Lady Gaga asks about Fortnite, is apparently in internet feud with Ninja now
Music icon versus video game streaming millionaire.
If you don't follow esports, you may find it bemusing that gamers can not only get rich off steaming and competition, but that they can become celebrities too. If you are bewildered by that, you're not alone. Lady Gaga also has some questions. On Wednesday she tweeted a query that's been asked by millions of non-gamers around the world in the last year: What's this Fortnite thing? What followed was an odd interaction between a global music superstar and one of gaming's biggest celebrities, Tyler " Ninja " Blevins.
Damn, Gaga. Cold. What Ninja is alluding to in that last tweet is his famous Fortnite session with Drake, which was another surreal and perplexing cultural moment.
Ninja made his name by playing battle-royale game Fortnite on streaming platform Twitch, where he had over 14 million followers, but in August jumped ship to Microsoft's Mixer platform. Ninja also has just under 15 million followers on Instagram and over 5 million on Twitter, if those metrics mean anything to you. He told CNBC that in 2018 he made over $6 million from streaming Fortnite.
Naturally, Twitter is having a lot of fun reacting to Gaga's very public brushing off of Ninja.
Gaga's tweet is likely just a bit of fun. She's got at least a little gamer in her, previously tweeting about playing action game Bayonetta. The ultra-popular singer has pushed a few strange or cryptic tweets out in the last few days, leading fans to believe an album announcement in coming.
If this is a marketing tactic, it's working. Gaga's Fortnite tweet has over 200,000 retweets and just under 900,000 likes.
We would say that this will probably end with Gaga being on a stream with Ninja, but that might be a no-go since Ninja apparently doesn't stream with women out of respect to his wife.