A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Libs of TikTok

00:00:00.000 people have always come came after me and like these specific types of people like they've

00:00:05.360 always called me a pedophile they've always called me a groomer so i was like yeah yeah

00:00:08.160 whatever it's tuesday hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity the show that is responsible for

00:00:21.300 zero bomb threats so far i'm matt bernstein and i am so grateful and happy that you're here today

00:00:26.960 If you like the show, please consider following us on whatever app you're listening to this on

00:00:32.340 so you get reminded each week when we release new episodes.

00:00:35.840 You can also find us on YouTube and on Instagram at abitfruitypod.

00:00:40.280 All of those links will be in the episode description.

00:00:43.320 Last week, a 37-year-old woman named Catherine Levy from Massachusetts

00:00:47.020 pled guilty to calling in bomb threats to the Boston Children's Hospital last August.

00:00:52.100 There's a bomb on the way to the hospital.

00:00:54.000 You better evacuate everybody, you sickos.

00:00:56.300 She sent in a phone call to the hospital.

00:00:58.580 The call was made a few days after the hospital was put on blast by a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok, which disparaged the hospital for providing gender-affirming care to trans people.

00:01:07.560 Libs of TikTok pushed the conspiracy that the hospital was providing surgery to trans minors, which was not true.

00:01:13.560 After the bomb threat, the hospital was put on lockdown and a bomb squad was dispatched.

00:01:18.380 Libs of TikTok is, for the most part, a Twitter account, or X, or whatever it's called by the time you're listening to this.

00:01:25.920 Libs of TikTok currently has two and a half million followers.

00:01:29.240 I'm blocked, which I wear as a badge of honor.

00:01:32.100 But it's essentially a curated, never-ending stream of content reposted from other people's

00:01:38.140 TikToks or other social media accounts.

00:01:40.640 Most of these people are queer teachers or social workers or doctors or just literally

00:01:46.060 random queer people.

00:01:48.080 It could be some teacher in Colorado with 50 followers who posted a TikTok from their

00:01:52.580 classroom and there was a rainbow flag on the wall in the background. Libs of TikTok will repost

00:01:57.480 that to their millions of followers with a caption alluding to the teacher being a child groomer or

00:02:03.380 a pedophile and bam, thousands of angry replies. Her followers find out what school the teacher

00:02:09.540 works at and perhaps their personal home address and bomb threats ensue and school evacuations.

00:02:16.380 I know that this sounds extreme, but Libs of TikTok has been connected to bomb threats at 11

00:02:21.060 different schools in the United States just in the last month. Today, we're going to deep dive

00:02:26.020 into what has become one of the biggest influences in the current anti-LGBTQ movement and groomer

00:02:31.400 conspiracy and the person behind it. And if you hang out till the end, we're also going to hear

00:02:36.940 directly from some of the teachers who have been targeted directly by Libs of TikTok. To help us

00:02:41.860 dig through all of this, we are joined by the extremely prolific Taylor Lorenz. Taylor is a

00:02:48.160 journalist at the Washington Post who reports on the internet and the people who use it.

00:02:52.140 She's also the author of a brand new book called Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame,

00:02:58.340 Influence, and Power on the Internet, which I highly recommend. She's also the person who

00:03:04.320 brought to light the identity of the person who runs the libs of TikTok account and the chaos

00:03:08.580 that ensued after she did that. I will have her tell you about that. Taylor, welcome to A Bit

00:03:14.240 Fruity. Thanks for having me. Of course, I'm so happy and grateful that you're here. So Taylor,

00:03:20.640 I want to start at the beginning. Who is behind the Libs of TikTok account? And what do we know

00:03:27.560 about them? Basic info. So Haya Rychak is around 30 years old. She's a part of this Orthodox Jewish

00:03:34.120 community. She lives in Los Angeles. She revealed her own address on Twitter. I will not do it here.

00:03:39.480 Um, but she, yeah, she, I mean, she's best known for basically launching hate campaigns against

00:03:45.660 LGBTQ people. And now she's a full-time employee of Seth Dillon, um, at the Babylon Bee. And she

00:03:51.940 is basically a social media influencer full-time. Who was she though, before she started all of

00:03:57.980 this, because she had a life of more than 25 years before libs of TikTok. She's from Brooklyn,

00:04:04.560 right? Yeah. And she was a real estate agent. Previously, she worked at this real estate

00:04:10.960 company that seems to have employed a lot of people in Brooklyn. And then she moved out to

00:04:15.740 Los Angeles during the thing around the pandemic. I can't remember exactly the year, but she moved

00:04:22.060 at some point from Brooklyn to LA. But yeah, she was living in New York previously. She had some

00:04:26.580 like early kind of rumblings on Twitter before she was Twitter famous. Yeah, before she was

00:04:33.900 of TikTok, she went through several different iterations on Twitter. She was almost sort of

00:04:38.360 trying to see what hit. She was clearly involved in right-wing politics. She was at the insurrection

00:04:45.640 and actually live tweeted from the insurrection from a previous Twitter account under her own

00:04:50.100 name. She used to tweet under her own name. And then she had several different like weird

00:04:54.240 parody accounts. One was called like Biden's houseplant or something. And she would tweet

00:04:59.280 as if she was like a houseplant in the Biden administration.

00:05:03.080 It was very strange.

00:05:05.000 You could kind of see her basically trying out

00:05:07.260 these different kind of parody identity accounts

00:05:10.500 to try to get traction and generate, you know,

00:05:13.580 yeah, generate attention.

00:05:15.120 So she was like firmly a right-wing individual

00:05:17.560 on the internet and in her like personal life

00:05:20.900 and like trying to maybe do something online

00:05:24.460 before this is what took off.

00:05:27.180 Exactly.

00:05:27.660 I mean, she was promoting election fraud conspiracies.

00:05:30.800 Once again, she was at the insurrection or claimed to have been.

00:05:33.820 Actually, she was not, she didn't even claim to be.

00:05:35.560 She was actually pretty much as soon as her face was revealed, she was found in the January 6th footage.

00:05:41.160 And so she was clearly like, she had clearly been radicalized already.

00:05:45.160 Like she already believed a lot of this right wing ideology, but she wasn't really specifically targeting gay or trans people.

00:05:52.840 She was mostly just, I mean, again, it was the election fraud.

00:05:56.280 it was just other sort of like generic far right conspiracies. It really wasn't until she kind of

00:06:02.960 flipped over to the libs of TikTok. It was summer of I guess that would have been 2021 or 20. Yeah,

00:06:09.460 last year was 2022. So summer of 2021, that she really sort of started to latch on to these like

00:06:14.920 groomer conspiracies and like really go hard against LGBTQ people.

00:06:20.140 Right. So that wasn't a big part of her political totem pole until it started gaining traction for

00:06:25.800 her online exactly so summer of 2021 libs of tiktok is born and like i said earlier it's it's

00:06:36.160 a curated feed of queer people usually like plucked out of obscurity like it's not like famous

00:06:42.860 gay people it's not like billy porter it's not even like me like people with a following it's

00:06:47.140 like random people it's literally like your gay uncle who like works at a daycare in alabama or

00:06:52.040 something it's not even clear a lot of these people are gay by the way matt like i will say

00:06:58.420 like i there's some people that are like i mean they're just it's she sort of is against anyone

00:07:03.360 that looks progressive 99 of the people are members of the lgbtq community but there's also

00:07:10.740 just people that maybe just don't conform 100 to gender stereotypes that she targets you know as

00:07:16.840 well and yeah i mean like you said i mean they might not be queer but if they're a teacher it

00:07:21.060 might be that they have like a rainbow flag in the mug on their desk or like something like really

00:07:26.820 at first it felt like she was going big with like oh my god it's like a drag queen in school or

00:07:32.880 something first of all i don't have any issue with drag queens in schools but it seemed like she was

00:07:36.260 like i'm gonna go for like the targets that seem obvious to my audience as time has gone on and she

00:07:41.220 has to keep up a feed of never-ending content it's like she digs deeper and deeper and it's like

00:07:47.320 literally like a teacher with like a rainbow flag sticker on the chalkboard in the background of a

00:07:51.780 picture yeah exactly i can't remember exactly when the account flipped to lips of tiktok but it was

