Lady Gaga is one of the most accomplished musicians of all time. Ninja plays video games for millions of people online. If this isn’t the biggest crossover in the history of pop culture, I don’t know what is.
I write about video games for a living and barely know what the heck Fortnite is all about, so it came as no surprise when Lady Gaga—between private flights to concerts in exotic locations, no doubt—asked her Twitter followers for the details on this “fortnight” she’s been hearing so much about yesterday morning. As is often the case, the internet exploded, with IGN, Twitch, and even Smash pro Ezra “Samsora” Morris fighting for the “Bad Romance” singer’s attention. Lady Gaga’s original tweet has since amassed over 204,000 retweets and almost 870,000 likes.
Never one to shy away from the spotlight, streaming superstar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins stepped up to the plate, offering to guide Lady Gaga through the wide world of video games with a couple choice references to her music: “Call me on the Telephone. I’ll give you a Million Reasons to play. You and I.”
Ninja, who recently made a big show out of moving from Twitch to rival streaming platform Mixer, is famously against playing games with women out of respect for his wife, whatever that means. Lady Gaga, as some have correctly pointed out, is a woman. Maybe famous women, like Gaga and Ellen DeGeneres before her, don’t count because they might help his bottom line?
In any case, Lady Gaga didn’t seem too impressed. She responded to Ninja directly with a follow-up tweet this afternoon, posing another simple question: “who are you.” No capitalization, no punctuation. Ninja, displaying big “not mad” energy, name-dropped Drake, another famous—but not quite as famous as Gaga, mind—musician who appeared on his stream last year. Since then, both sides have gone quiet, likely because they have more important things to do than stare at a Twitter feed all day like me.
What does this mean? Does it mean anything? I don’t know, man. The world is ending. Find some joy wherever you can.
Kotaku contacted representatives for both Lady Gaga and Ninja but neither responded before publishing.