A little under two years after Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz doxed Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik, the two had a sit-down interview that went about as well as you might expect.
For one, even though the interview was at an outdoor table at a coffee shop, Lorenz was wearing a mask. In February 2024. That should probably tell you just the kind of personality we’re dealing with here.
But, anyhow, Lorenz tried to double down on her rationale for doxing Raichik for running an anonymous social media account when her day job — as a real estate saleswoman — has nothing to do with an account that mocks the outer limits of performative wokeness, particularly in public institutions such as libraries and schools.
It, uh, didn’t go so well for Lorenz.
So let’s reiterate why she thought it was worth doxing Raichik, from her April 2022 piece on the social media account: According to Lorenz, Libs of TikTok had “cement[ed] its spot in the right-wing media outrage cycle. Its attacks on the LGBTQ+ community also escalated. By January, Raichik’s page was leaning hard into ‘groomer’ discourse, calling for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be ‘fired on the spot.’”
“Libs of TikTok is basically acting as a wire service for the broader right-wing media ecosystem,” said transgender activist Ari Drennen, LGBT program director from the hard-left scolds at Media Matters for America.
“Libs of TikTok is shaping our entire political conversation about the rights of LGBTQ people to participate in society,” Drennen added. “It feels like they’re single-handedly taking us back a decade in terms of the public discourse around LGBTQ rights. It’s been like nothing we’ve ever really seen.”
Nothing they’ve ever seen! Clutcheth them pearls! I bet Drennen says that whenever encountering someone on the Washington Metro wearing a Republican Party button, but I digress. Lorenz had no choice but to dox Raichik, even though she herself had given a tearful interview about the effects of doxing. (More on that in a bit.)
The Post stuck by its reporter’s decision to reveal Raichik’s identity: “Taylor Lorenz is a diligent and accomplished journalist whose reporting methods comport entirely with the Washington Post’s professional standards,” Post senior managing editor Cameron Barr said in a statement at the time, according to the New York Post.
Do you like Libs of TikTok?
“Chaya Raichik, in her management of the Libs of TikTok Twitter account and in media interviews, has had significant impact on public discourse and her identity had become public knowledge on social media,” Barr said, adding: “We did not publish or link to any details about her personal life.”
That last part is factually inaccurate, given that the initial version contained a link to Raichik’s job details and work address; while the details were removed later, the damage was already done.
Lorenz’s only punishment for journalistic sloppiness during her relatively spectacular 2022 run of racking up L’s came after a story about social media coverage of the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial contained a false assertion that she had reached out to the subjects and received no response when she hadn’t contacted them for comment at all.
After this, she was reportedly shifted from the features department to the technology beat, and her work had to be approved by Barr before it was published. No word on whether those strictures are still in place.
In any event, Lorenz interviewed Raichik for a piece published Saturday. Raichik, seeking to remind Lorenz of her record, wore a shirt with a still shot from the interview with MSNBC where Lorenz was crying about doxers shortly before she doxed Raichik herself.
Taylor Lorenz says that she has “severe PTSD” from mean tweets directed at her.
“It’s horrifying,” she says before breaking down in tears. pic.twitter.com/ryFweRtnSd
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 1, 2022
Raichik was asked about bomb threats — all of which have amounted to nothing and have been deemed relatively noncredible by local authorities in most cases where there’s reporting about the actual danger — after she outs a teacher or institution for some woke nonsense that individual or institution had made public via social media.
However, Lorenz still pointed to “a recent NBC investigation found at least 33 instances” of threats that may or may not be connected to Libs of TikTok — claiming that because the account had posted about the institution, it was “a pretty significant correlation.”
Raichik struck back by noting that she “got tons of death threats this week after the entire media machine came after me. So are they responsible for those?”
“I don’t think there’s, um, the same correlation,” Lorenz responded. “Are you receiving bomb threats?”
“I’m receiving death threats,” Raichik said. “Like, ‘Hi, I’m coming to murder you.’”
“I definitely sympathize with you there,” Lorenz said, claiming she gets the same thing when Fox News attacks her.
“So are the journalists — is the journalist responsible?” Raichik said.
Well, that’s an inconvenient question. Time to wiggle out of it! “I would say, um, you know, there’s a different responsibility when we’re talking about media,” Lorenz said, adding, “I guess to me, a death threat is different than a violent bomb threat” and that “we’re kind of getting normalized to them.”
But therein lies the other problem: When Lorenz talks about “we,” she’s talking about “public figures” like “you and I,” not “these obscure people” that get featured on Libs of TikTok.
“Say you’re taking a private citizen, you know, a gay teacher, for instance, in a small town,” Lorenz said. “And you post about that person. And then that person subsequently who had no media presence prior, receives pretty violent threats. How does that make you feel?”
It’s worth pointing out that these are generally people who have some position of influence over education, medical care or some other major function where their ideology is being imprinted upon other people — very often children — against the general will of those people.
Furthermore, they’ve made those clips public on social media, which means they have a “media presence” in this day and age, especially if they do not choose to be anonymous.
And as for Raichik? She’s only a “public figure” because Lorenz doxed her in a hyperbolic piece about the influence of Libs of TikTok where the “expert” on the account’s impact was a Media Matters troll.
So Raichik returned to the initial question: “Is the journalist responsible for actions that happened after” his or her reporting?
The best Lorenz could manage after more back-and-forth: “I think that journalists should take care and should, should, you know, should consider sort of the framing. And I think that they should do their best not to — not to appear as if they encourage that sort of behavior.”
The Post Millennial has a good wrap-up of the entire interview, which was definitely another L for Lorenz.
However, the most jaw-hitting-floor moment was when the Post’s star social-media scourer lacked the self-awareness to not walk into a question about whether someone is responsible for threats that spring out of reporting on people’s public social media activity when the threats against Raichik emanate from Lorenz’s decision to report on her private social media activity.
Before the April 2022 report in which she doxed Raichik, who she was was immaterial. She made no bones about the fact that she wished to remain anonymous and was reporting on videos and posts made publicly.
Her professional position, too, was immaterial to Libs of TikTok’s mission. She was in no position of authority over you, your job or your children. She sold real estate and, on the side, was an independent journalist.
And yet Taylor Lorenz — whose job involves a very visible, public-facing role — broke down on TV over the kinds of hate messages she and her family receive.
Which isn’t to encourage or excuse that sort of behavior; boot the idiots from whatever social platform the messages come from if they don’t constitute criminal harassment or threats, seek to arrest them if they do.
But don’t literally cry about it weeks before you make a deliberate decision to subject an anonymous real estate agent with opinions to the same “normalized” death threats you say you receive.
It makes one or both of those two public floggings — one of anyone who would dare criticize Lorenz, the other of Raichik — look like hypocritical, self-serving acts.
