How Lady Gaga Broke Through Adversity To Become One Of the Biggest Pop Stars of All Time

For those trying to make it on the big screen, it can be a difficult journey. There are many lonely nights, struggles with rejection, and ignoring the naysayers. Often we think that famous actors don’t go through the troubles of other mere mortals. But even people who are on the top of the world like Lady Gaga have at one time or another had to deal with the haters. The Oscar winning singer and nominated actress shared screenshots of a Facebook group that was set up by Gaga’s fellow university students on Twitter.

She had an extremely vicious group of haters, who even went as far as to create a Facebook group titled “Stefani Germonotta, you will never be famous”, posting regularly about how she was an “attention whore”, not good enough, and would never fulfill her dreams of becoming a pop star.

The group viciously attacked Lady Gaga and is the type of group that Facebook is now trying hard to police and distance itself from. Some of the comments like “Who does she think she is?” were made on the page when Lady Gaga was a freshmen at NYU. Since then the pop star has opened up how hurtful they were and how she carried them around for a long time.  

 While cyberbullying, especially towards women, is a newer phenomenon that has only recently gained attention. Unfortunately, the last decade has witnessed a surge of cyberbullying through social media resulting in some tragic suicides including the high profile cases of Amanda Todd and Phoebe Prince. Thankfully with more discussion around the subject, we will see an improvement. With famous actors like Lady Gaga and Ashley Judd, who gave a TED talk in 2017 titled “How Online Abuse of Women Has Spiraled Out of Control”, we will see even more awareness. With celebrities leading the charge,  we will get to a point were people and companies like Facebook will be more vocal and shut down bullies.    

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (aka Lady Gaga) attended New York University Tisch School of the Arts before dropping out to pursue her music career, has gone on to become one of the most successful music artists of our time. The 32-year-old singer’s debut album “The Fame” propelled the singer to major pop status and today is worth over $300 million. While she may have a lot of things to gloat about, she appears diplomatic when she discusses the twelve members of the group who made her life a living hell. 

Gaga has been vocal about the bullying she suffered both in high school and university. She spoke in a PSA video in her early twenties about how she had been bullied in high school and had been picked up and thrown into a rubbish bin.

While the bullying would have been terrible for anybody, she has managed to bring something positive from her experience: it helped her craft her performance in her Oscar-nominated role of Ally in A Star is Born. The key is, and I’m sure Lady Gaga, would agree, is to not dwell on the negativity. Instead, use it to drive you towards your goals and where you want to be.