Why people think Ariana Grande is feuding with this teenager who looks exactly like her

Here is a collection of words that are extremely 2020: people think Ariana Grande is feuding with her TikTok doppelganger.

If that seems like gibberish, please have the pleasure of being introduced to Paige Niemann.

Fifteen year old Niemann is a TikTok star who’s racked up nearly six million TikTok followers thanks to her absolutely uncanny resemblance to Ariana Grande.

It helps that she's also nailed the singer’s trademark styling – including ponytail – and her idiosyncratic facial expressions and gestures.

Niemann posts regular videos of herself dressed as Grande to TikTok, often overlaid with her songs or snippets of audio from Ariana’s teenaged turn as Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious.

It’s almost scary how accurate it is.

But now people think Grande is feuding with her doppelganger after she commented on “degrading” TikTok impersonations.

In a now-deleted Instagram story, Grande reposted a video from comedian Jordan Firstman where in which he “impersonates a meme”.

“What if we took a moment, like a small clip from a movie or a TV show, something that an artist really poured their soul into, and it like, it just took them years to make,” Firstman began.

And we kind of like, re-contextualized it—like, does that make sense?" says, "And we put a completely arbitrary meaning onto that thing that the artist loves so much? Kind of like, degrading its entire value.

Grande then reportedly posted a follow-up story, writing:

Omg can this please also double as your impression of the ponytail TikTok girls who think doing that Cat Valentine voice and that wearing winged eyeliner and a sweatshirt is doing a good impersonation of me.

Cause this really how it feels.... 'Degrading its entire value' I screamed.

However fans and Cosmopolitancaptured screenshots of the post before it was removed.

And now people think she was shading Niemann in particular, especially give that Grande has previously questioned Niemann’s decision to use Cat Valentine audio in her TikToks.

“i just wonder whyyyy the cat voice / dialogue,” Grande wrote in response to a tweeted video of Niemann posing as her in November 2019.

“i am sure she is the sweetest sweet sweetheart forreal !! but it’s definitley [sic] bizarre seeing people blend the two worlds lmao”.

Niemann certainly believes Grande had her in mind when she posted the story.

In fact, she said it’s part of the reason she’s “not a fan of her anymore”.

On Instagram Live Niemann was asked what she thought of Grande’s comments.

"I'm used to Ariana shading me,” she responded.

I’m just here to entertain people, it’s not how I am in real life. 

Kind of why I'm not a fan of her anymore, honestly.

Previously Niemann had proclaimed herself to be a big Arianator.

In an interview with Dazed last year, she said she had Grande posters on the wall and initially learnt how to mimic the star’s signature make-up in homage to her.

Grande even reached out to her and told Niemann to “grab a hug” if she was going to her Sweetener tour and that she was “beautiful in her own way”.

Unfortunately it seems relations have soured since.

And if not on the singer’s part, certainly on her fanbase’s, who Niemann says leave cruel comments on her posts.

“Ariana fans get so offended when people do anything similar to Ariana,” she said. “They’ll be like ‘be yourself’, or that they don’t like people stealing, or that there is only one Ariana, that I’ll never be her”.

Comments on Niemann’s most recent Instagram post seem to back this up.

“why do you still pretend to act and look like ariana grande ? can u get your own personality....” read one reply, which garnered over 1,500 likes.

“why is this wannabe verified, it's literally a scary obsession” said another user.

Someone tell Grande that imitation is the highest form of flattery...