00:07:57.680 really summer of 2021 that this hatred uh sort of towards lgbtq people became a core pillar of her

00:08:04.800 content that's also when joe rogan i believe joe rogan shouted her out that august and directed

00:08:09.520 people there that was one of many shout outs that joe rogan actually gave to haya and it really

00:08:14.860 started to get traction with the conspiracies too. She promoted that conspiracy that children

00:08:19.920 were using, you know, identifying as cats and using litter boxes at school, which ended up

00:08:25.400 being completely false. Actually, Tyler Kincaid tracked down why that rumor spread and the

00:08:30.060 litter boxes were actually for children to use, if they needed to use the bathroom during a school

00:08:34.520 shooting lockdown. That's why the school had litter boxes. It had nothing to do with like

00:08:39.140 LGBTQ students. But she promoted that conspiracy and a number of others. And as you said, it's

00:08:44.660 really just like anybody that sort of supports the lgbtq community mostly it is gay people but

00:08:49.960 a lot of times yeah it's just like a rainbow sticker you know or something and she also said

00:08:54.240 i believe didn't she call like the trevor project like terrorist organization or something she had

00:08:58.520 a lot of sharp words for the trevor project as well yeah it gets really dark i mean the trevor

00:09:03.400 project which is chiefly an lgbtq crisis hotline she disparaged at length before i believe deleting

00:09:11.920 the tweets disparaging them but she was basically like this is an organization for groomers and it's

00:09:16.760 like oh my goodness this isn't an episode about the groomer conspiracy theory this is an episode

00:09:21.220 about higher rate chick and libs of tiktok but like the idea which i feel like is important to

00:09:26.700 understand for any of this behind it and behind the the groomer conspiracy is that i mean it's

00:09:32.000 the gay agenda if you've been alive for more than 15 minutes you're aware of this it's it's the

00:09:36.300 modern iteration of the gay agenda that gay adults um you know can't and trans adults and queer

00:09:41.660 adults like we can't reproduce so we're going to schools and we are um because we can't reproduce

00:09:48.020 we're in we can reproduce by the way but because they think we can't reproduce um that biologically

00:09:54.760 that we have to go and recruit and so we're recruiting in schools we're recruiting by

00:09:58.540 becoming teachers and bus drivers and you know social workers and whatever else um and so the

00:10:05.380 whole idea behind all of this is like save the children right we have to save the children

00:10:09.600 And the amazing thing about her little Trevor Project barrage was that the Trevor Project is like quite literally a resource to save queer youth from dying.

00:10:21.640 I mean, that's what the Trevor Project is.

00:10:22.920 So each of these posts of like random people, queer or suspected queer, will generate, you know, hundreds to thousands of comments consistently on every single post on Twitter.

00:10:34.640 And it's extremely hostile.

00:10:36.900 It's all, you know, this is a pedophile.

00:10:38.920 This is a groomer. And then as we'll talk about in a little bit, like a lot of these people will

00:10:44.440 do a lot more than just leave a nasty comment. They'll take action that transcends the internet

00:10:50.400 and starts to affect these people's real material lives. But you mentioned Joe Rogan. At what point

00:10:57.300 does Libs of TikTok go from being another one of Haya's like projects that she's trying out

00:11:03.120 on the internet to like big time really fall of 2021 and early 2022 in january of 2022 or really

00:11:12.700 by like january february march the groomer conspiracy had like really taken hold um you

00:11:18.900 started to see the rise of this anti-lgbtq legislation in florida um it was just going

00:11:24.700 really viral like her account grew significantly during those that six month period of sort of

00:11:30.180 late 2021 into early 2022. She also was doing more and more media appearances. She did a whole

00:11:36.780 interview with the New York Post. She was on Tucker Carlson. She had very much become this

00:11:41.040 popular figure on the right by then. But it's notable that she wasn't going on these shows

00:11:47.240 with her face yet. Or like her real voice, right? She went on anonymously and hid her face and

00:11:54.780 disguised her voice, basically. Right. And the whole thing was like, I'm anonymous. I'm like

00:11:59.560 this like superhero saving the children anonymously, not for long. But my other question

00:12:05.980 about the beginning of Libs of TikTok is like, where does the funding come from? Because in

00:12:10.640 theory, it's like this like grassroots, like we're just building a movement from the ground up. But

00:12:17.640 like a lot of times when things seem that way, it's not. It was very much not grassroots. By

00:12:23.260 February 2022, she was she had already struck a deal with Seth Dillon and was making quite a

00:12:28.640 significant amount of money to the point that she could quit her job and work on it full time and

00:12:33.180 she was already funded by the babylon bill like seth dylan who owns the babylon b right and the

00:12:39.160 babylon b i mean at first wasn't she soliciting donations and stuff yeah she also got well she

00:12:45.220 has solicited money over throughout her accounts history um she set up a sub stack as to get

00:12:51.440 subscription money um she sells merch like she has her own sort of various monetization strategies

00:12:58.440 But early on, it was primarily Seth Dillon's payments that were funding her.

00:13:04.940 Right. And Seth Dillon is the he's the editor in chief CEO, whatever you want to call it, of the Babylon Bee, which is like it's like the right wing version of the Onion.

00:13:16.780 It's like a it's like a satire website.

00:13:19.500 It's meant to be a satire website, but it's like barely satire, like especially because most of the people that read it just think of it as news.

00:13:26.540 it's just like weird right-wing headlines basically right yeah it's just it's just like

00:13:32.780 right-wing headlines with like maybe a little bit of like what they consider comedy in there

00:13:37.400 to position it as not real news it's also like the reason that elon musk by the way this is a

00:13:43.360 little bit of a tangent but it's the babylon b is the reason that elon musk like bought twitter

00:13:48.380 i believe because i think they were banned uh or suspended or something under the old twitter

00:13:54.500 management and then elon musk was like comedy has to be legal again like this is this is outrageous

00:14:00.280 that they were banned for something that was overtly transphobic and then elon musk bought

00:14:04.600 twitter yeah they're like comedy is just like misgendering trans people right so libs of tiktok

00:14:12.260 as it's growing it goes from you know no followers to like hundreds of thousands of followers very

00:14:17.560 quickly and it starts to shape and this is like why we're doing this episode by the way because

00:14:23.080 like i wouldn't if a lot of people on the internet are transphobic a lot of people on twitter are

00:14:30.220 transphobic a lot of people are transphobic and we don't make a show about them because like who

00:14:36.400 actually gives a shit but the thing about libs of tiktok is it became very quickly and this is

00:14:42.320 something that taylor really highlighted when she wrote about the person who was behind it

00:14:47.340 it became like a machine that started to inform legislation and right-wing sentiment about queer

00:14:55.520 and trans people in general like you would see videos that libs of tiktok that higher rate chick

00:15:00.480 scraped from like some teachers some random teachers tiktok account or something and then

00:15:06.680 you would see that video being played on tucker carlson's show when he was still at fox news

00:15:12.200 to you know millions of people and being like this is what they're doing in our schools and so it like

00:15:17.280 trickled up very quickly to like the most powerful people in media which in turn trickled back down

00:15:23.240 to all of the consumers of that media being like oh my god what's happening in our schools and then

00:15:27.620 we see these bills uh you know don't say gay bills and ban bills banning trans health care for minors

00:15:34.980 and sometimes trans health care also for adults start floating around through the country and

00:15:40.440 that's you know that's why we're talking about it so i want to address something about the you know

00:15:47.860 anytime i talk about libs of tiktok i get a ton of shit which is i mean i get a ton of shit every

00:15:53.720 time i talk about anything which is what it is but one thing that both higher ray chick and all

00:16:01.880 of her millions of followers love to say anytime you criticize libs of tiktok especially when you

00:16:08.260 talk about the real world effect that they're having you know the bomb threats on schools the

00:16:13.360 bomb threats on hospitals the doxing of teachers is this isn't a right-wing account I'm not posting

00:16:20.420 anything that isn't already out there you know I'm just showing what's already being posted by

00:16:25.800 these teachers because in theory they're just taking videos and photos that you know teachers

00:16:31.500 and other people you know queer people are posting on their own social medias in fact

00:16:37.040 just the other night when I was taking notes for this show Haya tweeted to her personal

00:16:43.980 Twitter account which I'm also blocked on which is great but she tweeted if you need a reminder

00:16:52.940 on who the real fascists are the left wants me to go to prison for reposting their own TikToks

00:16:59.020 this is such a dishonest framing of what's really going on here because if you were just reposting

00:17:06.920 content innocently, with no motive behind it, not trying to, you know, maybe project any of

00:17:13.540 your own narrative or agenda onto it, then you would not be connected so closely to so many

00:17:19.560 bomb threats. And you get this from her followers, too. Like, she's not right wing. She's not,

00:17:24.940 you know, doing anything wrong. She's not endangering people. She's just posting what

00:17:28.580 these people have already posted. What do you make of that argument, Taylor?

