She gave cleaning the ol’ college try.
It’s the “tour we’ve all been waiting for,” according to “it girl” Alix Earle, who gave her 4.7 million fans on TikTok a sneak peek into her home while attending the University of Miami, in a clip that amassed 8 million views.
Despite her meteoric rise to internet superstardom, Earle certainly isn’t famous for being a “clean girl,” according to fans who say she’s the antithesis of the decluttered beauty and lifestyle trend that went viral last year. Indeed, her new Miami crib, which is shared amongst six roommates and a pet fish named Elton, is the epitome of student housing stereotypes. (Influencers – they’re just like us!)
The video sees empty handles of Tito’s Vodka littering the dining table, along with hairbrushes, a disposable camera, shot glasses and many grimy smudges of who-knows-what. Their laundry room “doubles as storage” – a space strewn with suitcases, piles of clothes and boxes exploding with miscellaneous items.
“Somehow this is a frat house without any frat boys,” one follower commented on another recent clip from Earle, which prompted the 22-year-old to respond in a new video with a full house tour.
Earle’s first stop was “Casa Cucaracha” – a feature that could be described as a birdhouse-turned-cockroach chateau.
“We get a lot of cockroaches so we made a little house for them,” Earle says in the clip, giggling. She then shows off her novelty snack bag clips, which are also shaped like cockroaches.
Earle’s low-light bedroom is dubbed “the dungeon,” she shared, but it’s another roommate who got the short end of the stick with a room that was never intended to be a private space, affixed with a door that doesn’t work.
At one point, Earle pans around the house to show what “most of our floors look like” – that is, covered with random items of clothing, GoPuff delivery bags and empty shipping boxes.
Judging by her non-stop giggling throughout the clip, Earle certainly finds the state of her home amusing, gushing that she “wouldn’t want to live anywhere else” in the caption. Some viewers, however, were appalled.
Popular TikTok critic Gracie Lily Chee, aka @thoughtswgracie dubbed Earle’s college house a “depression den.” The user slammed Earle for “glorifying” the so-called “symptoms” of mental health issues — referring to an unkempt home — saying it made her “sad.”
In a subsequent video, she argued that college is not an “excuse” for the mess Earle and her roomies inhabit.
However, Earle’s fans defended what appeared to be a fairly typical college-aged situation — which spawned a modest TikTok trend of its own.
One user filmed her rooms crowded with empty Diet Coke cans and water bottles, makeup products, wigs and dolls — and overflowing bags of trash and recycling.
Another woman recalled her living quarters in college as a former student, explaining how she lived with five other girls in a “crazy college house.”
“The joke was that you have to go get a penicillin shot after you left our house because it was just a monstrosity,” the user, who goes by Shelby, continued.
“We were just having the time of our lives, and I can assure you I’m much more depressed now clinically than I was in college living in a filthy house,” she added. “It’s not that deep, girl.”
Model and artist Julia Fox — who recently kept it real with her own NYC apartment tour, replete with mice — also praised Earle’s latest episode, writing, “I love this.”