a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, calling the woman in the video a “predator. “The next night, the same clip was shown on Fox News’ Laura Ingraham show, prompting the host to ask, “when did our public schools, all schools, become what are essentially gender identity radical care centers?”
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TikTok libraries publish a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, mostly from LGBTQ+ people, often including inflammatory footage designed to cause outrage. Videos published on the account quickly made it to the list of the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has become a powerful force online, shaping right-wing media, influencing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and influencing millions of people by publishing viral videos designed to provoke right-wing outrage.
The impact of the anonymous account is profound and far-reaching. His content is augmented by high-profile members of the media, politicians and right-wing influencers. His tweets reach millions of people, and his influence extends far beyond his more than 648,000 Twitter followers. TikTok libraries have become a defining element of right-wing discourse, and the content they publish shows a direct correlation to the recent increase in legislation and rhetoric aimed directly at the LGBTQ+ community.
“The TikTok libraries essentially act as a wired service to the broader right-wing media ecosystem,” said Ari Drennen, program director of LGBTQ Media Matters, a progressive media monitoring group. “It has shaped public policy in concrete ways and affected teachers’ ability to feel safe in their classrooms.”
The account was promoted by podcast host Joe Rogan and has been featured in the New York Post, The Federalist, The Post Millennial and a host of other right-wing news sites. Meghan McCain retweeted it. Online influencer Glenn Greenwald expanded it to his 1.8 million Twitter followers, calling himself a “sponsor” of the account. “Last Thursday, the woman behind the account appeared anonymously on the Tucker Carlson show to complain that she had been suspended for violating Twitter community rules. Fox News often creates news packages based on content that has appeared in TikTok libraries.
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“The role I’ve seen this account play is to find new characters for right-wing propaganda,” said Jillian Branstetter, an ACLU media strategist. “He’s using an endless stream of content from TikTok and the Internet to make any trans person the new villain in his story.”
Throughout his increasingly popular publications and despite numerous media coverage, the account has remained anonymous. But the identity of the TikTok library operator is traceable through a complex online history and shows someone who has been passionate about right-wing discourse for two years and now helps lead it.
An account in search of a voice – and a big break from Joe Rogan
Chaya Rajczyk was working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would later become TikTok Library.
Under her first alias, @shaya69830552, she downplayed covid, questioned election results, and promoted a dubious story about a child sex trafficking network. November. On October 23, 2020, Rajcik changed her alias, this time to @shaya_ray and publicly identified herself as a real estate investor in Brooklyn. She began doubling down on election-rigging conspiracies using QAnon-related language. In early December, she joked about launching a clothing line called “election fraud is real.”
Rajcik began talking about going to Washington in support of Trump in January. 6 at a flying training camp stop. When violence erupted at the Capitol that day, she tweeted a game account claiming to be in the field. “It was law enforcement rubber bullets. 1 hit right next to me,” she said. She posted a video of the crowd and talked about the tear gas that was used nearby. Saying she was out of the riot, she used Twitter to downplay the event, saying it was peaceful compared to the “BLM protest.”
Later that month, Rajcik went through two more names on Twitter, this time focusing on state politicians. First, under the pseudonym @Chayaraikik and the alias “Chaya Rajcik,” and then under the new alias @cuomomustgo, she railed against New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo( right), calling for his resignation. She promoted efforts to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom (right). She also began publishing articles about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (right), calling him “really brilliant.
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Early last March, she turned to a parody account called @houseplantpotus, claiming to tweet as if she were a houseplant living with President Biden. She redesigned her avatar to look like a small bush with Biden’s face on the leaves. At the time, she also proudly claimed to be orthodox Jewish, living in Brooklyn and working in real estate in her Twitter bio.
But the potted plant parody never caught on. On April 19, 2021, she switched her account again, this time to TikTok libraries.
Just four months after its launch, TikTok Libraries was back with great success as Joe Rogan began promoting the account to the millions of listeners of his popular podcast. He mentioned it several times on the show in August and then again in late September. “TikTok libraries are one of the greatest shitty accounts of all time,” he said. With an approving nod, Ryczyk’s entourage moved on.
TikTok libraries gained notoriety late last year, cementing its place in the cycle of right-wing media outrage. His attacks on the LGBTQ+ community have also intensified. In January, Rajcik’s page was heavily devoted to the “groomer” speech, calling for any teacher who exposed himself as gay in front of his students to be “fired on the spot.”
Her anti-trans tweets went especially viral. She urged her supporters to contact schools that allow “boys to visit girls’ toilets,” and advanced a false conspiracy theory that schools install toilet boxes in bathrooms for children who identify as cats. She also claimed that adults teaching LGBTQ+ identities to children are “abusive,” that gender nonconformity or alliance with the LGBTQ+ community is a “mental illness,” and called schools “state ideological processing camps” for the LGBTQ+ community.
