Lucy Devine
A teenage singer was reduced to tears in the street when a stranger told her 'some people have it… you don't'.
You can watch the clip below:
Mia Kirkland, 18, who was busking in St Helen's Square in York, was left in tears after a man who claimed to have 'worked with Diana Ross' criticised her performance.
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The man cruelly told her that 'some people have it… you don't' before following her as she tried to walk away.
Mia simply told her critic, 'that's nice, thank-you, have a lovely day' before the man walked off.
But the hurtful comment left Mia feeling upset, with the clip - that was live streamed to her 300,000 TikTok followers - showing the teenager composing herself before wiping away a tear.
A woman's voice can be heard gently telling Mia not to cry, meanwhile the video has now racked up nearly 12 million views.
"He was trying to mumble so that other people couldn't hear it, but he said 'some people have it and you don't'," says Mia.
"I started walking away and he was saying he knows what he's talking about because he's worked with Diana Ross and [started] naming other artists.
"He kept following me and then as soon as my mum stood up and came over he left. So the only reason he was doing it was because he thought I was on my own.
"Then as soon as he'd spoken to me I said to my mum, 'my day's just ruined now. I don't want to keep going.'
"It was only earlier that I'd had flowers and loads of kind words, but it's hard not to let people like that ruin your day.
"It's just a bit presumptuous of him to think that he could get away with it because I'm a young woman on my own."
Video footage shows Mia preparing to sing Lady Gaga's 'Million Reasons' before a man approaches her.
Mia says that while she gets heaps of support from audiences, she's had some 'weird' experiences.
"I've had so many experiences of people being weird with me - I had to report a woman to the police for sending me hate mail - so this is normal for me," she says.
"When I started I didn't think busking would be like that at all. But now that I've been doing it quite a while, every time I go out I have to prepare myself for someone who doesn't enjoy it coming up to me.
"I'm quite a shy person, and I've had to learn to not be. If someone had said that to me before I'd have probably said, 'oh okay, I'll stop then', but people can't just walk over me.
"I was speaking to other buskers that are friends of mine and we were saying how we'd never think of walking up to someone in the street and saying something bad about them.
"Even if you do think something's bad, you just move on. A common phrase buskers use for people coming up and complaining is 'the further away you are the quieter it gets'. If they walk away they won't hear it anymore."
Mia, who will begin studying at the London Centre of Contemporary Music next year, also adds that she doesn't think there's any truth to her critic having worked with Diana Ross.
"I don't think there's any truth in him saying he worked with Diana Ross, if he did he wouldn't come up to me and say something like that," she says.
"Lots of people have said the closest he's probably got to her is listening to her in the shower.
"Most of the time people aren't mean but even when it's that one time it gets you all worried, it makes you anxious and on edge.
"I've only been busking once after it and I was so nervous about coming across him again or someone else saying something, but it was so lovely.
"I am not a confident person at all, but ever since this happened and the positive response I've had from lots of people has made me think, 'people like me, that's good!'."