RAW & UNFILTERED
One should always be prepared for a Cat Arambulo Antonio interview. She is verbally agile, extremely witty, and absolutely full of insight. Her well of wisdom comes from experience. Hence, each word is delivered with gusto, fearless and powerful. As with her social media, you can never expect Cat to mince her words. She affirms, “I actually pretty much show them everything except of course when I’m sleeping, right? I mean, there are a lot of personal stuff also that I don’t show. My social media naman is not on 24 hours a day. So a lot of it is kept for us, my husband, and my kids. But a big chunk of it really reflects on how I really live my daily life. And it’s no filter, it’s not edited, it’s as raw as it can be. It comes with the good and the bad. If I’m being judged for it, whatever. It doesn’t matter.
It’s the real thing.”
It is this kind of realness that attracts Cat’s throngs of fans and followers to her social media accounts. Anybody can claim authenticity, but on top of that, Cat offers her astonishing wit and humor. She is hounded by endorsers, who all know very well how she can turn just about anything to gold. That is why she is very aware of her responsibilities as a social media influencer and the digital karma it entails.
She shares, “I’m very transparent with my followers. Especially as being social media personalities, we have a bigger responsibility to the people following us. And not everyone that’s following us has the same capacity or has the same disposable income as we do. I don’t want to be misleading anyone. I wouldn’t want to be gaining traction or earning money in that kind of way. I can’t, I can not live with that”
Her endearing nature perfectly balances her no-holds-barred personality, an inherent quality of her own true persona that translates perfectly both on and off camera. Cat says, “I guess with that, it distinguishes the way I do things and my relationships with my followers. It’s a bigger connection because I care about them. As much as they believe in me, I respect and really value their trust. And because I value their trust, I’m very careful about everything I do.”
Aware and mindful of the psychological perils being experienced by an online-dependent generation, Cat agrees that everyone should be responsible for guiding the youth in traversing the digital landscape. “I think it’s us who should be really responsible to teach the younger ones. We have the first-hand experience, and during our time we had no gadgets like that. Sometimes we need to have a real conversation, not through [online] messages. We’re also guilty of it, but we try to make an effort to do it.”
Social media is Cat’s platform to share and connect with people. It is her outlet to release her feelings, and at the same time, a venue to inspire a lot of people to live their best lives. And it is through her unedited online presence that people are able to relate, “That’s why I’m so raw because I want them to see that ‘Hey, I’m not perfect!’” She adds with a laugh, “Plus I really don’t know how to edit so screw it, I’ll just post whatever.”
And as with this confident honesty comes the good and the bad, Cat has discovered a lot through meditation and soul-searching, “What I learned was whatever thoughts and comments you have about me are actually none of my business. That’s your problem, not mine. You can’t change what other people think or say about you, but you can change the way you react to it. And that’s the most powerful thing I’ve learned from all of this. And not even just in social media, but I apply it in my daily life. So I’m just happy.” Having experienced a conversation with her, one can only agree, she truly and genuinely is.