Lady Gaga, Perez Hilton feud escalates on Twitter

Lady Gaga beseeched her fans not to send death threats to her former close friend Perez Hilton as the war of words between the singer and blogger escalated Monday.

"Sending threats of any kind, using hateful or abusive language, and the provoking of others on the Internet is not supported by me or anything that I stand for," Gaga wrote on the website of her Born This Way Foundation. "What I've seen transpiring is wrong and upsetting to me . . . I know how angry you feel sometimes . . . [but] by engaging in this negativity you are allowing it to spread."

Gaga tweeted Friday that Hilton had sent her a text intimating that a hip injury she suffered in February was karmic payback. Then Sunday, after a fan tweeted that Hilton was at Gaga's apartment building, the singer posted a since-removed tweet telling Hilton in capital letters, "Stay away from me and my family. You are sick, trying to rent an apartment in my building to stalk me. Leave me alone!"

Hilton responded in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, saying, "While it is still too painful for me to go into detail about why I chose to no longer make her a part of my life, I will say that I am a critic and not a stalker. Any allegation that I am stalking her is utterly false, defamatory and now appear to be putting me in danger."

He continued to tweet criticisms of Gaga Monday, including the suggestion that she had a drug problem and that the video for her new song, "Applause," borrowed from David Bowie's 1987 Glass Spider tour costumes and set design. That video debuted Monday on "Good Morning America."

Meanwhile, Gaga will perform "Applause" at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 25, MTV announced Monday.