Australian pop singer and queer social media phenomenon Troye Sivan has opened up about the challenges he once faced meeting new people as an underage gay man.
Speaking to Attitude magazine, Sivan reflected on the isolation he occasionally felt while growing up in Perth, Western Australia.
"All my friends were hooking up with random people at parties, and I just felt so left behind because I didn’t know gay people,” he said. “I didn’t know where to meet gay people."
Sivan said that he ended up getting a fake ID and setting up a profile on gay hookup app Grindr.
“[I] started to try to meet people who were like me, but you sort of are forced a little bit into these hyper-sexualised environments, and even though that’s awesome when you’re 17… I didn’t know what else to do."
Sivan continued: “I don’t remember specifically but, because I was always so small, I was so scared to meet up with people because I was like, ‘I’m going to get killed, I’m going to get murdered by someone.’”
"When I see photos of myself, from when I was that age, and I think of the guys that I was meeting up with and talking to, I think: ‘Wow, I looked really, really young'."
Taking over the charts with his music, Sivan admits that he's still influenced by his experiences as a confused young man coming of age in Australia - pointing to his latest single "My! My! My!" as an example.
“Originally the chorus of the song was 'Here he comes/ Like he just walked out of a dream/ Doesn't care that you're 17,’” he said.
“And I was like 'uh, that sounds a bit predatory,' and maybe it was a little bit.”
