Doja Cat says she feels liberated after she lost nearly a quarter million Instagram followers

“Kiss Me More” singer and rapper Doja Cat has had a rough go of it over the past few years being in the limelight. The “Say So” singer has definitely said so herself, like the time she shot back at disappointed Paraguay fans, threatening to quit the music biz, or the time her infected tonsils messed with her, er, libation habits, and she hinted she might have “bad news” for concert goers. 

Now, a month after she ripped her so-dubbed Kittenz fanbase a new one on Instagram, resulting in nearly half a million fans unfollowing her on the platform, she is speaking out about the incident. And if you guessed that she is not contrite, you guessed right.

“Seeing all these people unfollow me makes me feel like I’ve defeated a large beast that’s been holding me down for so long,” she wrote in her Instagram Stories (watch it before it disappears here). “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.”

“I feel free,” she concluded the Story.

The drama began back in July where, according to CNN, she was miffed at her fans first for calling her by her “government name” (Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini), and later for an “alcoholic teen” dreaming up the “Kittenz” fanbase name.

“You making my government name your sn [screenname] is creepy as f**k,” the outlet reported she tweeted. She then followed that up with, “My fans don’t get to name themselves s**t. If you call yourself a ‘Kitten’ or f***ing ‘Kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.”

For comparison, many pop star fan bases have names. Beyonce has the Bey Hive. Taylor Swift has Swifties. Nicki Minaj has Barbz. BTS has BTS Army. 

Since that incident, social media tracker Hype Auditor reports that she lost nearly 800,000 social media followers (via XXL Mag).

It would seem the fans that have remained are still coming for the “Best Friend” rapper.  On August 7, she posted a selfie wearing a knitted mask and sunglasses. "We don't like you no more. Go take your money and just ... disappear," one Instagram user commented. Before you write off that comment as just an everyday troll, that comment actually earned thousands of likes. Yes, thousands.

 A few days later, the “Streets” rapper uploaded a series of shots to Instagram rocking a tight-fitting cropped top. Once again, several followers turned up in the comment to bash the rapper.

And her animosity with her fans has been in the works for years. Back in 2020, a "Cancel Doja Cat" movement gained traction which was in response to backlash over her track "Dindu Muffin" — a derogatory term used on some message boards to describe Black people who were victims of police brutality. While she apologized for using the slur, tweeting, "The term that I used in the song was one that I learned that day. People were calling me it left and right," (via High Snobiety), the drama wasn’t over. 

When a fan wasn’t happy with her apology, she decided to double down rather than work through it. "FINE.... I'm...... I'm........ sorry that I couldn't see sooner that you're a f***ing loser pleb with micro c**k f**k off chump," she wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

Just…. yikes.