Nessa Barrett, the 17-year-old TikToker who came under fire for dancing to the sound of a man reciting the Quran, has posted a second apology for the since-deleted TikTok video. Barrett had previously apologized for the video in a livestream on TikTok, but many felt that her apology wasn't satisfactory and called for her cancelation.
In the new apology, posted as a standalone TikTok video on April 11, Barrett addresses her earlier apology, saying, "I have apologized before, but many people have felt that my apology just wasn't good enough, so I wanna come on here and make it clear that I am truly and deeply sorry to those that I have hurt and offended." She went on to say that while she knows she was ignorant in dancing to the audio, it did not come from a place of hate.
Barrett also reiterated what she had previously said about how the original dance video came out, saying that she came across a video of a "cute older man" and decided to use the video, not realizing that he was reciting the Quran. "If I had known that it was something so sacred, I would have never used it," she said. "This is a lesson learned for me to be much more careful, but the hate that I'm receiving right now is really hard to handle."
The comments on the video show a mixed reception to her apology. The three most-liked comments on the video are messages of forgiveness, but many called back to her original apology in which at one point, she said, "I think... I'm sorry," calling her disingenuous.
In the past several days, Barrett appears to have gained followers on TikTok despite calls for her cancelation — Insider previously reported that she had 6.1 million followers on Friday, April 10, and she currently has 6.2 million. According to Social Blade, Barrett has also gained YouTube subscribers in the days since posting and deleting the video; as of today, Barrett's YouTube channel has no available content.
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