TikTok’s ‘Crusader for Women’ Isn’t Afraid of Comment Trolls (Exclusive)

Drew Afualo is not scared of hate comments.

On Sunday, the TikTok star, comedian and podcast host spoke with The Messenger backstage at TikTok In the Mix, the platform's first ever music festival. Afualo, who hosted TikTok's livestream of the show along fellow comedian Eric Sedeño, opened up about her title of TikTok's "crusader for women" and her clap-back style videos.

For the uninitiated, Afualo is best known for her TikTok videos that start off with her iconic laughter. More often than not, she'll stitch a video made by a man who is making sexist or otherwise misogynistic comments about women.

More than a year into this comedy career now, Afualo is viewed by her followers as a sort of defender of women, oftentimes getting called in to make a video about whoever users on the platform find particularly heinous that day.

"My mountains are crazy," she jokes. "If I go in there, I'm like a little raccoon digging through the trash."

Despite her dedication to the bit, Afualo still faces a considerable amount of trolls in her comments. Her response, hundreds of videos in at this point: ignore, ignore, ignore.

"I'm one of the few creators whose entire platform is comprised almost entirely of hate. Lucky me," she adds. "It does truly make me laugh or make me giggle, because I've already packed up my internalized misogyny. So what random men on the internet say doesn't ever hurt my feelings. Literally ever."

"I feel like now it's like, again, if I have something funny or different to say, I'll make a video about it. If not, I just kind of ignore it," she adds.

Although the California-raised creator had been posting casually for months on TikTok, in early 2022, her videos roasting these men brought her from 1.5 million followers to 4 million in just two months.

"At this point in my career, I feel like I've proven that I can make content and I'm pretty good at it now. Clearly — check tape," she says. "And I think I don't really need to believe [hate comments] anymore. So I'm very selective now and that's more so for me. There's only so many bigoted men I can stitch in a row ...because they are not creative. That's why they don't do comedy for a living."

According to the podcast host (her show with Spotify, fittingly, is titled The Comment Section), one of the things that keeps her going is the opportunity to be a force of comedy and representation for women like her.

"I'm indigenous, and I'm someone [who] never had people like me growing up, especially in the influencer space, but in social media in general. Also, someone like myself, being able to grow a platform for TikTok that's solely reliant on just me being silly and being funny and wanting to empower women and other marginalized people — it's such a gift."

"Otherwise, I don't think people would have been exposed to anyone from my community," she says. "If they were it would just be The Rock, which is never a bad thing. But we need a little bit more. And it's not just him. I promise."