Culture

Anna Lytical is a TikTok star teaching coding in drag

Aiming to demystify STEM subjects – and bring much-needed diversity to the field – Anna Lytical helps coders get to grips with tricky concepts

Apparently, organising your makeup bag is very much like storing data when coding. Don’t believe us? Ask drag queen Anna Lytical, who recently declared it so in a TikTok video. (Eyeshadow palettes represent an array in which a group of elements can easily be identified, FYI.)

“There is a limited number of equally-sized spaces for product, and if I tell you I used the first one, you’ll know which one I’m talking about,” they say to the camera while sporting a lavender wig, eyeshadow and lipstick. “Who knew data structures could be so glamorous?”

It’s just one of many videos shared that bridge two passions: computer science and drag. Anna Lytical – also known as Billy Jacobson – is a New York-based developer experience engineer for Google with a long-time love of maths. Jacobson always viewed coding and his LGBTQ identity as two separate entities, and didn’t know many queer engineers. But during his second year at Washington University in Missouri he attended “Out for Undergrad”, a conference that gathered a thousand computer science students. It was the first moment he really felt at home in the coding community.

Like many people, Jacobson was first exposed to drag through Ru Paul’s Drag Race, but it wasn’t until returning to New York that he started attending shows and developing an act. Inspired by co-workers who had gained an audience through live-streaming their coding, he decided to use drag to teach others computer science, and Anna Lytical was born. The Anna Lytical look is a twist on formal business attire: a black shirt and blazer paired with a colourful wig and dramatic makeup. “I style the wigs myself and try to make them very colourful, but also very teacher-librarian,” Jacobson says. “Hair is out of the face to keep my vision clear so I can see everything that I'm coding, but I still want it to be big and colourful and drag.”

Jacobson started by making longer YouTube videos intended to supplement what is taught in computer science classes, with the broader goal of demystifying STEM and challenging the idea of the self-taught whizz-kid who seemingly wakes up knowing every coding language. “There are no stupid questions,” he says. “It's just me creating a space where we can look at concepts from hard to easy and explain them in a way that feels approachable.”

Two years into their social media career, Anna Lytical has found an even broader following on TikTok. A recent TikTok video highlighting the history of women in computing quickly became their most popular, garnering over 1.5 million views. In the comments, women shared horror stories of the sexism they faced, and some even said that Anna Lytical is inspiring them to get back into STEM. “It was very validating that even beyond the drag of what I do, I think my audience really likes Anna as a teacher,” Jacobson says.

However, Anna Lytical has also faced trolls who believe the bar is lowered for minorities in the tech industry. Even though programmers commonly work with pre-existing code, Anna Lytical has been accused of relying on someone else’s work and not knowing how to do it themselves. The response? Building a full website using only copy-and-pasted code: “Even just being in drag can be enough to bring that group of haters forward, so I feel at least some responsibility to duel them in a fun way,” says Jacobson.

Anna Lytical’s larger goal is to draw in those who are underrepresented in tech. Jacobson explains that if queer people are not involved in creating technology, it could lead to issues of biases in machine learning or online forms that don’t consider a range of gender and sexual identities. Given historic higher rates of poverty in many LGBTQ communities, Jacobson’s work also highlights the lucrative career opportunities that also value the soft skills often overlooked in STEM fields.

As Anna Lytical proves, communicating a technical problem in a clear way often requires more than a textbook definition, and a purple-haired drag queen might just make the field a bit more welcoming. “I don't have all the answers,” Jacobson says, “but it's great to have so many others who are willing to help fill the gaps and make sure people know where the right resources are and help them feel seen.”

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK