth name (Amala Zandile Dlamini) as their screen name, writing, “you making my government name ur sn is creepy as fuck.” The fan’s response? “LORDD A DOJA NOTICEE”.

Billboard reports that, after her anti-Kittenz spree, Doja deactivated her Threads account. But the damage was done; the singer/rapper quickly lost over 237,758 Instagram followers. Add that to the 200,000 followers who abandoned her after her very public feud with Noah Schnapp. But the fan-base-formerly-known-as-Kittenz mustn’t worry; their beloved Doja Cat still has over 26 million Instagram followers (that’s basically the population of Australia!). And, surely, 26 million people/bots can’t turn on her, right? Well, that all depends on how badly Doja wants them to …