Dua Lipa wants to be more "empowering" online.

Dua Lipa

Dua Lipa

The 22-year-old musician has commented on the growing number of "trolls" and "haters" who spread negativity online, saying that she wants to her online presence to help empower other people.

She said: "It's important to remember that not everyone feels the way that some trolls feel. I think people are [generally] very empowering online, and that's the message I want to put out. It's upsetting - because I'm also human - when people do say mean things online or they assume they really know something about your personal life, which they don't."

The 'Be The One' hitmaker got a taste of how cruel internet comments can be in March when she posted a birthday tribute to her father on Instagram.

In the post, Dua called her father "Babi", an endearing term in Albanian, which also means "pig" when translated into Malay, causing Malaysian fans of the singer to leave "aggressive" comments on the post.

She recalled: "It was actually quite mean on their behalf, because obviously I'm not talking in Malay. I speak another language as well, and the language that I speak with my parents is my heritage. I would like that to be respected."

Since shooting to fame with her newest single 'New Rules', Dua has learned that whilst there are people around her who are "lovely and supportive", she's also open to judgement and criticism, which she does her best to ignore.

Speaking to L'Officiel, she said: "You never expect a song to do [what 'New Rules' did] and you're never really prepared for it. Everybody's so lovely and supportive, but you're also very open to judgment. That's one of the sacrifices that you put up with doing this as a job. You get lots of people saying not so nice things. I don't know if it was just this whole shift in the song doing well - all of a sudden you have a lot more eyeballs on you and then people just don't like you for the sake of not liking you."


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