Doja Cat likes her fans after all.
The “Paint the Town Red” hitmaker denied the months-long rumor that she hates her fans, who call themselves “Kittenz,” in an interview with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden released Thursday.
“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,” she said.
“But it’s a really big misquoted thing where everybody is saying, she hates her fans.”
Doja, 28, laughed off the gossip while speaking with Darden and attributed it to people not understanding her humor.
“It’s definitely something, and I know that people who get it, get it, and I’m fine with that,” she noted.
“I don’t need to have to explain my sense of humor or explain comedy to anyone.”
“If people don’t see the joke, then they just don’t see the joke. It’s not my responsibility to have them understand.”
Doja lost more than 250,000 followers in July after she refused to tell fans she loved them on social media, replying to one who requested the verbal confirmation with, “I don’t though cuz i don’t even know yall.”
After another person accused her of being rude to the people who made her successful, she added, “nobody forced you [to support me] idk why you’re talking to me like you’re my mother … you sound like a crazy person.”
She also slammed her fans for naming themselves Kittenz, calling them “creepy” and telling them to “get a job.”
Before that, the Grammy winner raised eyebrows when she seemingly made fun of fans for buying her first two albums, which she described as “cash-grabs.”
Her chat with Apple Music isn’t the first time Doja has addressed the criticism she’s received from fans.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar in August, she hypothesized that fans’ belief that they own her in some way leads to outrage when she does something unexpected.
“My theory is that if someone has never met me in real life, then, subconsciously, I’m not real to them,” she reasoned.
“So when people become engaged with someone they don’t even know on the internet, they kind of take ownership over that person.”
“They think that person belongs to them in some sense.”
Doja continued, “And when that person changes drastically, there is a shock response that is almost uncontrollable… I’ve accepted that that’s what happens.”
