A viral video appearing to show a woman getting laid off from Snapchat turned out to be fake.She doesn't even work there, but people believed her, and it received over 2 million views.She told Insider she never expected it to blow up, she just wanted to raise awareness.A TikTok creator who went viral with a video falsely stating she was fired from Snapchat never expected viewers to believe it was true, but she's not sorry she raised awareness of the layoffs hitting tech workers.
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The video, posted by TikToker @alberta.nyc on October 9, was labeled a "day in the life" of a software engineer at Snapchat. The creator started off her day by getting ready, watering her plants, and logging into a meeting at 9 am. She then filmed what appeared to be a virtual meeting, before looking shocked. In a voiceover, she said, "It turned out that the meeting was laying me off so I decided to stop recording because I did not really want that on camera." The video has been viewed over 2 million times and received over 1,000 comments, many expressing sympathy, being critical of Snapchat, and sharing their own stories of being laid off. The top comment, with over 4,000 likes asked, "wait is this real," and received a mixed response β many people assumed it was based on a recent wave of tech layoffs, while others suggested her reactions seemed "fake." On October 11, the creator posted a follow-up video responding to the comment with "No." On- screen text read, "20% of Snap empoyees *were* laid off in the past couple of months," and said she makes these "re-enactments" to call out tech companies. Alberta, who requested that only her first name be used due to privacy concerns, told Insider that she made the video in order to shed some light on recent layoffs at Snap Inc, the parent company of the Snapchat app. She said, "My TikTok content is mostly satire videos about tech and the tech industry so this was in line with that. I really didn't expect people to believe it." She explained that she assumed people would understand it was a re-enactment based on her past content, which features many videos satirizing workplace culture, including parody layoffs. But Alberta said she didn't account for the fact that "the million people that see one of your videos might not be the same people that have seen your videos in the past." "I thought that people would realize it was fake and that would be the end of it," she added. Instead, many β including her friends and family β fell for it. Alberta said that it was "not a conscious choice" to make people believe that her video was real and that all she wanted to do was alert people to what was happening to others. However, she doesn't regret "waiting to tell people that this was not true."