Alix Earle

Submission 920

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About

Alix Earle is an American influencer and businesswoman famous for her TikTok presence and podcast, Hot Mess With Alix Earle. Much of her content revolves around lifestyle, travel and make-up, and she has been caught in several controversies over the course of her career. Notably, much of Alix Earle's popularity as an influencer has been tied to her public openness about personal insecurities including acne and relationships, as well as her success at selling products. In the summer of 2024, old posts by Alix Earle in which she used racial slurs surfaced, leading to a controversy surrounding the prominent influencer erupting online over racism allegations.

Career

Alix Earle was born in 2000, the daughter of a wealthy construction magnate in New Jersey.^[1] She attended the University of Miami, graduating in 2023 and endowing a scholarship with her own money the year after. During her time in undergrad, Earle became one of the most prominent personalities on TikTok and made a lucrative business participating in brand deals with a variety of clients.^[2]

Earle has notably made appearances on several high-profile shows or podcasts over the years, including The Howard Stern Show (seen below, left) and The Kelly Clarkson Show (seen below, right).

Online Presence

As of August 2024, Earle has over 7.1 million followers on TikTok^[3] and 4 million followers on Instagram.^[4] She also has a podcast on Spotify, called Hot Mess with Alix Earle^[5] which is hosted on the Unwell network run by Alex Cooper, the podcaster behind Call Me Daddy. She is also known as a notoriously good marketer of products, making them sell out within a day after a video.^[11]

The podcast's YouTube^[13] channel has over 227,000 subscribers as of early August 2024. On July 18th, 2024, the most viewed episode of Hot Mess with Alix Earle was uploaded featuring guest Tianna Robillard, which accumulated over 1.5 million views in three weeks (seen below, left). She also has a YouTube^[14] channel under her name with over 94,000 subscribers as of August 2024, with the most viewed video at roughly 473,000 views uploaded on December 24th, 2022 (seen below, right).

TikTok Fame

Alix Earle first gained public attention after starting her TikTok in 2020 as a student at the University of Miami, posting mostly about outfits, parties and college life. It was her content about her personal life and about her acne, however, which garnered more attention and virality on the platform.

The most liked of Earle's many posts about acne, in which she declares "social media is fake" as the hook (seen below, left) earned over 29 million views and 1.9 million likes over a year after she posted it on April 15th, 2023.^[6] Another viral post (seen below, right) from January 27th, 2023, described going to a "frat wedding" party and was typical of much Earle's content while in college. The post earned 19.6 million views and 2.9 million likes over a year.^[7]

After college, Earle posted large amounts of travel content with her boyfriend and family, such as the video (seen below, left) posted on June 21st, 2024, that described going to Venice, Italy with her boyfriend and earned over 5.3 million views and 689,000 likes in two months.^[8]

Earle is also well-known for her get ready with me videos, such as the one (seen below, right) which received 7.3 million views and 596,000 likes over the course of six months on February 11th, 2023.^[9]

Controversies

Alix Earle has been involved in several controversies since becoming an influencer online in the 2020s. Some have objected to her wealthy lifestyle, depicted uncritically in her content. Others have criticized her use of alcohol.^[14]

In the summer of 2024, users on the subreddit /r/LAinfluencersnark and the associated /r/AlixearleSnark posted screenshots of what appeared to be a Last.fm account owned by a teenage Earle using the N-word several times in chats and posts.^[12] The discovery quickly led to allegations of racism surrounding Earle, sparking discourse and backlash online.^[15]

A TikTok about the controversy by @baciaavrejam2183 on August 5th, 2024 (seen below), presented a series of screenshots of the account and its posting, receiving over 116,000 views, 2,200 likes and 300 comments in three days.^[10] The posts, however, were unconfirmed.