00:17:32.520 I mean, it's just a flat out lie. She's overtly right wing and proudly right wing and speaks, constantly promotes a very far right agenda. It's also just a flat out lie that she only reposts content. She's, let's not forget, she's tweeted out the address and personal phone number of teachers before. She's targeted people explicitly. Like you said, she's made commentary about the Trevor Project and others.

00:17:56.900 She also edits videos and manipulates them to make them really inflammatory and often misleading.

00:18:03.140 She's never showing the whole TikTok.

00:18:04.880 She'll often show clips of it or takes things out of context, deeply out of context to mislead.

00:18:10.920 And this is all just classic misinformation.

00:18:13.860 She's using source material of content that she finds online and then skewing it and misrepresenting it and using it to target average people, just working people.

00:18:25.440 like you said, people with often no following. Yeah, I mean, it's just a completely, she's just

00:18:29.740 a liar. And that's not true. And she's not just resurfacing content in a neutral way at all.

00:18:34.680 And I think she's she does so much editorializing, that to try to act like she's some sort of neutral

00:18:40.220 actor is just it's ridiculous. It's just an obvious and overt lie that can be disproven

00:18:45.720 very easily by just looking at her Twitter feed. Yeah, well, one of the times that she went on

00:18:50.900 tucker carlson notably the time after you you know exposed her as it were which we'll talk about in a

00:18:57.480 second but one note that tucker said that like fucking this was an hour-long interview that

00:19:03.620 they did and it fucking blew my mind because tucker returned to this point over and over again

00:19:09.280 that how brilliant the idea was for libs of tiktok because she in his mind does so little

00:19:15.960 editorializing. He was like, it's amazing that you don't even have to add much, that you don't even

00:19:21.700 have to add your own thoughts or context. You just present the information as is and see how people

00:19:26.420 react. And one of the amazing things about that to me was, first of all, if you listen to Haya

00:19:30.680 Rachik speak, and I know I'm going to go like maybe a little bit below the belt here, but she

00:19:34.980 doesn't actually have that much to say. Part of the reason why she's not, you know, she does write

00:19:39.240 captions whenever she reposts content. And the captions, to your point, Taylor, like they are

00:19:44.200 very inflammatory, they will always allude to people being groomers or pedophiles with no

00:19:50.540 evidence whatsoever. But the thing is, if you listen to her speak in interviews and whatnot,

00:19:54.520 she's like, she doesn't have a lot of thoughts. It's not a lot going on. And so it's like,

00:19:59.940 wow, you have this brilliant concept where you don't need to, you know, speak that much about

00:20:04.080 your own belief system. And it's like, I don't think she has that much of a belief system,

00:20:07.360 guys. I think she likes being viral on Twitter. Well, she does. I would say she does have a very

00:20:12.580 right-wing ideology. I mean, I went to her house and I saw the books on her bookshelf and she has,

00:20:20.200 you know, a lot of far-right stuff. Tucker Carlson's book was there, obviously,

00:20:24.060 Glenn Greenwald's book. Like, she's clearly steeped in this right-wing ideology, but I

00:20:28.420 totally agree. Like, I mean, she's just an incredibly uncharismatic person. Generally,

00:20:33.040 she would never make it as an influencer if she didn't have this sort of anonymous account that

00:20:38.500 she ran, that she's built up. Like, her as a person, she's not compelling, really, other than

00:20:43.260 she's just a hateful, kind of spiteful person. But yeah, I mean, she absolutely does not just take

00:20:49.100 videos. And you hear this from a lot of people on the right, by the way. You know, they like to call

00:20:54.860 themselves journalists when they're not doing journalism. But people like Andy Ngo, you know,

00:20:59.560 he does the same thing where he will take videos, right, of protesters or, you know, something

00:21:05.140 happening i just remember during the black lives matter protest in seattle he was sharing just like

00:21:08.900 videos of random black people like sometimes committing crimes or appearing to make crimes

00:21:13.000 and just be like look at what's going on you know like there's this very specific subtext there and

00:21:17.740 there's a very specific reason they're sharing these specific videos at this specific time

00:21:21.300 to promote a specific agenda and it's just it's a lie for her to act like she's she's not doing

00:21:27.140 that because that's the whole point of her account yeah when i explain to people what's going on at

00:21:31.240 libs of tiktok and when they say to me they're like well she's just posting other people's

00:21:35.700 videos i'm like if i fed my audience a steady stream of material that said like every brunette

00:21:43.740 woman was a serial killer right and i like implicitly or explicitly like was consistently

00:21:49.740 feeding them language that was like you know better watch out you know wouldn't wouldn't

00:21:55.040 really want a brunette woman around my kids and then i like take i find like a tiktok video of

00:21:59.560 random woman with brown hair. And I post that, a screenshot of that onto my, you know, to my

00:22:04.860 audience. And I'm like, look, a brunette woman. And then millions of people who follow me go and

00:22:09.980 like find her address and, you know, attempt to bomb her house. And then I go, well, I never said

00:22:15.800 she was a serial killer. I just said a lot of brunette women are serial killers. And then I

00:22:20.120 showed you a random brunette woman. What the fuck do you think they're going to do?

00:22:23.740 She knows what they're going to do. She wants them to do these things, right? She's,

00:22:27.540 she's implied support for the for this whole agenda like she said gay people shouldn't be

00:22:32.300 allowed to teach in schools like this is what she backs and it's just i mean she's just a liar

00:22:36.680 she's a liar and tucker carlson's a liar by the way too they're just liars and you can't really

00:22:42.400 like fight with liars because they're just pathological liars she's just gonna keep lying

00:22:46.860 and be like oh no i'm just this little old woman sharing things it's like no you have

00:22:50.340 such exactly what you just said you know what you're doing and you're inciting violence against

00:22:54.360 an oppressed group of lgbtq people who you hate and you know that's horrible and and making an

00:23:01.960 eye-watering amount of money in the process obscene amount of money obscene amount of money

00:23:08.480 she's making so much money so much money and she's profiting off a hate campaign against vulnerable

00:23:15.260 people who have no access to money i interviewed you know teachers who she got fired and these are

00:23:22.400 lgbtq people that are you know we're already making almost no money as teachers and we're

00:23:27.880 now fired because of this hate campaigns against them um and you know there's no there's no support

00:23:34.900 there's no relief for these people there's no maybe sometimes one of them will tweet like hey

00:23:38.940 go fund me or something but there's no lasting that the harm is to them is is irreparable and

00:23:45.160 she doesn't care she doesn't appear to care yeah so in april of last year as millennials say you

00:23:55.200 did a thing uh you wrote an article in the washington post titled meet the woman behind

00:24:02.680 libs of tiktok secretly fueling the rights outrage machine so up until that point libs of tiktok as

00:24:10.160 we said she had been operating anonymously how did you figure out who was behind the account

00:24:15.980 because there were there was a campaign that ensued against you that was one of the most

00:24:23.880 vicious hate campaigns i have ever witnessed on the internet against anyone since like gamer gate

00:24:30.740 if if you the listener know what gamer gate is this like resembled that in a lot of ways i thought

00:24:36.720 So what motivated you to figure out who was behind the account or tipped you off or, you know, write this article in the first place?

00:24:44.740 Well, obviously, I'm a huge supporter of LGBTQ rights.

00:24:47.900 I was just disgusted by what was happening and horrified.

00:24:52.480 I saw this sort of increased violent rhetoric against gay people and trans people specifically.

00:24:59.480 And I saw this account growing in power.

00:25:03.300 I cover online influence for a living.

