CCT110 Podcast:The Viral Vendetta

Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj had a falling out after collaborating on a song together. Megan later released a song that seemed to target Nicki's husband, and Nicki retaliated with a diss track. This caused a feud between their fans, with Nicki encouraging hate and doxing. The feud made people afraid to express their opinions online. Hi, I'm your host Natasha, and welcome to my podcast. Today we'll be discussing Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj, the viral vendetta. I'm also going to touch on how parasocial relationships between Minaj and her fans caused an outbreak of internet safety issues. The turmoil between Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj hit its peak on January 29, 2024, but this isn't where the story starts. In 2019, Megan and Nicki released a song together called Hot Girl. The song went on to be extremely successful and placed 166th on the Billboard 200. After this successful collaboration, Megan Thee Stallion collaborated with Cardi B, an artist that Nicki Minaj has public issues with. After the collaboration, Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj's friendship seemed to be less fruitful. Soon after, Nicki unfollowed Megan on Instagram. On January 26th of this year, Megan Thee Stallion released a song called Hiss, a song that criticizes people who talk bad about her. In the song, a specific line stung Nicki Minaj, and I'm going to play it right here. So it's fine, people gon' be mad at Megan, she's mad at Megan's law. Megan's law is a federal law in force that requires the information of sexual offenders to be open to the public. This line is speculated to be targeted against Minaj's husband Kenny Petty, a registered sex offender. However, Megan never said Nicki's name, so she might have took the phrase if the shoe fits, a little bit too literally. Minaj then retaliated with a song called Jack Stone, but I still ain't let Megan fail. She's like six foot, I call her big foot. When the beat fell off, I say get it for your foot foot. When the beat fell off, I say get it for your foot foot. This line is supposed to be a poke at how Tory Lanez shot Megan in the foot in 2020. Minaj then goes on to mention Megan's two parents who have unfortunately passed away and curse her unborn children, very similar to Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. Descends caused discourse between Barb's Nicki Minaj fandom and Hottie's Megan's fandom. Minaj turned to X to continue sharing hateful comments about Megan, instructing Barb to go after those who sided with Megan. Barb weaponized X, Instagram, and TikTok by using them to dox people who called Nicki Minaj out and spread their public information on the internet, whilst also threatening them and their families. Minaj fueled parasocial relationships with Barb by encouraging and praising illegal activities like doxing and harassment. This feud between rappers was able to make freedom of speech practically impossible on social media. Many people started to refrain from sharing their opinions about the situation and fear of being doxed and threatened over a dispute between two rappers. That's all for my podcast and I hope you enjoyed.