Catherine Cohen resisted TikTok, a platform where she now has over 70,000 followers, for as long as she could, conceding only when holed up in a hotel room for two weeks quarantining in 2021. “I didn’t understand what it was,” explains the New York-based comedian over Zoom, “and then I just fell in love with it. It’s so creative and much more exciting than Instagram or Twitter. I mostly look at dogs, make-up and people making salads. I appreciate the unintentional comedy of it.” 

While her own material is millennial-coded and largely informed by the type of experiences that feed social media (sex, dating, body image, therapy), when we speak she has recently deleted her Twitter account, retaining her Instagram platform – and some 104,000 followers – to work in tandem with her clips on TikTok. When I check her stories to see what she’s posting in the build-up to a show at London’s Hackney Empire that evening, I’m greeted by a familiar sight: her legs are freshly shaven and there are bloodied bits of tissue by her ankles. “Getting ready for the big show tonight!” quips the caption.