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.
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.
As depicted in the show, the triumphant resolution to the Earle-Cooper drama is Alix posting a TikTok where she jokingly claims she took a break from social media because she was busy learning to pole dance. The move is anticlimactic, flat and about as fun to watch Alix talk through as it is to hear someone recount a dream; canned music does most of the work to make a glorified GIF seem like savvy crisis PR. But it is, in fairness, an accurate reflection of “Earle Meets World.” If that doesn’t sound riveting to you, feel free not to engage.
All eight episodes of “Earle Meets World” are now streaming on Netflix.
