At the start of her eponymous reality show “Earle Meets World,” the influencer Alix Earle promises that while “there’s a whole other side” of the creator economy “people don’t get to see,” her viewers are “gonna see everything in this show.” I hope for Earle’s sake she isn’t telling the truth, because if “Earle Meets World” really does contain the full scope of the TikTok star’s jet-setting lifestyle, it’s one of strikingly limited range. Rather than reveal Earle’s hidden depths or shed light on the nature of her viral appeal, the Netflix series goes to show that 30-second clips don’t easily expand into 40-minute episodes. Alix blew up while still a college student at the University of Miami, and her signature — besides a blonde, blue-eyed beauty — is a bland neutrality that lends itself to endorsing all manner of products.
She’s not particularly funny, opinionated or inventive; she’s just a wealthier and more conventionally attractive version of the average consumer. But the same relatability that makes Earle a dependable brand ambassador also makes her everyday life almost painfully boring to watch, with the few juicy nuggets either overhyped, downplayed or both. Content creation is a collective enterprise for the Earles.
Alix’s younger sister Ashtin has followed her into the influencing game, while their stepmother Ashley came by fame the old-fashioned way: a tabloid scandal, as the call girl once linked to New York governor Eliot Spitzer. But Ashley, too, has taken to social media, and she’s hoping her own kids (Alix and Ashtin’s half siblings) will do the same. Some of the queasiest scenes in “Earle Meets World” involve a tweenager filming her own “outfit of the day” videos, her child’s voice aping the inflections of her older sisters.
There’s no time to be a kid or cultivate your own interests when there’s clout to be chased. Against an interchangeable backdrop of major cities that each fade into a blur — Paris for Fashion Week; Nashville for a product launch; Coachella for partying — the Earles navigate the intersection of work and home. Ashtin feels TJ doesn’t take her career as seriously as her sister’s.
Alix has to fire the childhood best friend she hired to handle her Snapchat account. Alix is furious at Ashtin for “spoiling” the launch of her skincare line Reale Actives by using an unlabeled bottle in a post about her makeup routine. These conflicts are too far from the broader human experience to engender much sympathy, yet too petty to take on a sheen of aspirational glamor.
Nor are they negotiated with any Housewife-ian flair for drama. The Earles often sound like wooden actors reading from a prefabricated script, possibly because they are; a polite conversation between TJ and his ex-wife’s boyfriend about an inappropriate remark proves conflict resolution and compelling TV can be mutually exclusive. The few moments of piercing insight, like both Alix’s recent ex and Ashtin pointing out that they can’t trust her not to record and share candid conversations, pass by so quickly and with so little comment that they seem accidental.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
