By Audrey Martin
Boston University News Service
When Kat Ungvary, a senior in Boston University’s College of Communication, downloaded TikTok in 2019 as a way to post funny videos of herself and her friends, she never expected anyone outside of her immediate circle to notice her profile.
So, when in December of 2021 Ungvary posted a video to the platform that garnered more than 2.9 million views, she was surprised, to say the least.
“It was just a really overwhelming day,” Ungvary said. “Everything with that entire situation was super overwhelming. I had just my friends following me and the next day I had thousands of people relying on me for content. Like, this is really weird. I didn’t sign up for this.”
The video in question was a short, cheeky 45-second explanation of the basic rules of football.
“Two weeks ago I discovered football’s not that hard to understand,” Ungvary says at the start of the video. “Men are just awful at explaining things and love to gatekeep.”
The video currently has more than 600,000 likes and 7,300 comments. And while a majority of the comments come from users thanking Ungvary for finally giving them a decent explanation of one of America’s most popular sports, other commenters include the TikTok-famous Hank Green and the National Football League itself, who commented the short but sweet, “crushed it.”
“The best thing was it was mainly positive things,” Ungvary said of the onslaught of comments. “I felt really grateful. And it was nice that other people were really grateful. It was just a nice little circle of gratitude.”
Ungvary’s friend Bailey Clark, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she was proud of her friend for her accomplishment.
“Kat has always been the most entertaining and commanding person in the room,” Clark said. “I am glad I get to share how funny and wonderful Kat is with the rest of the world.”
Because her following came about so quickly, Ungvary said she doesn’t have a set plan or goal for her newfound TikTok fame.
“Right now, with just having a platform, it’s something that’s interesting and very experimental,” Ungvary said. “Like, I don’t know what I want to do with it right now.”
Ungvary is currently studying advertising and is planning to attend law school in the future. She said she’s taken a step back from posting regularly on TikTok for the moment to give herself some time to figure out exactly what she wants to do with her platform.
“I have this following and I should be using it because I have all these followers and people are relying on me for content and like, I could create stuff and I could make money off of it and then I could make it a career,” Ungvary said.
This story is a part of a series of interviews with local TikTokers. Read more here.
