Less than three weeks after the release of her latest studio album Scarlet, Doja Cat has found another way to infuriate her fanbase. On Saturday (October 7), she uploaded a seemingly pedestrian selfie to Instagram, quickly deleted it, and then re-uploaded a cropped version of it. However, the initial un-cropped photo showed the T-shirt she was wearing, which included an image of an incredibly controversial figure named Sam Hyde.
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Hyde is a comedian who has previously been criticized for racist, homophobic, and antisemitic rhetoric. Most notably, he worked as a writer on an Adult Swim show titled Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace, which only lasted a season due to its polarizing content. Additionally, Hyde has been condemned for his support of a man named Andrew Anglin, who is the editor for a neo-Nazi website named The Daily Stormer.
Many saw Doja’s shirt as a co-sign or endorsement of Hyde. And though she scrubbed it from her Instagram page soon after it was posted, that did not stop users on social media from calling her out for her support of the questionable comedian.
“we can’t afford to give high profile celebrities the benefit of the doubt while fascism is on the rise,” a Twitter user named @BRBRASTREISAND wrote. “we need to stop trivializing Doja Cat’s conduct as ‘edginess’ and be clear that she’s a Nazi Sympathizer.”
As alluded to before, this is not Doja’s first time upsetting listeners. Earlier this year, she caught tons of hate for the rampant satanic imagery she used in the rollout for Scarlet, especially with promotional singles like “Paint The Town Red” and “Demons.” She also angered fans when she explicitly told them she did not love them, writing on Twitter: “I don’t even know yall.”
Through all of this, Doja lost many social media followers, which likely resulted in an underwhelming first week of sales for Scarlet. But, while the LP only reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 for its debut, the aforementioned “Paint The Town Red” earned another week atop the Hot 100, which Billboard confirmed a couple of days after the Hyde controversy.
Ultimately, it appears that Doja has certainly faced consequences for her bizarre behavior, but has also been able to transcend controversy with one of her project’s 17 songs.
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for MTV
