On Instagram, the rapper addressed the fallout from when she told her fans that she doesn’t love them and encouraged them to deactivate their accounts
When Doja Cat fell out with her fans last month, it was in part because they wanted her to express a devotion to them that didn’t feel true to her. “I don’t even know y’all,” she told one fan on Threads who asked her to declare her love for her fanbase. In their attempt to stand up to her, update accounts that once supported the rapper’s every move deactivated their accounts, and large swaths of fans unfollowed her various social media. In a recent Instagram Story addressing the fallout, Doja Cat described it as a weight being lifted from her shoulders.
“Seeing all these people unfollow makes me feel like I’ve defeated a large beast that’s been holding me down for so long,” she wrote. It’s a surprise that she even noticed a dip in her follower count. The rapper currently has 25.1 million followers on Instagram.
But her fans weren’t just upset about her refusing to declare their love to her to mend some parasocial bond. They were also concerned about her rumored relationship with J Cyrus, a popular online streamer who has been accused of alleged grooming and sexual misconduct by multiple women. “I don’t give a fuck what you think about my personal life I never have and never will,” she wrote in response to an Instagram comment in July about the fans she was losing. “Goodbye and good riddance miserable hoes.”
Trending
Fans had hoped that taking a stand against Doja Cat would register as a big enough threat for her to make an effort to understand where they were coming from. Instead, she saw it as a convenient way for them to weed themselves out. “It feels like I can reconnect with the people who really matter and love me for who I am and not for who I was,” she wrote on her Instagram Story. “I feel free.”
Earlier this month, Doja Cat shared “Paint the Town Red” as the second single from her forthcoming studio album Scarlet. “Bitch, I said what I said/I’d rather be famous instead/I let all that get to my head/I don’t care, I paint the town red,” she raps on the chorus. The song has been used in over 70,000 TikTok posts since its release and inspired a dance trend on the app. In another verse, she adds: “Fans ain’t dumb, but extremists are… Fame ain’t somethin’ that I need no more.”
