The internet went into a frenzy after controversial TikTok star Ava Louise posted a video of herself licking a public toilet seat amid the growing coronavirus pandemic. Now, the influencer has opened up about why she really did it, and it turns out, Ava shared the clip in an attempt to gain attention online and make money.

“My job is to make people laugh. My job is to shock people. That’s my brand,” she told Distractify. “I’m sitting here thinking, ‘OK, I have a current top 10 song on TikTok… What can I do to make people click that link in my bio and listen to the song some more?’ Because that’s how I make money.”

“I know I’m infamous, and I knew licking a toilet seat was going to be controversial,” the social media star continued. “I thought, ‘What are the two most talked about things right now? Corona[virus] and TikTok.’ I have a song currently going viral on TikTok. I want people searching Ava Louise on TikTok. So I licked the toilet.”

The 22-year-old shared the controversial clip, which she captioned “coronavirus challenge,” on March 14, 2020, and it quickly gained attention online — with some people slamming the social media star for making a joke out of the outbreak. It showed her licking a toilet on a plane before giving the camera a peace sign. The video has since-been deleted from TikTok, but is still up on her Twitter account, with over 620,000 views.

In another video, Ava addressed her haters, claiming that she “doesn’t care” if the internet cancels her because she’s “blonde, rich and skinny.” She then added, “I can recover from anything because of hot girl privilege.”

Ava assured her fans that she did clean it before she licked it, and that she didn’t do it in a public airplane bathroom after all. Instead, she explained that it was on her “sugar daddy’s” private plane. The internet star also claimed that since she posted the original video, her song has been streamed hundreds of thousands of times, and TikTok stars like Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae and Loren Gray have made videos to her song.

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