TikToker Larray sparks backlash for joking he “pretended” to be gay

TikTok star Larray has found himself in controversy once again, after he Tweeted during his livestream that he’s only “pretending to be gay for clout”. 

22-year old Lawrence Merrit, who is better known by his screen name Larray, is part of TikTok content creation collective the Hype House.

He recently hosted a livestream for fans, which included a game or two of popular online game Among Us. However, the good spirits soon soured when Larray Tweeted that “this whole time ive been pretending to be gay for clout [sic]”.

Of course, this led to many fans reacting with anger and shock.

As well as many Twitter users predicting that Larray would now be “canceled”, one user demanded that he “leave the hype house” following this Tweet. Another quipped that Larray should “get the note app ready”, referring to TikTokers’ favored mode of online apologies.

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The Tweet also caused a lot of speculation, with one user suggesting that the revelation, if true, was “not a big deal.” They argued that “David bowie lied about being gay/bi at the beginning of his career” and suggesting that Larray, like Bowie, used his sexuality “as a facade and it caught people’s attention.”

Note: David Bowie did come out later in life, but didn’t lie about his sexuality beforehand.

Meanwhile, another Twitter user theorized that this wasn’t the only thing Larray did for “clout”: So is [t]he Black Lives Matter photo for clout as well? These things make you wonder?”

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A lot of fans, on the other hand, stepped in to defend Larray, with many of them explaining that the Tweet was part of a joke he was making with fans on his livestream, with one fan saying: “ya’ll, it’s a joke on his ig live… [sic]”.

Another fan criticized the reaction, asking: “so we can’t joke now?”

Meanwhile, when Nikita Dragun responded to Larray that “we been known” in a now-deleted Tweet, she immediately received backlash, with one user saying “Yikes” and another declaring her “canceled [sic]”.

Both Larray and Dragun have been in a constant swirl of backlash on social media throughout the 2020.

While Larray was recently accused of ‘slapping’ bestie Charli D’Amelio, fans have recently turned against Nikita Dragun for allegedly telling her security guard to “shoo” in a viral video.