Katy Perry Responds to Online Hate With Message to Fans: ‘I Keep Looking to the Light’

Katy Perry has assured fans that she’s “ok,” despite a recent barrage of online vitriol that has come her way.

The singer addressed the recent negativity from online commentators in an Instagram comment on a fan page, expressing her gratitude toward her fans for their ongoing support during what she labels an undoubtedly difficult time.

“I’m so grateful for you guys. We’re in this beautiful and wild journey together,” Perry wrote. “I can continue to remain true to myself, heart open and honest especially because of our bond. I love you guys and have grown up together with you and am so excited to see you all over the world this year!”

Perry has found herself as something of a lightning rod for negativity in the past few weeks, with much of the discourse related to her spaceflight aboard the Blue Origin NS-31 on April 14.

While the likes of Kesha had been roped into the ongoing drama following an online post that seemingly referenced fast-food chain Wendy’s’ snarky jab at the “Firework” singer, English musician Lily Allen recently walked back her comments about calling Perry and her spaceflight “out of touch.”

“There was actually no need for me to bring her name into it, and it was my own internalized misogyny,” Allen said on her Miss Me? podcast. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it was just completely unnecessary to pile on with her. I disagree with what it was that they did, but she wasn’t the only person that did it. She was possibly the most famous and the one that divides people the most.”

The Instagram post which Perry responded to was a video of a Times Square billboard that congratulated the singer for the opening week of her Liftimes tour, and ostensibly aimed to serve as comfort amidst the online backlash. 

As Perry continued, she explained that much of her ability to survive the barrage of negative comments has come about through plenty of therapy and personal growth.

“Please know I am ok, I have done a lot work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me,” she noted. “My therapist said something years ago that has been a game changer, ‘no one can make you believe something about yourself that you don’t already believe about yourself’ and if I ever do have any feelings about it then it’s an opportunity to investigate the feeling underneath it. 

“When the ‘online’ world tries to make me a human Piñata, I take it with grace and send them love, cause I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed.”

Perry recently launched her Liftimes tour in Mexico on April 23, with each night also featuring fans being brought onstage during a special request section of the set. “What’s real is seeing your faces every night, singing in unison, reading your notes, feeling your warmth,” she concluded. “I find people to lock eyes and sing with and I know we are healing each other in a small way when I get to do that.

“I’m not perfect, and I actually have omitted that word from my vocabulary, I’m on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but… I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level UNLOCKS.”

Perry will bring her Lifetimes tour to the U.S. next week, with a headline date in Houston, TX set to take place on May 7.