00:25:04.940 So I cover, you know, influencers of all types, including far-right influencers.

00:25:10.200 And it wasn't just that she was an influencer online, it's that she had become a media figure.

00:25:15.020 She was essentially a de facto assignment editor for the entire right-wing media, as you mentioned.

00:25:19.640 Like, she would cover something on her account.

00:25:21.580 It would be on Fox News and Breitbart and all these websites, like, the next day.

00:25:25.240 Christine Pushaw, DeSantis' press secretary, also cited her account and said it informed, you know,

00:25:31.640 the thinking of the DeSantis campaign, who's obviously pushing super anti-LGBTQ legislation.

00:25:38.320 So it felt like it was, you know, it felt like her account was affecting laws, you know,

00:25:43.640 used to restrict LGBTQ rights. And then also, you know, she was targeting these helpless people,

00:25:49.060 and it was just getting increasingly violent. And she was this huge political public figure doing

00:25:54.340 public appearances, by the way, like going on Tucker Carlson, doing interviews, but nobody

00:25:59.500 had reported who she was. And so I thought, I'm going to do that. I've done that before

00:26:03.780 for influencers. Like, I mean, I think it's really important to understand kind of who's

00:26:08.700 shaping our media landscape. And if you have someone highly influential with tons of money

00:26:12.840 launching these hate campaigns against LGBTQ people and hospitals, by the way, that provide

00:26:18.080 gender affirming care, we should know who that is. We should know who that is. We should know

00:26:22.120 who's behind an account like that so that we can give them the appropriate amount of scrutiny.

00:26:26.100 me. So I decided to do that. And, you know, through a lot of reporting, found out who she

00:26:31.360 was. I famously visited her house. She wouldn't give me comment for the story. I tried to call

00:26:36.700 her a number of times and she hung up on me. And as a journalist, if you are going to, especially

00:26:41.360 if you're going to reveal someone's identity publicly in a newspaper, you need to make every

00:26:45.420 single effort to get comment from them. Like you need to really make sure it's not enough just to

00:26:50.020 be like, oh yeah, by the way, I tried to call you a couple of times because for all I knew that

00:26:53.940 number could have not been her that could have not been her answering the phone so i really wanted

00:26:58.180 to make sure that i had the right higher right check there's several higher right checks including

00:27:02.560 several in los angeles so i visited her house um and confirmed that she lived there she actually

00:27:09.400 tweeted a photo of me at her doorstep which i was shocked by because for somebody that appear that

00:27:14.380 alleges to care so much about their own privacy and safety she tweeted a photo of me at her

00:27:19.200 doorstep that not only showed the exact street that she lived on in los angeles but it showed

00:27:23.920 the exact house that she lived at so you know for somebody to cry doxing and then essentially

00:27:29.260 show their exact address before i had even published the story was kind of crazy to me

00:27:34.760 but anyway um yeah it i yeah it published the story the next day i'm sorry it's not funny

00:27:43.200 because what you went through is not funny but also i don't care by the way i would go through

00:27:48.800 it again. I would go through it 150 times over. I totally 100% stand by that story. And I would

00:27:55.300 do the story again today. We should know who these people driving hate campaigns are. You don't get

00:27:59.860 to anonymously build millions of followers, solicit millions of dollars in donations and

00:28:04.840 fundraising, be involved in our political system, and then cry anonymity. No, like you are a public

00:28:11.440 figure and you deserve scrutiny period so the doxing allegations and this isn't really like

00:28:22.440 the story of libs of tiktok and so it doesn't really matter but i do want to like i think the

00:28:26.380 wrath of her following and the amount of well-connected right-wing influence that she has

00:28:32.340 is really well represented by what you went through so do you want to like briefly explain

00:28:38.460 what happened after you published the story and like notably the billboard oh my god yeah i almost

00:28:44.920 forgot about the billboard what happened after i published the story is is a cycle that i've

00:28:49.460 unfortunately been through several times at this point which is the right-wing media sort of like

00:28:53.400 machine coming at you i was very quickly doxed all of my family members were doxed everyone

00:28:59.620 affiliated with me was harassed my family members some people in my family were swatted um people

00:29:05.500 tried to get you know um target lgbtq members of my family saying that they should have their

00:29:11.480 children taken away and trying to kind of take steps to initiate that i mean it was just crazy

00:29:16.740 like they obviously they they got tim pool um got who's a far-right influencer on youtube got um

00:29:24.280 put out a big times square billboard saying taylor lorenz doxed libs of tiktok um i mean it just it

00:29:32.360 yeah it was like this whole dog and pony show that they do every time they don't like a story

00:29:36.980 i mean it is the gamer gate playbook right it's like let's dox and harass and destroy this woman's

00:29:41.920 life and launch this smear campaign and make her controversial and target her employer and try and

00:29:46.880 get her fired and you know like all of this stuff that they do and it was crazy it was it was really

00:29:53.480 crazy especially because then you then you see high out there claiming persecution meanwhile

00:29:57.620 she's got every single right-wing person backing her like i'm like on my own you know like i have

00:30:04.000 no i don't have millions of dollars i can't run to you know whatever i think she said like ted

00:30:09.740 cruz or some politician was offering her like hiding or something like i don't have any of

00:30:13.360 that i'm just a journalist and you know thankfully i had the washington post behind me but yeah it

00:30:18.220 was it was crazy it was it was crazy i remember watching it from afar and first of all i was one

00:30:26.300 of i was like i mean obviously there are thousands of targets of higher rate chick at this point and

00:30:32.080 thousands of people that libs of tiktok has posted i'm one of them i was one of the early ones i

00:30:37.800 fortunately was posted on libs of tiktok when her following was still in the lower hundreds of

00:30:43.960 thousands also like people didn't really come after me in that way and also like people have

00:30:48.840 always come came after me and like these specific types of people like they've always called me a

00:30:53.480 had a file they've always called me a groomer so i was like yeah yeah whatever it's tuesday

00:30:57.060 i remember seeing the billboard i remember first of all i remember being extremely grateful for

00:31:03.260 your reporting around what was going on because it meant a lot to me personally and also me as

00:31:10.620 you know a queer community member that you were doing that um and and i will never stop thanking

00:31:15.820 you for that and for writing that piece but i remember seeing what was going on and the stuff

00:31:20.300 around it and then i saw the billboard which was yeah it was a fucking times square billboard that

00:31:24.800 says taylor lorenz doxed libs of tiktok which by the way you found out her identity using publicly

00:31:31.300 available information i just want to be clear i definitely did not dox her like doxing is like

00:31:36.140 revealing non-private like private information and i never linked to any address you know i never

00:31:42.700 linked to her home address as people were like oh you linked her home address no i did not

00:31:46.580 um absolutely not she tweeted her own address out like i said she tweeted that picture of me

00:31:52.120 on her doorstep that showed the street that she lived on and the house that she lived at

00:31:55.720 before i even published this story um and all i said in my story is that she lived in los angeles

00:32:00.540 i did not dox her in any meaningful and in any way right right in any meaningful or or uh non-meaningful

00:32:08.860 way so after you publish this article Haya first of all you know aside from all of the railing

00:32:17.960 against you that happens which goes on for a long time by the way it was like it felt like months

00:32:22.380 that they were just going after you they're still going after me man it's still still have her fans

00:32:27.420 in my mentions yeah well you know for what it's worth the same yeah Haya is like I am going to

00:32:36.460 make my play and i'm going to use this to become a celebrity with my face attached instead of an

00:32:42.200 anonymous right-wing celebrity the first thing i remember her doing is going on tucker carlson and

00:32:46.640 this is when he still had a show on fox news rest in peace um and i want to play for you a slightly

00:32:54.520 less than two minute clip from that interview where um well let's just watch how what is going

00:33:02.580 on here do you have any theories i think there's um there's something so unique about the lgbtq

00:33:13.560 community has become this cult and it's so captivating and it pulls people in so strongly

00:33:20.300 unlike anything we've ever seen um and they they brainwash people to join and they convince them

00:33:30.360 of all of these things, and it's really, really hard to get out of it.

00:33:35.660 It's really difficult, and there are studies on this.

00:33:38.080 There's been a lot of reporting on this about people, parents, who are like,

00:33:43.440 you know, my child is starting to say that they're non-binary or transgender or whatever,

00:33:49.020 and what do I do?

