Is the U.S. government spending money on the "National Pillow Fluffing Initiative," the "Bureau of Elevator Music Standards," the "National Velcro Noise Study," the "Program of Ice Cube Uniformity," the "American Cloud Watching Fund," the "Federal Kazoo Orchestra Grant" and the "Federal Bureau of Traffic Cone Counting"? No, that's not true: All these supposed expenses originated in a comedy skit by TikTok creator Read Choi who pretended these were all discovered by DOGE. The original video was labeled a skit, a meme and a sketch in the description and used the LOL hashtag.
The skit appeared as a video (archived here, here and here) published on TikTok on February 5, 2025, with the following description:
When I tell you I didn't know it was this bad #lol #meme #skit #sketch #memes
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Feb 5 21:19:52 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories searched for the initiatives named in the video on usaspending.gov, an official United States government website tracking federal spending, and no results were returned:
(Source: screenshot of usaspending.gov taken by Lead Stories on Wed Feb 5 21:23:43 2025 UTC)
Read Choi is an influencer who is known for making comedy skits, for example, this one about Elon Musk making a gesture during President Trump's inauguration, which used the same hashtags as the DOGE skit:
@readchoi *this is just a skit and not supposed to be a source of accurate news He did WHAT?! #skit #sketch #meme #memes #relatable ♬ original sound - Read Choi
His IMDB profile (archived here) describes him as:
Read Choi is an American actor and virtual comedian born on the 2nd of February in 1996 to Chinese-Korean parents. In addition to the development of his limelight, he amassed over 8 million followers on social platforms- he grew his notability consecutively since 2019. Moreover, Read Choi's acting roles are in Merry Christmas, Elijah, and other short films in his childhood. In the following year 2024, he debuted in Dhar Mann videos, thus, he also gained fame from there as well. Read Choi is 1.85m tall.
