A recent Washington Post exposé on the Twitter account Libs of TikTok has outed its creator and called it a ‘powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media’ but what is it?
Yesterday, Tuesday April 19, Taylor Lorenz – a Washington Post reporter – outed the creator of Libs of TikTok as Chaya Raichik in a huge exposing feature.
What is Libs of TikTok?
Libs of TikTok is a conservative Twitter account which primarily posts content created by left-wing, liberal, or LGBT TikTok users with the intent of mocking them. It has over 674,000 followers and has become influential among conservatives.
In her article, Lorenz says the account’s intent is to ‘generate outrage’ along with calling it a ‘powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media’.
She said: ‘Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage.
‘Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right.’
It’s a potentially damaging account as it recently posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, and called the woman in the video a ‘predator’ when all she was doing was giving them a standard education.
Just four months after its creation, Joe Rogan helped it gain further fame when discussing it on his podcast in August 2021. He said: ‘Libs of TikTok is one of the greatest f—ing accounts of all time.’
Who is Chaya Raichik?
In her exposé, Lorenz has outed the creator of the account as Chaya Raichik. She was working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok.
Lorenz said she discovered it was Raichik when she found she’d been ‘cycling’ through account names and posting similar content before eventually settling on ‘Libs of TikTok’.
On her accounts Raichik shared posts that ‘minimized covid, cast doubt on the election results and promoted a dubious story about a child sex trafficking ring’, according to Lorenz.
Through Libs of TikTok Raichik has promoted vile opinions such as calling for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be ‘fired on the spot’.
Although maintaining her anonymity until now, Raichik had made several high-profile media appearances. Lorenz was able to really nail the identity of the account’s creator when Raichik was ‘registering the domain LibsofTikTok.us last October, she used her full name and cellphone number linked to her real estate salesperson contact information’.