00:33:50.000 How do I stop this?

00:33:52.580 And it's really, really difficult.

00:33:56.140 It's unlike anything we've ever seen, I think.

00:33:58.800 It's extremely poisonous.

00:34:00.360 But do you see a spiritual component to any of this?

00:34:06.460 You don't have to answer that if you don't want.

00:34:08.560 Yeah, I don't know.

00:34:10.040 Well, I do. I do. I don't think this makes sense at all.

00:34:13.220 No, it doesn't make any sense.

00:34:15.840 And I think they're evil.

00:34:20.800 And sometimes we try to break it down a lot.

00:34:26.380 and you know we we discuss like why this is happening what's happening and whatever and i

00:34:31.800 think sometimes the simplest answer is like they're just evil they're bad people they're just

00:34:36.940 evil people and they want to and they want to groom kids yeah they're recruiting this is one

00:34:46.620 of my favorite videos because it's like so revealing of what i said earlier about haya

00:34:51.980 not really having like the most developed belief system in the sense that like tucker asked her

00:34:59.340 one question about like do you think there's a spiritual component and she obviously doesn't

00:35:03.620 know what he means and she's like i don't know and all she can say and all she can repeat is this

00:35:09.620 they're just grooming kids they're just grooming kids and um i just think they're bad people and

00:35:15.180 they're grim and cats. And it's like, she doesn't really have much to say beyond that. And like you

00:35:22.180 said, Taylor, she strikes me as someone who would really struggle to have a career as an influencer

00:35:28.660 if it were not for this very specific thing that she's chosen to do, where she doesn't have to say

00:35:33.080 much at all. Exactly. I mean, I think she doesn't have very sophisticated political beliefs or a

00:35:40.800 very sophisticated ideology it's just all predicated on like hate and she she is is very

00:35:46.540 much the one in the cult i mean you see listen to her talk about things like the lgbtq agenda and

00:35:52.220 all this stuff it's like she's brainwashed she's brainwashed by conservative media that's told her

00:35:57.440 to sort of villainize this oppressed group um but she can't even really understand why it's just

00:36:03.780 sort of like she's adopted this ideology i think partially because it plays well online i think

00:36:08.980 also partially she probably believes it herself but she doesn't really understand why and she

00:36:13.120 certainly can't talk about it in any kind of like thoughtful detail no she can't and um i love that

00:36:20.020 when she's like it's a cult you know there are studies on this i love that whenever people

00:36:24.900 really have nothing to say or nothing to back up their point people love to say there are studies

00:36:29.100 on this and what i love is that tucker does not notably does not ask her about where those studies

00:36:35.060 are it's great it's great i love that clip i i mean i don't love that clip but you know

00:36:40.540 you can also find studies to say anything literally yeah there's yeah there's no there's

00:36:45.560 like there's right-wing studies right-wing think tanks that promote wild study you can literally

00:36:51.060 find a study to back up anything you want to say that doesn't mean that it's scientific consensus

00:36:55.100 and scientific consensus says that gender affirming care is good for trans people and

00:37:01.180 lgbtq people are not there's not something like medically wrong with them or psychologically wrong

00:37:06.160 with them and you know she's talking about stripping people's identity and like ignoring

00:37:10.160 their sexuality where she's saying like oh it's really hard to get people out of this cult it's

00:37:13.740 like you're trying to turn gay people straight you know like yeah it's not a cult it's just that

00:37:18.400 you are refusing to recognize their identity and their sexual orientation i almost feel like it's

00:37:24.540 um besides the point to try unfortunately to try to contend with the things that she says

00:37:30.100 because they're so far gone yeah anyway i can't even contend with the things that she says

00:37:34.960 that's my point so libs of tiktok is a really great example of what people are calling stochastic

00:37:44.520 terrorism and this is a really important concept to understanding this episode and to understanding

00:37:51.760 libs of tiktok and why what she's doing matters um beyond just that it makes life online harder

00:37:59.640 for queer people and queer teachers so stochastic terrorism is here's the definition it's the

00:38:06.080 public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act which is

00:38:11.340 statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted and so what that basically means is

00:38:16.900 if you have a bunch of really powerful people with really big audiences demonizing a person or a

00:38:23.960 group. So queer people. The idea behind stochastic terrorism is that a violent act, you know, a

00:38:30.200 shooting, a bomb, a bomb threat, whatever, some act of violence will probably occur at some point.

00:38:38.640 And we can't exactly say when, but the fact that all of these, you know, big media heads and

00:38:45.100 influencers and right-wing news people are demonizing this group consistently means that we

00:38:49.640 know what's probably going to happen vice just published an article the other day that i was

00:38:54.560 reading in preparation for this episode which detailed 11 different schools that have received

00:39:00.640 bomb threats uh just in the last month and whose bomb threats were connected to libs of tiktok in

00:39:06.640 the sense that libs of tiktok posted a picture or a video of a teacher or a faculty member that

00:39:12.920 works at these schools and and bomb threats ensued and so i'm gonna read an overview of some of these

00:39:19.140 and so you know strap in everybody western heights school in oklahoma city was targeted in three of

00:39:25.680 libs of tiktok posts between september 9th and september 14th during this time oklahoma state

00:39:30.580 superintendent of education posted a photo with ray chick and praised her as doing more for

00:39:35.440 transparency and accountability in schools than most elected officials an elementary school in

00:39:39.900 western heights received a bomb threat on september 15th one day later witchcraft heights elementary

00:39:44.380 school in salem massachusetts was targeted in a libs of tiktok post on september 12th

00:39:49.100 the school received emailed bomb threats on september 15th 19th and the 21st prompting

00:39:54.140 evacuations anoka hennepin sorry if i'm butchering the pronunciation there school district in

00:39:59.880 minnesota was targeted in libs of tiktok posts on september 13th and 14th they received a bomb

00:40:05.500 threat by email on september 15th red oak school and elementary school in the suburb of chicago

00:40:11.000 was featured in a libs of tiktok post on september 15th the elementary school received three threats

00:40:15.880 over the course of four days children were evacuated from school following the first two

00:40:20.780 threats these are elementary schools davis joint unified school district in california was targeted

00:40:26.880 in two separate libs of tiktok posts on september 19th and 22nd and received bomb threats on september

00:40:31.860 20th and 25th on both occasions the threats indicated that bombs have been placed in the

00:40:36.640 homes of school district officials and in certain schools in the district we're almost there

00:40:40.860 pulaski high school in wisconsin was targeted and a lives of tiktok post on september 20th

00:40:48.100 the school was evacuated on september 22nd and again on september 26th due to two separate bomb

00:40:53.120 threats brownsville elementary school in kitsap washington was targeted by lives of tiktok on

00:40:58.120 september 21st on september 25th the school was evacuated due to an emailed bomb threat we're

00:41:03.080 really you know saving the children here cherry creek high school district in colorado was

00:41:07.620 targeted by libs of tick tock and uh on september 22nd they received bomb threats against several

00:41:13.140 schools and administrative buildings that same day denver public schools were targeted you get

00:41:18.440 the point i'm actually going to stop reading these you get the point there have also been

00:41:22.020 as we've said hospital bomb threats to hospitals that may or may not provide gender affirming care

00:41:28.460 uh bomb threats to librarians houses um and then there's like the stuff that wasn't just threats

00:41:35.700 You know, like when the Club Q shooting happened and when recently a woman shop owner was killed outside of her shop in California, people quickly connected these to right wing influencers, including libs of TikTok.

00:41:50.860 So what does Haya say when she's publicly connected to all of these bomb threats and sometimes actual acts of violence?

00:42:00.040 So The Advocate this past week reported on a bunch of the bomb threats that I just described

00:42:04.780 and in an article titled, Schools Keep Receiving Bomb Threats After Libs of TikTok Posts About

00:42:10.060 Them.

00:42:10.760 Chaya, on her personal account once again, tweeted a screenshot of that article and

00:42:15.480 wrote, the quote, dangerous cusp of online rhetoric, unquote, that The Advocate is so

00:42:20.520 terrified of is called reposting the left's own words.

00:42:24.480 They really hate when their own views are shared more widely.

00:42:28.020 Why is that?

