Lady Gaga Explains A Weird Tweet
A wide-ranging conversation about mental health also touched on the star’s recent social media activity.
Lady Gaga spoke with Oprah (Oprah!) in an interview for Elle magazine. And while their conversation primarily centered around Gaga’s mental health struggles and the importance of kindness (and of course a mention of Bradley Cooper), we were pleased to see Gaga address one of her notable Weird Tweets. On September 28th, 2019 at 7:19 PM, Gaga tweeted this missive: “I didn’t do this for fame, I did it for impact.” And she and Oprah talked about it!
While having an earnest discussion about the power of kindness, Gaga referenced the tweet. “When you look back on the past 10 years,” asked Oprah. “At what moment do you feel that you were most able to express that kindness heals all things?”
“I think it really started with my relationship with my fans,” Gaga responded. “Looking out into the audience and seeing so many people who were like me, people who felt different, who didn’t feel seen or understood. And then also seeing a lot of kids who felt afraid to be open about who they were, it became sort of an existential experience for me, where I thought about what it means to be an individual—I wanted to fight for those individuals.”
“I actually said this the other day on social media,” she continued. “I said, ‘I didn’t do this for fame, I did it for impact.’ And that’s the truth. I recognized very early on that my impact was to help liberate people through kindness. I mean, I think it’s the most powerful thing in the world, particularly in the space of mental illness.”
Gaga opened up further about her struggles with PTSD after being repeatedly sexually assaulted at 19, chronic pain from fibromyalgia, and her history as a cutter. The conversation is quite moving.
“I believe life is asking of us to accept the challenge,” she concluded. “Accept the challenge of kindness. It’s hard in a world the way that we are; we have a very, very grave history. We’re in trouble, and we have been before. But I think life asks us amid these challenges, this hatred, this tragedy, this famine, this war, this cruelty: Can you be kind and can you survive?”
