“If I knew what was going to end up happening, I would have done things very differently from the beginning.”
The Libs of TikTok (LOTT) creator has been inundated with interview requests ever since Taylor Lorenz at The Washington Post published an article early Tuesday morning that linked to personal information including her name and an address associated with her old real estate license.
The article headlined, “Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine,” was an unapologetic hit piece intent on revealing the identity of a private citizen for no clear reason. Even some WaPo supporters pointed out how the whole article could have existed without including the name of the person behind the account.
But now she’s out there, and was willing to discuss a few misperceptions with The Daily Wire.
“There is so much misinformation and lies going around about this whole thing. Some of it is just really funny,” the Twitter phenomenon said during a phone interview. One of the most ridiculous lies perpetuated by the article was she created the account on a quest to be famous, or at the very least, because she was transphobic.
“People think that I started this and I had this whole plan and I wanted to harass people on the Left,” she told The Daily Wire. “[They think] I had this whole agenda. The truth is, the way that they found me is they were able to dig up what the Libs of TikTok handle used to be called.”
The ease with which Lorenz and software developer Travis Brown unearthed the account’s Twitter history and profile changes helps prove how little she was trying to hide. The creator of Libs of TikTok, whose name we will omit out of respect for her privacy, said she originally started the account for laughs as a place to post videos of blue-haired Leftists saying silly things on TikTok. As a private person who never even had a Facebook page, she said she was not chasing notoriety.
“I was just having fun,” she said during the interview. She and some friends thought they’d find the wildest videos they could and share them amongst themselves.
But LOTT unearthed a scandal and once she saw behind the curtain, the Twitter user felt a moral obligation to keep posting even amid mounting threats and hatred. Lorenz may have given her the most exposure, but she wasn’t the first person to notice how Libs of TikTok was becoming an internet sensation. This was very bad for Leftists who couldn’t stand being laughed at.
“It just started picking up so much steam, and then the videos started going viral. … I never expected it to grow as big as it did,” she told The Daily Wire. She said she hates how WaPo made her sound fame-hungry when it’s not how she feels at all. “I was not looking for this,” she said. “I never asked for this; I didn’t want this … it just, it happened.”
“Sometimes even now I’m like, is this real? Is this really having an impact on legislation like the Left is claiming? It still boggles my mind how this has been affecting the narrative and the culture war.”
In the beginning, she recalls posting a lot about COVID-19 because that’s what people were talking about. The LOTT creator said it was a lot of vaccine song and dance routines and that she refrained from posting opinions on COVID-19, preferring to share the content and let viewers draw their own conclusions. She’s masterful at doing that to the point that the Left accuses her of taking the videos “out of context.” However, Libs of TikTok usually promotes publicly available videos often without extra commentary.
“You’re holding up a mirror,” the LOTT creator told The Daily Wire when asked to speculate on why they hate her so much. “I think they feel threatened.”
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 21, 2022
“The Left are experts in gaslighting and lying,” she continued. “They’re trying to tell you, there’s no CRT [Critical Race Theory] in schools. No one wants to talk to little kids about sex. It’s just not happening … the LGBT community is just full of love. They have all these talking points, and then when I’m posting stuff refuting their own points, with their own words – that’s why it’s so powerful.”
Eventually, the Twitter sensation started following the topic of the day: pronouns. She mentioned the “narcissism” of anyone demanding that others use specific, even made-up pronouns when they’re not around. “You have to be so self-obsessed to force someone to say your made-up pronoun,” she mused.
Ultimately, the LOTT creator says she feels more sympathy than wrath for the people who make it onto her feed. “I mean, it’s funny and everyone laughs at them, but I actually feel really bad for them. I think we have a serious mental health crisis that is not being addressed.”
Radical gender theory eventually led her to the preschool teachers bragging about teaching it to young students. Though exposing teachers and informing parents was never the Twitter user’s intention, once she saw what was happening in schools, she knew how important it was to keep going.
“It was never a decision, like I want to explore what’s going on in schools,” Libs of TikTok’s creator told The Daily Wire. “I didn’t even know. I didn’t know what was happening.”
Later, she mentioned being “most proud” of exposing what was going on at schools.
In a recent tweet, she wrote, “Brian Stelter: ‘It’s [Libs of TikTok] even helped inform Florida’s recent parental rights law’ If true, this is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life and I will wear it with a badge of honor. We must protect innocent young kids.”
Brian Stelter: “It’s [Libs of TikTok] even helped inform Florida's recent parental rights law"
If true, this is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life and I will wear it with a badge of honor. We must protect innocent young kids. pic.twitter.com/ngPmsVNMjr
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 21, 2022
The one thing the LOTT writer will alter is being more careful about the wording she uses to avoid getting banned. She already has a personal policy against posting any videos of minors.
Meanwhile, since the article went live, the LOTT founder has been receiving more threats than usual.
“I probably got two dozen death threats, and threats of hurting me … I don’t think it’s serious,” she said. She tried reporting one of the more egregious threats to Twitter, but the company claimed it didn’t violate its policies.
“Apparently threatening to assassinate someone doesn’t violate Twitter’s policies. But conservatives get suspended for stating biological facts. @TwitterSafety,” she wrote.
Apparently threatening to assassinate someone doesn’t violate Twitter’s policies. But conservatives get suspended for stating biological facts. @TwitterSafety pic.twitter.com/2xMz9x9ii5
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 21, 2022
The WaPo article attracted some of the worst people on Twitter. But it also got Libs of TikTok more notoriety and exposure, pushing her account even closer to 1 million followers. She started a Substack newsletter and posted it to the account as a way for fans to follow even if her account does eventually get banned again.
So what’s next for Libs of TikTok? During the phone interview, the person behind the account echoed what she told Fox News host Tucker Carlson: she refuses to be intimidated by the WaPo or any of her critics.
“The next few weeks are going to be pivotal,” she told The Daily Wire, speaking on how she’ll be deciding “the future” for herself and the account. But she emphasized the desire to keep doing what she’s been doing, which the Twitter sensation has continued without pause since the WaPo article went live.
“I’m going to continue exposing them,” she said. “I’m going to continue posting them. It’s going to be the same, just now people know my name.”