00:42:28.860 And so it's like, again, people are like, Chaya, right after you posted about these 11 different schools, they all received bomb threats.

00:42:38.960 Save the children, by the way.

00:42:40.780 And then she's like, she does this plausible deniability thing.

00:42:44.080 I just want to say, like, once again, she's lying.

00:42:47.580 Like, she's lying.

00:42:49.660 She has no legitimate plausible deniability here.

00:42:53.320 She's causing these bomb threats.

00:42:55.020 Her actions are directly leading to these bomb threats.

00:42:57.920 and she can try and weasel out of it however she wants by misrepresenting the content on her own

00:43:02.480 account but it's out there for everyone to see her comments are out there for everyone to see

00:43:06.740 and you know she's just lying another thing that happened last week on her twitter account was

00:43:13.800 a journalist named zach shermiel again i'm sorry if i'm butchering that but he said

00:43:19.500 he uh he he's a journalist at usa today and he dm'd her and he said hi there my name is zach

00:43:26.060 and i'm a reporter at usa today we are writing a story about the bomb threat on fresno state

00:43:30.980 university's campus that occurred this week targeting a professor whose pronoun policy

00:43:34.920 your organization criticized in a tweet on wednesday wondering if your organization has

00:43:39.640 any comment on this incident i am filing the story in the next hour thanks she responded to his dm

00:43:45.740 and then screenshotted it and tweeted it on her account she wrote you have pronouns in your bio

00:43:50.940 which tells me that nothing you say should be taken seriously and it's like

00:43:54.960 is this where we're at that you can cause a bomb threat on a school and then when someone asks you

00:44:03.280 about said bomb threat you go you have he him in your bio so i'm not addressing you and i'm not

00:44:09.260 taking this inquiry seriously well the subtext there is that he's a member like she believes

00:44:14.960 him to be a member of the LGBTQ community. And she refuses to engage with actual LGBTQ people.

00:44:23.200 She's implying that he's not worth speaking to and doesn't deserve a response because he somehow

00:44:29.680 ascribes to those beliefs. My question for you, Taylor, is what do we do? Who can we hold

00:44:37.940 accountable for making the stop or at least navigating around it? Is it is it social media

00:44:44.900 platforms? Yeah, I mean, I think it's bigger than social media platforms. Ideally, a platform like

00:44:51.760 Twitter would police this sort of hate. And you know, platforms like YouTube, for instance,

00:44:58.340 other major social platforms do take into account offline behavior and activity. Like I mean, Alex

00:45:04.180 Jones was banned from YouTube, not necessarily from what he said on YouTube, but from a lot of

00:45:09.580 his behavior outside of YouTube as well. And I think you can very clearly see Haya's behavior

00:45:15.940 and sort of what she's inciting as incitement of violence. I mean, she's directly inciting

00:45:20.800 violence with her tweets. She should not have access to the audience that she does if she's

00:45:25.920 going to use it, you know, to incite violence. But of course, Elon supports these violent

00:45:33.500 campaigns, right? And so he's never going to police it. I think we have a much bigger problem

00:45:39.860 than that, though, because I think that people don't seem to understand the urgency of these

00:45:46.240 sorts of hate campaigns. Like, we've seen a huge resurgence in anti-LGBTQ hate in the past few

00:45:52.280 years, I think it's been normalized partially through the mainstream media as well and just

00:45:56.940 in culture and politics. So it's not enough to just ban libs of TikTok, right? We need

00:46:02.420 politicians and members of, you know, political parties to also care about protecting LGBTQ

00:46:07.700 rights. And we need, you know, a media that also recognizes it and doesn't both sides

00:46:14.120 the issue or, you know, do what like the New York Times has been doing with their trans

00:46:18.300 coverage, which is basically launder a bunch of far right anti-trans talking points through

00:46:23.020 the guise of a neutral article. You know, I think the problem is bigger than libs of TikTok. But

00:46:28.380 yeah, I mean, it would be great to see her reach restricted because of how she's using her

00:46:33.340 platform. I don't think that'll ever happen on Twitter. And, you know, I mean, she's on Instagram

00:46:40.300 and other platforms, too, and they seem totally fine monetizing hate. It's disappointing that

00:46:44.720 all of these platforms will fundamentally allow the monetization of hate because it drives

00:46:49.900 engagement and they have business models built on monetizing engagement.

00:46:54.260 Yeah, I actually had a meeting recently with a queer colleague of mine and a bunch of people

00:47:00.200 who work at Meta. And my colleague, who I'm not going to name in case they don't want me to talk

00:47:05.700 about them in the story, but both basically like, you know, can you please do something about all of

00:47:10.740 the super far right wing hate groups that you're allowing on instagram that have hundreds of

00:47:17.540 thousands of followers on instagram libs of tiktok has 400 000 followers on instagram gays

00:47:22.580 against groomers has 400 000 followers on instagram and they were like well you know and

00:47:29.100 i was like these are hate groups they're called a hate group i went to gays against groomers

00:47:33.520 wikipedia and it was described as a hate group and they were like well that's wikipedia calling

00:47:37.160 it a hate group and i was like are you fucking kidding me they were like well anyone can call

00:47:42.060 anything a hate group and i'm like and the world is made of pudding right also no not anyone can

00:47:47.860 can reliably call someone a hate group there are actual hate groups and then there are not hate

00:47:52.400 groups and you can call certain things a hate group that doesn't mean that it's right um but

00:47:57.320 gays against groomers is a hate group lives against tiktok is a hate account um i mean these

00:48:02.340 are hateful, far-right extremist media properties, and we should absolutely treat them that way.

00:48:10.280 They're there to promote a very regressive and terrifying kind of political agenda that

00:48:14.860 restricts the rights of LGBTQ people, women, people of color. And yeah, I mean, Facebook

00:48:20.560 obviously has no spine, right? Like they'll go ahead and block newsworthy terms on threads or

00:48:26.160 whatever, showing that they can actually moderate content very strictly. And then they'll allow

00:48:30.680 stuff like this to flourish because fundamentally they're able to monetize it and this is why we're

00:48:34.800 never going to get i mean you can never trust corporations to defend lgbtq rights they're not

00:48:40.280 going to look at what bud light did with dylan right like they'll hang they'll hang lgbtq people

00:48:46.060 out to dry every single time right aside from even when if they have their like corporate pride month

00:48:50.980 in june right like none of that matters a corporation is never going to defend human rights

00:48:55.960 generally so we need people in power to hold corporations and hold people accountable

00:49:00.640 and to push and to change culture like we need it we need to make it socially acceptable not to

00:49:06.480 launch hate campaigns against gay people that should not be socially acceptable yeah and when

00:49:11.920 the people in power and by that i mean ceos of tech companies and politicians and people allowing

00:49:19.020 lives of tiktok to flourish across multiple social media platforms when they are like well we can't

00:49:23.920 do anything about this because free speech is really complicated it's like you're the people

00:49:28.200 ultimately legitimizing hate campaigns against like a random gay teacher also yeah it's not even

00:49:35.440 like a free speech issue in my opinion it's like you are directly inciting violent acts don't do

00:49:42.420 that don't do that don't do that with your account or you know don't amplify it like these platforms

00:49:49.760 amplify this content they suggest libs of tiktok to other users you know if you follow certain

00:49:55.820 accounts. I followed, I think it was RFK the other day, but you get a dropdown list and you're

00:50:01.000 prompted to follow a lot of other extremist accounts. That's dangerous. We shouldn't be

00:50:05.980 doing that, right? But of course, these platforms have shown time and time and time again that

00:50:10.940 they're perfectly happy to champion hate campaigns and hateful people and bigotry as long as it

00:50:16.320 allows them to profit. And let's be clear, they're profiting very heavily off it. Meta and Twitter

00:50:22.220 and all these platforms are profiting off that hate and engagement that's generated from these

00:50:27.420 accounts like lives of tiktok so before we go i want to talk about one post from lives of tiktok

00:50:34.160 that went particularly viral in the last week and it was not of a teacher it was not of a parent

00:50:43.340 it was not a social worker or a doctor or a school or a hospital it was just a queer adult

00:50:51.200 So Libs of TikTok made this post where they just posted what looked like a professional

00:50:59.180 portrait of someone named Tyler Cherry.

