In late August, a blog post by Daniel O'Connor made headlines when he described a negative experience he and his daughters had when meeting Ariana during a special fan contest in connection with the MTV VMAs. Daniel's daughter had a won a special fan-art contest, and the family was given a chance to meet with Ariana backstage at the VMAs. According to Daniel, Ariana was rude to his daughters, refusing to make small talk and not even asking them their names. He also claims that Ariana made his daughters delete photos they had taken of themselves handing their winning fan art to her. Later, after the post went viral, a different fan shared an alleged DM conversation with Ariana over Twitter, where she claimed she only walked away from them because the art featured her late grandfather and she "didn't want them to see [her] cry." She also claimed she had written a letter to the fans but MTV said it had no way of giving it to them. Daniel later admitted that the fan art did include a picture of Ariana's grandfather but that her bad behavior had started before she saw it.
Unfortunately, this is one of those he-said, she-said cases where it's really hard to know the truth. Ariana is notoriously sensitive about the subject of her late grandfather, so it could be true that she was genuinely upset. It's just one of those cases you hope was a mix of miscommunication and bad timing, and not the sign of a bigger problem.
