Many TikTokers are currently struggling to hold onto engagement, but Alix Earle is bathing in newfound online fame.
Over the past few months, the 22-year-old gained over 2 million new followers — not after a single viral video or moment in the spotlight, but rather for seemingly being herself. It’s a cosmic rise to elite influencer status that we’ve only seen a handful of times in the app’s history (Charli D’Amelio being the first and most notable).
Discussing Earle’s popularity is becoming its own genre of TikTok content, with other creators dissecting why and how she got so famous so fast. Tags for “Alix Earle social growth” aggregate dozens of recent videos, many of which have hundreds of thousands of views.
There are a few floating theories about why she rose to fame, like how relatable and conventionally attractive she is. But the consensus, at least among a certain demographic of college-aged young women viewers on TikTok, seems to be that people unequivocally love her. Earle has been dubbed the new “it girl” on the platform, and fans cannot stop gushing about feeling like she’s their best friend.
Earle now holds 2.4 million followers, and that number is quickly rising. Only a week ago, she had 1.3 million, according to social-analytics tracker SocialBlade. Her cumulative growth over the past month has been over 1.7 million new followers.
Earle is now famous enough to make headlines. Last week, she went live on TikTok announcing she had broken up with her boyfriend and professional baseball player, Tyler Wade. She also clued fans in on issues they were facing behind the scenes, like feeling insecure that he wouldn’t post about her or their relationship on his social media accounts. On TikTok, people unanimously rallied behind her and lauded her for leaving the relationship behind.
If you feel completely out of the loop about who the new class of influencers are heading into 2023, this is a cheat sheet of sorts to catch you up. Here is a bit more about Earle, a few little-known facts about her, and how she became so beloved and popular.
While she’s currently enrolled in the University of Miami Herbert Business School, Earle is also a marketing intern at Earle, her family’s 54-year-old New Jersey-based road construction and paving company. In this capacity, Earle has assisted with the company’s social media posts and newsletter, per her LinkedIn page.
On the company’s official website, Earle says it requires each piece of construction equipment to display the American flag — a tradition that started after the September 11 attacks. The family also operates a foundation with the primary focus of fighting opioid addiction.
Earle’s father, Thomas Earle — who serves as the company’s CEO — has also garnered headlines following a high-profile breakup. In 2008, reports surfaced that Thomas Earle was cheating on his then-wife, Alisa, with Ashley Dupré. Dupré worked at the Emperors Club VIP escort agency, which was patronized by former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, leading to his resignation from office.
Thomas and Ashley Earle married in 2013, per The New York Daily News. She has three children, according to her Instagram profile, and two “bonus babies” — presumably referring to Alix and her sister, Ashtin.
Everybody is different and needs to find what works for them ?? this is what worked for me 🙂
Earle posts a “get-ready-with-me” selfie video (known on social media as GRWMs) almost every other day. They’re mostly unremarkable, but that’s also the point. As many fans and observers have already pointed out on the platform, Earle is beloved because she seems to have a natural authenticity about her — even as she talks about ways she’s augmented herself or her looks.
“Because she feels like your cool best friend, you feel like you know her, and that means you’ll be loyal to her,” user @samanthatannor noted in a TikTok she posted about Earle’s rise to fame. In her GWRM videos, Earle has been open about her struggles with acne, depression, anxiety, friendship, and other everyday realities of being a young person on the internet. It can create a meaningful parasocial bond, or an illusion of a real-life relationship that fans feel with her.
Her GRWMs have become so iconic and synonymous with her online brand that it even scored her a collaboration with Selena Gomez to help advertise the singer’s make-up line Rare Beauty.
The allure of her GRWM TikToks seems to be that they run the whole gamut of social media voyeurism. In some, Earle sloppily slaps on her makeup, rushing for time, so she can go on a bar crawl. (She’s also done her makeup sitting on the floor at the airport.) On the other end, she posts videos of herself getting ready in full glam for ritzy events, like Art Basel.
Earle poses in glitzy outfits but also captures when they go awry, like this TikTok she filmed of herself running through a drug store to find hair ties when hers snapped.
Earle’s breakup with Oakland Athletics player Tyler Wade propelled her fame to new heights, as fans speculated about the cause of the breakup and quickly showed Earle support.
Though the two only dated for three months, Wade frequently appeared on Earle’s TikTok account — though the exposure wasn’t mutual, which she implied partially led to the dissolution of their relationship.”We have been fighting for a bit,” Earle said in a TikTok live stream. “I just was not happy with the way that I was feeling. Like, he wouldn’t post me.”
During that stream, Earle said the couple had gone to a wedding together, but Wade had refused to post any photos. She also said he seemed perturbed by her burgeoning influencer career, becoming incensed whenever she pulled out her camera.
Insider reached out to Wade for comment.
While Earle has risen to fame for her GRWM videos chronicling glamorous nights out on the town, arguably one of the buzziest events she’s been associated with to date was the 36th birthday party for rapper Drake, which the Daily Mail reported she attended at Sexy Fish, a restaurant in Miami.
And it’s a safe bet that she’ll be in attendance at many more celeb-studded events to come.
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