00:51:01.920 So Tyler Cherry is currently a communications director for the Secretary of Interior for

00:51:08.600 the Biden-Harris administration.

00:51:10.760 And Haya basically just posted his professional work portrait.

00:51:15.460 And it's just, you know, what looks like a visibly queer person.

00:51:20.020 he looks young maybe 30 years old he's wearing a black turtleneck and a striped white and navy

00:51:26.660 blazer and some like gold hoop earrings and this got nearly according to twitter which i don't even

00:51:35.440 believe these numbers i think elon inflates them uh for to look good for advertisers but according

00:51:41.460 to twitter the post got uh 26 million impressions and it did get and this you know we can see it got

00:51:48.940 12 000 replies from people making you know jabs at this person the reason this stood out to me so

00:51:55.940 much is like even if you buy into tiktok or libs of tiktok's main premise which is that they're here

00:52:03.740 to you know save the children from gay teachers or whatever this person isn't even a teacher

00:52:11.680 he doesn't work with kids in any capacity he's a government official who wore earrings and so

00:52:22.360 i thought this was extremely revealing of what higher rate chick is actually about which is not

00:52:29.640 saving children i think we already knew that based on the amount of bomb threats that she's causing

00:52:34.380 on children's schools which she seems to not care about but it's not about saving children

00:52:37.780 it's just about someone screenshotted that post that she made and was basically like why would

00:52:43.140 she do this is the point just to be mean and just to be a bully and someone named max fox quote

00:52:50.480 tweeted that and wrote the point is to construct a society that does not allow queerness in public

00:52:55.820 and ideologically i thought that was a really astute way of putting her primary goal what do

00:53:02.360 what do you think? 100% agree. I think that's a really good way to explain what she wants to do,

00:53:10.080 which is drive queer people out of public life and, you know, assert very specific gender roles

00:53:16.520 and this very sort of restrictive and toxic gender binary. I mean, you also see her promote

00:53:22.080 a lot of misogynistic stuff too, not just against trans people, but even cis women, like, because

00:53:27.200 She believes in this really regressive worldview where cute earrings, if you're, you know, identify as male or whatever, right?

00:53:34.880 It's just, it's about conformity and it's about driving queer and all LGBTQ people out of public life, out of schools, out of everything.

00:53:42.660 She doesn't want them to exist.

00:53:44.360 And it's horrifying.

00:53:46.720 So as I promised, we're going to hear directly from some people who have been targeted by higher rate chick and lives of TikTok.

00:53:53.640 But Taylor, I want to let you go.

00:53:55.780 and you've had a long day and you continue to have a long day. I know releasing a book and

00:54:00.040 promoting it is a ton of work. But I want to say before you go, where can people find you

00:54:05.280 and support your work? Well, I have a YouTube now. So follow, subscribe to my YouTube. It's

00:54:11.100 just Taylor Lorenz. I'm also on TikTok and Instagram and Blue Sky and Threads pretty

00:54:17.040 much everywhere except Twitter. And your book? Oh, yeah. Obviously, buy my book.

00:54:22.740 my book don't forget i'm so fried um my new book is called extremely online the untold story of

00:54:30.800 fame influence and power on the internet it's all about the rise of the social media sort of

00:54:35.520 influencer ecosystem um it's a lot about sort of like the people that pioneered the internet which

00:54:41.380 is actually a lot of lgbtq people and women um who have been very written out of the history of

00:54:46.780 social media you know as as told through silicon valley narrative so yeah please get it it's on

00:54:52.300 sale now taylor is extremely you know nothing if not thorough and vicious in her pursuit of of the

00:55:00.940 stories that she's telling and i can't recommend just following along with her and her work enough

00:55:06.380 um taylor thank you so much for being here today thank you for having me so we've been talking a

00:55:13.400 lot this past hour about anyone who is in the line of fire of chaya raychik and libs of tiktok

00:55:20.260 and as promised let's hear from them hi my name is and i'm up in canada uh last year a uh teacher

00:55:30.080 here who's also a drake performer was doing a drake queen story time in a park where he was

00:55:36.760 physically assaulted by protesters the protesters actually stepped on children to get near to the

00:55:43.860 performer. Um, this obviously hit the news, which caught the attention of libs of Tik TOK. And she

00:55:53.460 tweeted out a video of in his high school art classroom, um, as a Tik TOK. And he's just

00:56:01.420 showing like lights and the decor. Um, and of course that went viral. And then Marjorie Taylor

00:56:09.080 green also picked that up and tweeted that to her followers and overnight aka mr got tens of

00:56:17.460 thousands of death threats overnight he had to leave his job and he ended up trying to unalive

00:56:23.480 himself um has pulled through um i'm not sure if if he's working at the moment um but yes an

00:56:33.040 absolute victim um of lives of tiktok and we're in canada it's fucked up in my town i'm a sophomore

00:56:43.740 i'm 16 i live in a small town in california and about nine or ten weeks ago the anti-trans group

00:56:51.060 moms for liberty had an information setting you can't see my body but i'm doing air quotes

00:56:56.420 about trans girls in sports at our local library and some friends and I along with community members

00:57:04.260 went to the library to do a sit-in protest against them and before this happened the

00:57:10.020 library staff outlined the rules of the library right they outlined how respect and a bunch of

00:57:16.600 other core principles were important to the library and if people violated those rules they

00:57:21.400 would be asked to leave and part of that was respecting people's identity and people's

00:57:25.320 pronouns and this was told to us and the anti-trans hate group moms for liberty which has a chapter in

00:57:31.540 our town and they were the one doing the information setting anyway in short they

00:57:37.500 continuously violated the library's guidelines so individual speakers and then the entire group

00:57:43.780 was asked to leave during this time they verbally harassed us they physically harassed us it was

00:57:51.660 very scary especially as a young kid but that's not what this is about they recorded it for the

00:57:57.720 intention of suing the library but it made its way onto fox news and libs of tiktok and because

00:58:03.660 of that our school district has had almost seven straight weeks of bomb threats like there hasn't

00:58:10.720 been a week where there hasn't been between one and three bomb threats each one attached is a

00:58:17.120 horrifically anti-queer and anti-trans message that are just so scary to read my school has been

00:58:25.200 closed significantly other schools have been closed significantly our high schools our middle

00:58:30.340 schools our elementary schools heck some of our elementary schools are connected to preschools

00:58:35.220 our library has been review bombed our library has been threatened so have the staff and individual

00:58:41.220 people and politicians in our town the library is right next to our local high school and our

00:58:48.180 local one of our local elementary schools and they've been attacked repeatedly it's really

00:58:54.600 really scary especially because some of the people in these anti-trans groups are significant members

00:59:00.360 of our society and hold positions of power which is really scary to see anyway it's a hard time

00:59:09.300 especially as a student especially as a trans kid but what's been really hopeful and really

00:59:16.340 beautiful to see is that earlier this week we had a big show of solidarity for trans kids and queer

00:59:21.120 kids and we had a lot of supporters and we had a big letter of support and that was really beautiful

00:59:26.460 to see because there is hope out there but uh anyway fuck lips of tiktok fuck turfs and why

00:59:34.060 in the world will you say that you're protecting kids and then attack their schools?

00:59:41.360 So I used to work at an elementary school. I was an assistant teacher in a sixth grade language

00:59:46.580 arts classroom. And on the first day of school, a couple of years ago, I had posted on my personal

00:59:53.060 Instagram account. And in the photo, I was standing in my classroom and I had a beard and

01:00:01.400 eyeliner and eyeshadow. And in the caption, I was basically sharing joy that I was openly using

01:00:09.340 they-them pronouns and using the gender-neutral honorific mix as opposed to mister. And just

01:00:17.120 kind of sharing joy that my administration and my staff and my students and their parents and

01:00:21.780 families were supporting me and were very kind and accepting of my identity. The school year went on

01:00:28.940 without any hiccups having to do with my identity. And then nine months later, my photo ended up

01:00:35.860 being posted on libs of TikTok. And immediately, tens of thousands of people had seen it and

01:00:44.340 commented on it and were saying nasty things about me, about my appearance. They called me a groomer.

