A TikToker went viral pretending to get fired from Snapchat. She didn't think it would be taken seriously, but doesn't regret raising awareness of tech layoffs, she said.

• 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.

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.

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 — 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 — including her friends and family — 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."

"Part of the reason it resonated with so many people was that they could imagine and feel the emotions that the person in the video might have been experiencing, and they had to believe in that," she said.

This is not the first time Alberta has gone viral for one of her videos, but she said that it's always "a little overwhelming." She added that it's good for people to remember that "not every video on TikTok is real and that we should be taking everything with a grain of salt."

"I'm sure a lot of people have been in my situation, where they accidentally or purposely made a video that wasn't true but then were too scared to come out and admit that it was a lie because of potential backlash," Alberta said.

Alberta told Insider her videos are intended to unpack the "glamorization of tech on TikTok and throughout media in general."

"These companies are still organizations that are trying to make money and if their shareholders want them to fire people, they will. It's just so unimaginable for so many of my colleagues that this kind of thing could happen, but it does," she said.

Snap let go of over 1,200 people in a mass layoff in September, which is around 20% of the company's workforce. Employees told Insider that the layoffs were "messy," and several people were suddenly invited to short meetings with their managers without explanation, where they were then "read a script."

Some people who were laid off were locked out of their company accounts prior to those meetings or even during the meetings, so "some people couldn't even log in to get laid off," according to one worker who previously spoke to Insider about the situation, Insider previously reported.

A Snap spokeswoman previously told Insider that this was due to "IT issues" and said that Snap CEO Evan Spiegel "apologized for this at the start of our company all hands on Thursday." The spokeswoman added, "We are conducting a post-mortem and continue to follow up with any team members who may have been affected,"

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.