“The TikTok libraries are shaping our entire political conversation about LGBTQ rights,” Drennen said. “It feels like they themselves take us back a decade in terms of public discourse about LGBTQ rights. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
Back in March, TikTok libraries were directly impacting legislation. Desantis spokeswoman Christina Puschow believes the story “opened his eyes” and informed his views on restrictive state legislation banning discussion of sexuality or gender identity in kindergarten. through third grade, triggered by parents. criticizes the “don’t say you’re gay” bill. According to a report by Media Matters, she and TikTok libraries have communicated publicly at least 138 times. Asked by The Post about her relationship with the account, Pushaw wrote ” ” I subscribe, like and retweet libsoftiktok. My interaction with this account is public,” and added that she is a strong supporter of her mission.
As the legislation moved forward before it was finally signed into law on March 28, TikTok libraries stepped up their attacks, flooding it with a flood of accusations of “grooming. ” right-wing media and influential conservative leading figures used anti-LGBTQ content from TikTok libraries as an excuse to use for their arguments.
Fox News hosts Jesse Watters and Tucker Carlson began showing content directly from TikTok libraries live on air, with Carlson urging his viewers to subscribe to it “before it gets banned, if you want to know what might be going on at your kid’s school. ” (Fox News does not.)did not respond to a request for comment.)
From the Internet to school boards
As the account gained momentum, Rajcik took steps to hide her identity. Although she has appeared many times in high profile media, she has appeared anonymously. However, when she registered the LibsofTikTok.us domain last October, she used her full name and cell phone number associated with the contact information of her real estate salesperson.
On Saturday, software developer Travis Brown (who works on the project with support from the Prototype Fund, an organization that supports open-source projects) looked at the Twitter account history and posted a thread detailing information about the profile changes.
When the reporter called the phone number listed on Rajcik’s real estate profile and LibofTikTok.us the woman who answered hung up after the reporter identified herself as the caller from The Washington Post. The woman at the address listed in Rajcik’s name in Los Angeles refused to identify herself. On Monday night, Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter feed confirmed that the home visited belonged to Rajczyk’s family.
Although Rajczyk claimed to operate the account himself, Grant Lally, an attorney and Republican agent, trademarked the TikTok libraries as a “news reporter service last August. ” Lally said he was “not at liberty” to comment when asked attached by mail.
” I’m not doing this for money or fame,” Rajcik told the New York Post (which, like all other media outlets interviewing her, allowed her to speak on condition of anonymity) in February, comparing herself to Project Veritas. “I’m not a blue-collar politician or journalist. I feel there are so many little stories that are so important that they don’t come out – and that’s why I’m here.” in other anonymous interviews, she claims to have left New York for somewhere in California, and recently moved her account to a full-time job. For a while she was collecting donations through Venmo.
Although TikTok Libraries briefly had its own TikTok account, it was suspended for violating community rules. Last week, the account was briefly blocked on Twitter for a second time for violating the platform’s rules regarding targeted harassment.
But TikTok’s libraries continue to gain subscribers online. It has more than 65,000 followers on Instagram, nearly 10,000 on YouTube, and a solid presence in right-handed competitor YouTube Rumble, as well as in other right-handed apps like Gab and GETTR. That also includes building an email database through Review’s newsletter platform.
Rajczyk said in an interview that she participates in the Content Channel from the stream of messages she receives every day. In that sense, TikTok Libraries is a collective in the spirit of the Internet Right Hive. She sees her account as providing a voice and platform for concerned parents and everyday citizens.
“I see a general spirit in TikTok libraries and an appetite for it in the broader right-wing media that turns neighbor to neighbor and turns anyone into an enforcer of this very strict gendered regime,” Branstetter said. “There’s a deep sense of paranoia that this rhetoric evokes, and it’s extremely volatile, it’s more than playing with fire. It inspires a spirit of vigilance.”
Rajczyk brags that several teachers have been fired as a result of their presence on the books.
Tyler Rinn, a former English teacher in Oklahoma, posted a video telling LGBTQ children shunned by their parents that Rinn is “proud of them” and loves them; it was posted on TikTok libraries last week. Rynn has been harassed and threatened with death ever since she was featured on the page.
“I’ve always considered myself the kind of teacher who stands up for marginalized voices,” Rinn said. “I see fellow teachers at TikTok speaking out for our disenfranchised students, and they are also being harassed in the same way.”
The popularity of TikTok libraries came at a time when the far-right Internet community began mocking school officials and calling for their execution. Parents of LGBTQ+ youth were driven out of their towns. Local school board members reported death threats.
In a recent podcast, Rajcik said that as his subscribers continue to grow, his maximum impact may not be reached until the election this fall. She urged her audience to go beyond school boards and run for local office. “These people,” she said, referring to members of the LGBTQ+ community, “some of them are literally evil, caring kids, they shouldn’t go to school, they shouldn’t be teachers.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community who are still trying to use platforms like TikTok to educate people about gay or transgender issues are being abused online, which is a deterrent. “[TikTok libraries] play on fears and misunderstandings of who trans people are while reinforcing extreme rhetoric and normalizing the representation of queer people as inherently dangerous to children,” Branstetter said. “It’s hard to stir up moral panic without main characters, and the role that TikTok libraries play is to find those characters.”
