TikTok star Charli D’Amelio is hitting back at the intense criticism she received after joking about not reaching 100 million followers in a year, as well as the hate that followed her tearful Instagram Live on the subject.
Charli D’Amelio is TikTok’s most-followed content creator. Now boasting over 101 million followers, Charli has become the poster girl for the viral video application — but not everyone is a fan of the internet superstar.
The 16-year-old influencer got hit with an avalanche of negativity upon the release of a “Dinner with the D’Amelio’s” episode on November 16, where she appeared to jokingly bemoan not reaching 100 million followers in a year’s time.
The issue quickly erupted into a scandal, with users calling out Charli for purportedly only seeing her fans as “numbers” and being ungrateful for her privileged position as a celebrity.
(Charli’s comment starts at 14:58)
The hate soon spun into a hurricane of vile comments, with D’Amelio even revealing she’d been sent death threats from angry viewers during a tearful Instagram live addressing the situation. She even lost 1 million followers over the ordeal.
She has discussed the matter yet again in a solo December 3 episode of her ‘2 Chix’ podcast sans sister Dixie D’Amelio, hitting back at the shocking amount of hate she received over the scandal.
“The thing that I think happened was, it spiraled completely out of control,” she said of the situation. “It turned into a place where I was getting threats for my life. When talking about this on Live, I got emotional, because that’s not something that people take lightly.”
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“I feel like people really have to understand that yes, I do have a substantial amount of people that follow me on social media,” she continued. “That does not mean that I am not a person. …The entire situation was taken completely out of proportion by lots of people.”
“I know I’m not a disrespectful person. I know that I’m not a genuinely horrible person. I know I’m a good person, at the end of the day. Whether or not everyone agrees with that is for them to figure out, and that’s totally fine.”
(Topic begins at 1:10)
Charli’s podcast shines a light on the growing negativity from social media platforms like TikTok, which even bullied the likes of Taio Cruz off the website within just a few days of him creating an account.
This situation serves as an important reminder to remember that no matter the circumstances, there’s always another person behind your phone screen who your words are directly affecting — 100 million followers or not.