Doja Cat's TinyChat Controversy

Overview

Doja Cat's TinyChat Controversy refers to a leaked video of singer Doja Cat in an alleged white-supremacist TinyChat chatroom called "Tea Time," which circulated Twitter in May 2020. The video of Doja Cat caused #DojaIsOverParty to trend on Twitter which in turn allowed users to unearth past controversial posts, what she has allegedly done on TinyChat and her song named after the Dindu Nuffin meme. Doja Cat swiftly apologized on Twitter but denied being apart of a racist chatroom.

Background

On May 22nd, 2020, one Lipstick Alley user posted the original video of Doja Cat in the Tea Time chat room in a thread (since deleted) regarding Doja Cat's TinyCat usage.^[1] The user went on to explain that "Rooms like this (Tea Time) are culturally racist. She goes on for hours at a time and I don't feel like recording or watching her for hours that doing too much, but they often say racist things and she jokes along, its pathetic to watch but if that's how he raises her self esteem I guess" (shown below). The thread was reposted and removed from Twitter according to another Lipstick Alley^[2] thread.

That same day, Twitter user @Agnirre reposted the video and added the caption, "Video proof of Doja Cat being on Tinychat with incels" (shown below). The video garnered over 16,900 likes and 7,000 retweets in four days.

Developments

On May 22nd, 2020, Redditor waterboysound reposted the video to r/DojaCatFans^[3] and received over 300 comments and 160 points (79% upvoted) in four days (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter user @bigdavis813^[4] posted a screenshot of an annotation on one of her past song lyrics referencing Dindu Nuffin (shown below, left). The tweet received over 6,600 likes and 1,400 retweets in four days. The next day, Twitter user @YanaTheEmpress^[5] posted a screenshot of an interview with PaperMag in which DojaCat admits to saying offensive things in chatrooms (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 1,900 likes and 240 retweets in three days. There were a number of Twitter threads attempting to explain why Doja Cat had been cancelled including one posted by @dojobat^[6] which accumulated over 11,100 likes and 6,900 retweets in three days.

On May 24th, Doja Cat posted an apology statement to Instagram^[7] and garnered over 954,000 likes in two days. She touched on her experience with TinyChat and her past song and denied being racist (shown below).

That same day, YouTuber Danny Lee TV uploaded a video of Tea Time on TinyChat discussing the controversy (Shown below, left). On May 26th, 2020, Doja Cat took to Instagram live to address the controversy and explain herself. The video was reposted to YouTube by extra quality and received over 65,500 views in a day (shown below, right). Independent^[8] and the Daily Dot^[9] published articles on the controversy.

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