01:00:51.060 They called me a pedophile. They told me I deserve to be put in a gas chamber. In the photo,

01:00:57.840 my school's name was on a lanyard that I was wearing and they doxed me and they found my home

01:01:06.200 address and they found my elementary school's address all the way down to the classroom number,

01:01:12.940 the specific classroom number that I was teaching in. Fortunately for me, my staff and my administration

01:01:19.100 and my whole community who had seen the photo and a lot of my students had seen the photo and seen

01:01:25.020 the nasty things being said about me, everyone was very supportive. And the school district

01:01:31.380 collaborated with the local police department to kind of monitor some of those death threats

01:01:36.920 and make sure that I was safe and that the students were safe. And luckily, nothing went

01:01:43.120 on further. However, I did make the decision to leave the education field altogether. At that

01:01:51.660 point I knew that I had wanted to medically transition and come out as a trans woman and

01:01:58.280 that experience with being posted on libs of TikTok made me realize that it was not a safe

01:02:03.660 environment for me to do that politically and I just wanted to be able to transition in peace

01:02:11.080 so I unfortunately made the decision to leave education altogether. The decision to leave the

01:02:15.820 education field was really heartbreaking to me. I loved my job. I loved working with my sixth

01:02:23.580 graders. And I'm not ashamed to say that I was most kids' favorite teacher. I was very scared

01:02:30.380 when that photo went viral. I was very scared when I was receiving death threats. I was very scared

01:02:36.900 when people had my home address and my classroom's address and room number. But I knew it was the

01:02:43.880 right choice for me to go, and it was time for me to transition out of the education field so that

01:02:48.960 I could feel safe and happy and peaceful to do what I needed to do. Hi, I'm a kindergarten teacher

01:02:59.960 at a public school, and I got canceled on Libs of TikTok earlier this year.

01:03:07.140 At our back-to-school kindergarten event, somebody took a picture in our classroom

01:03:12.600 of me reading to the kids and in the background you could see our pride flag and that along with

01:03:20.680 like another photo that was taken at some point from someone looking into our classroom got leaked

01:03:27.120 on libs of tiktok and they interviewed a parent in my class and they found all of my social media

01:03:34.980 and everything about me even though I rapidly tried to cleanse myself from the internet they

01:03:42.260 still found like my mom and my mom's work address and it got so intense that I missed over a week

01:03:50.600 of work until the district could implement a safety plan. So included in there are things

01:03:57.680 like school police was there on my return to school and I like get escorted in and out of the

01:04:04.520 building. Um, and the pride flag is still up because it is protected. Um, but it was not a

01:04:14.620 great start to the year and has continued to be a pretty traumatizing event. So that's my libs of

01:04:21.800 TikTok story. My cousin's elementary school in Illinois had to evacuate two days in a row because

01:04:34.740 it received bomb threats. She asked me, why are people trying to kill me and my teachers for being

01:04:41.400 who we are and for loving everyone? Her and her parents, who are both teachers, should not have

01:04:46.900 to be scared to go to school and work because a faculty member or district supports the LGBTQ plus

01:04:53.860 community. But I truly want to share this story. So I am an educator who worked in a who works in

01:05:04.200 a public school, elementary school in a district that just received bomb threats three days in a

01:05:12.600 row. Most likely, I'm assuming from connected to the lips of TikTok, because we had a picture

01:05:20.240 shared on their profile of just students playing a board game. That was what it was for. But then

01:05:27.360 there was a pride flag in the background. So it was shared and 17,000 hits occurred. And then

01:05:31.940 there was a bomb threat. So what is unique about, and sad, but unique about our story is that,

01:05:39.860 I mean, everyone had a difficult time coming out of COVID, obviously, so education's been a bit rough.

01:05:45.680 The previous summer in my district, there was a mass shooting during July 4th.

01:05:51.440 And then we just started to figure out how to get along, how to work past that.

01:05:58.360 And then there's a bomb threat to our specific school because pride flags are up.

01:06:03.780 the challenge of that day was trying to remain hopeful and trying to help these students know

01:06:10.680 that they're still good in the world the story that I like to share that I think really shows

01:06:16.460 the impact of what all these things are so again these are children that had a run from a gun being

01:06:22.000 shot at them during a celebration of a holiday for our nation I could probably feel the irony

01:06:28.920 within all that but so as adults in a building we're fairly certain the threat isn't real but

01:06:34.380 you know we have to take things seriously um i my main role in the school is to work is to help

01:06:41.100 people with their social emotional health and well-being and so i run to the fifth grade class

01:06:45.920 being the oldest but also because they had a sub and so um you know subs don't know what the hell

01:06:50.720 to do in that situation so i go there and take charge and we walk across the street to our you

01:06:56.160 know location our evacuation location and i'm walking and i as an adult i'm again fairly certain

01:07:04.040 that everything is okay but i'm still looking the scene because what if what if there's a shooter

01:07:08.540 that's just gonna take us all out because we're all walking in a line to a different location

01:07:12.200 um true to these children's spirit we're able to clear a school of 300 people in less than two

01:07:18.280 minutes because they know what to do in situations like this which again sad mark for american

01:07:25.340 education. But the story we want to share, so I'm walking across the street with a 10-year-old,

01:07:31.320 just a lovely human being, has the biggest heart I've ever met in a 10-year-old.

01:07:36.960 They're silently crying because what else can they do, right? Tears are coming down their face.

01:07:41.340 They turn to me and I know this child. I know this child on July 4th, a full year, two years ago,

01:07:48.460 guess now, but hid in a dumpster for three hours for their own safety, knowing that their parents

01:07:55.020 ran back into a parade to help other people because their parents are educators and first

01:08:00.980 responders. And they knew that, but they hid in a dumpster until they were safe again. But this

01:08:09.140 child turns to me, looks at me with the fear in her eyes, looks, are we going to die today?

01:08:15.380 and I don't know how to answer that question to a 10 year old because that should just never

01:08:20.900 be what a child asks. So I look back and I go, honey, I'm walking here and I'm right here with

01:08:28.820 you. Because in that moment, that's all I could do. I'm fairly certain we weren't, but I can't

01:08:33.680 make that promise anymore because that child has experienced more death threats in their life than

01:08:37.640 I have. And I'm decades older than them. At the same time, that's all I could do is be with that

01:08:44.320 person, because in a moment of panic and terror, the thing that's going to get us through is

01:08:51.040 looking at each other's humanity and being with the person in front of us. And so my school was

01:08:58.400 definitely affected by someone posting on social media, because how dare we have a pair-eyed flag

01:09:05.140 in our background? Now, how dare we try to promote inclusivity for those who may have

01:09:11.740 feel marginalized in life. How dare we try to promote kindness and accepting of others and

01:09:18.800 knowing that you're not going to get along with every human being, but you could treat the human

01:09:23.080 in front of you with dignity, the same dignity you want. And gratefully, these children understand

01:09:30.660 it. They've been through shit already in their lives, but they're coming out stronger.

01:09:37.140 and so that's the reason why you can't kick me out of my place of work no matter how much

01:09:43.420 people are going to try um how much they're going to use terror and fear tactics to try to get

01:09:49.680 adults to stop doing things that are right again i i could give a shit how a person identifies on

01:09:56.660 a gender spectrum on a sexuality spectrum i i do not care that that's everyone's own personal

01:10:03.560 understanding of who they are and know who am I to say who you are you know yourself best the only

01:10:10.740 thing I'm called to do is to care for one another and that's that's in itself is a challenge especially

01:10:17.940 when I'm still called to care for those who want to seek harm on me and those I love but that's

01:10:26.780 what it was like um receiving a bomb threat connected to lips of tit-tac so that's our show

01:10:33.540 for today as always and especially if you've made it this far from the very bottom of my little gay

01:10:38.880 heart thank you if you'd like to support the show you can give us a little rating on whatever app

01:10:44.120 you're listening on and please follow us on that app so you're reminded each week when we release

01:10:48.640 a new episode if you didn't like the show as always please don't give us a rating feel free

01:10:54.500 to share this episode with a friend, with your mom, with your cousin who may or may not be going

01:10:59.400 down a right-wing misinformation rabbit hole on Facebook, maybe they'll give us a shot. I'll see

01:11:04.540 you next week, and until then, stay fruity.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - October 24, 2023

Libs of TikTok

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