“I’m definitely emotionally available now. I’m a lot more open to being vulnerable, letting people in”
If there was ever a poster girl for the positive side of social media, it has to be Cat Burns. TikTok played an essential role in the 22-year-old south London singer’s rise to fame when, two years after its initial release, her track ‘Go’ reached number two on the UK singles charts this summer, selling more than 600,000 copies. (“No, I haven’t heard from Mr Styles,” she laughs as she names the pop star who kept her off the number-one spot. “I’ll be awaiting my call!”) Not only that, but social media’s mysterious, unknowable algorithms also had a very personal impact on Cat: they helped her to come out.
“It was the beginning of lockdown, and I was on TikTok, which liked to do a thing back then where it would… tell you you’re gay,” the star explains, half-joking. “It would show random videos, and if you interact with it, they’re like, ‘Oh — it seems like you like this stuff…’ I got fed a lot of videos and was like, ‘This makes sense.’”
The Brit School graduate, who identifies as a “woman loving women” and goes by she/her pronouns, then came out to her family. “Coming in my mum’s room, showing her different videos of people coming out, seeing what her response was.” Which was? “‘That’s
