Libs of what now?
The Washington Post has a piece on something called Libs of TikTok, apparently a Very Influential Twitter account of the angry right-wing variety. It’s somewhat interesting, as such things are, but the writing is terrible – don’t their editors edit?
The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
What the reporter, Taylor Lorenz, means is of course as usual the T “community.”
Throughout its increasingly popular posts and despite numerous media appearances, the account has remained anonymous. But the identity of the operator of Libs of TikTok is traceable through a complex online history and reveals someone who has been plugged into right-wing discourse for two years and is now helping to drive it.
You see what I mean about the crappy writing.
Chaya Raichik had been working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok.
It went through several names before settling on that one.
In January 2021, Raichik started talking about traveling to D.C. to support Trump on Jan. 6 at the Stop the Steal rally. When violence broke out at the Capitol that day, she tweeted a play-by-play account claiming to be on the ground. “They were rubber bullets from law enforcement. 1 hit right next to me,” she said. She posted videos from the crowd and spoke of tear gas being deployed nearby. After saying she left the riot, she used Twitter to downplay the event, claiming that it was peaceful compared to a “BLM protest.”
…
Just four months after getting started, Libs of TikTok got its big break: Joe Rogan started promoting the account to the millions of listeners of his hit podcast. He mentioned it several times on the show in August, then again in late September. “Libs of TikTok is one of the greatest f—ing accounts of all time,” he said. With his seal of approval, Raichik’s following skyrocketed.
I like a rags to riches story.
I think the article glossed over a lot of what Libs of Tik Tok has uncovered. While we’re being told of course teachers aren’t pushing a trans agenda or discussing sexuality with very young kids, Libs of Tik Tok posts scores of videos of teachers bragging about doing exactly that — and no doubt these are just the ones stupid enough to post publicly about it.
I’d seen the account retweeted frequently, usually the teacher videos. A couple times I scrolled through its feed, and, yeah, there it is clear that it’s being run by a MAGA person, as there are a lot of gross right-wing things posted (anti-mask at the height of the pandemic, support for the Canadian trucker strike, etc.). So this is not a person I’d agree with on most things.
The article uses as an example of a fired teacher one of the more borderline cases instead of one of the egregious ones.
The whole point of the article seemed to be to dox the author. They even linked to web archive links of the tweets, apparently in anticipation of the account being shut down in response to the article. Kind of seems beneath the Washington Post.
[You misspelled your address, in case you’re wondering why your comment was held.]
Yes it does seem sub-WP – the sloppiness of the writing and reasoning especially.
It is disturbing to admit that sometimes….sometimes….the MAGAidiots are right. JP is terrible on so many things, but damn this is hilarious. https://youtu.be/_sgjc29QCGo
He also makes fun of body positivity, the nonsense that it is healthy to weigh 300 pounds.
Yeah, so many people don’t get that it is possible to not shame someone for their body while still having a sensible approach to the risks of overweight. I got attacked in WHTM once for mentioning that when I had anorexia I was too skinny. You would think I had advocated the killing and eating of babies! (Just for the record: I have NEVER killed and eaten babies.) And the suggestion that I now weigh too much for health would have been treated as badly.
And not all that is overweight is genetic or thyroid related. I have a too sedentary lifestyle, spending too much time working on the damn computer.
I am…plump myself? Why? Because despite my whining I refuse to/am unable to deal with my sugar addiction.. In my…defense?…I am quite fit because my other addiction is recreational cycling. Only thing they had prevented lapsing into a full diabetic coma I fear
iknklast – My daughter struggles with that, too, but the way that her mother deals with it is to shame her, so she rebels by buying candy and snacks. (They don’t have a healthy relationship.)
LOTT has made some revelations and even recenlty shown some of Jeffery Marsh’s creepy “AF” videos about letting binary transexuals like himself into girls’ restrooms. So, good work, there. But the propagandistic effect is that people now associate all that with liberalism (which, I admit is fair,) but it gives them a tool to use in the congressional elections. And they can use that to counter anything that liberals say about abortion, global warming, education funding, and especially about the insurrection.
We’re painted with a broad brush and it’s going to damage the entire agenda. It’s also a self-own. The right quite likes placing men and women in gender roles, and the trans agenda serves their purpose: If boys or girls are gender-non-conforming, then changing their sex medically fixes it. It’s just that people think it’s weird and yucky for men to be girlish, and women to be boyish, and with the confusion in language between sex and gender and the imposition of pronouns, the right wins.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, Victoria “glosswitch” Smith has an excellent essay up at The Critic, Sex denialism helps nobody, talking about how sex denialism (and science denialism) gets used by conservatives to make liberals look foolish. Much righteous rage, really spot on.
I can’t recommend Victoria Smith’s essay highly enough, as it lays bare the issue of how the demand that TWAW is feeding the right-wing plenty of ammunition to attack the Democratic Party with.
About the Libs of TikTok, frankly, to me it’s a nut-picking enterprise that finds a few nuts and makes them the only thing that matters when of course they’re not. Beware of those with axes to grind, even when, or especially when, they appeal to your own beliefs. What I find more interesting is when said nuts are defended as simply those who walk into a room of kids with a dildo and a red monkey butt only wanting to educate those kids. Yeah, right,
(Yeah, I hit back and saw the misspelled address. Thanks for fixing it.)
I agree with the concern about “liberals” being tagged with this, but…
Virtually nobody—and maybe literally nobody—on the US right feels the way you describe about medical transition. It’s not the Phylis Schlafly era anymore. Most people on the right are fairly liberal about gender roles these days (some of today’s best lunatic right-wing leaders are women), and they’re certainly not cheering on “gender affirming surgery”.