The Real Problem with Libs of TikTok

Early this morning, The Washington Post released an article from Taylor Lorenz that exposes the identity of the woman behind the Libs of TikTok account. If you’re unfamiliar with the account, it has over 666,700 followers (and growing), and it’s predicated on finding random TikTok users and putting them on blast. The targets are typically LGBTQ+ or those who many would consider “woke”.

While there’s some debate around Taylor releasing this woman’s identity, I think there’s a much bigger problem we need to discuss.

Personally, I’ve been pretty vocal about how much I dislike this account. And if I’m being honest, I lose a little respect for people who I hold in high esteem that I see sharing tweets from Libs of TikTok. While you may be thinking, “Oh Chris, you’re just a lib with your feel feels hurt because she’s owning your ‘side’”, but I can promise you that’s not the case.

I actually think what Jordan Klepper does at the Daily Show is extremely unhelpful as well.

In fact, I could argue that it’s even worse that people on the left regularly find the right-wing people with the most fringe views and put them on display for people to mock. There are countless smaller creators doing the same thing as Jordan Klepper, but isn’t the left supposed to be the side of compassion and kindness? Getting in groups to publicly insult others doesn’t seem to actually align with these values.

We live in extremely polarized times, and it’s terrible. We have family members who don’t talk to each other. People losing jobs over their political views. People believing and spreading misinformation based on their confirmation bias. The list goes on and on.

I don’t know about you, but if I had a choice, I’d rather things be a little different.

The real problem with Libs of TikTok is that it plays on some of the biggest thinking errors that all humans are susceptible to. I’ve pointed out numerous times that Libs of TikTok shares videos of people who have little to no following, and oftentimes, the videos she shares have less than 100 likes.

If you’re unfamiliar with TikTok, videos can go viral easily. When you scroll through the platform’s “for you page”, you’ll basically only see videos with tens or even hundreds of thousands of likes and views. So, Libs of TikTok is finding (or being sent) videos that barely anyone is seeing.

Libs of TikTok is actually making these videos get more engagement than they would on their own.

But, based on confirmation bias and selection bias, the followers of Libs of TikTok think that these random videos represent the majority of liberals. And that’s kind of ridiculous.

It’s the same issue with the left, though. When Jordan Klepper and others run around interviewing MAGA folks and only showing you the most ridiculous interviews, you start to believe that this is representative of the whole. Not only does this not show you what the vast majority of the right thinks, but you’d probably be blown away if you saw how many interviews got cut in editing because they weren’t silly enough.

This isn’t the worst of it, though. Libs of TikTok is actually influencing politicians:

This comes after countless other giant influential people have referenced the account numerous times:

I get it, confirmation bias feels great. When we form beliefs about a group of people and find a random example of it, we get a nice little dopamine rush. As a former drug addict, I understand chasing that pleasure. But much like my addiction, getting those dopamine hits is just making things worse.

I’m not a math nerd, but I’ve forced myself to read books about numbers and data so I could better understand what I’m looking at when I come across them in news stories. Because of this, whenever I see something, I ask, “Is this representative of the majority or just a small sampling?” And I think a lot of us would benefit from doing this a little more.

Think about it. Even if Libs of TikTok showed you 1,000 videos of liberals being silly, that’s less than a drop in the bucket. Joe Biden received 81 million votes in 2020, but let’s say not all voters were liberals. I’ll be generous and say only 70 million of those voters are liberals.

If Libs of TikTok showed you 1,000 videos of those crazy libs, that’s 0.0014%. Are you really going to believe all liberals are like those people based on .0014%? I sure wouldn’t.

Trust me, I’m a progressive lefty, and I see some of these videos and strongly disagree with the people in those videos. But we need to realize this is a case-by-case issue. If we hope to end the polarization in this country and make it a better place for all of us, we need to focus on the real issues. There’s plenty of data about how many Americans are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. So let’s stop wasting our time on this culture war nonsense, come together, and make some cool stuff happen.

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