The Alix Earle vs. Alex Cooper Thing, Explained for People Who Don't Know Who Either of These People Are

I am not the target demographic for any of this. I am a middle-aged man who runs a movie website and has three teenagers, which means I know who Alix Earle is primarily because I watched Dancing with the Stars with my daughters. I know who Alex Cooper is because Call Her Daddy has become culturally inescapable even underneath the rock I inhabit.

And yet, here we are, because this particular piece of drama has crossed over from “Gen Z social media beef” into “something that is being covered by Bloomberg and The Hollywood Reporter,” which means it’s actual news now and not just content.

So here’s what happened, as best as I can piece it together.

In August 2023, Alex Cooper — host of Call Her Daddy, the fourth most popular podcast on Spotify who has figured out how to turn “talking candidly about sex and relationships” into a small empire — launched something called the Unwell Network. The pitch was that she’d bring in Gen Z creators, mentor them, and help them grow.

One of the first people she signed was Alix Earle.

If you don’t know Alix Earle, she’s a 25-year-old TikToker who became enormously famous doing “get ready with me” videos — a genre that sounds boring until you watch one and realize that they actually are very boring. She launched her podcast, Hot Mess with Alix Earle, under Cooper’s network in September 2023. Things seemed great. They appeared together. They were friendly colleagues.

Then things stopped being great.

Apparently, it all began to sour around the 2025 Super Bowl, when Earle — who was in New Orleans with her then-boyfriend, Miami Dolphins wide receiver Braxton Berrios — did not attend Unwell’s Super Bowl party. Interesting.

In February 2025, Hot Mess quietly exited the Unwell Network. There was no announcement or explanation. Cooper addressed it vaguely: “Alix not being able to podcast has nothing to do with Unwell.” Earle, for her part, later said that the departure involved “a little bit of a hot mess” behind the scenes. Hmmmm.

For the better part of a year after that, both of them remained conspicuously vague about it. Earle responded to a fan asking about the Cooper situation with “How much time do you have?” but she did not elaborate. Cooper kept insisting everything was fine. Nobody believed either of them.

Then things got real messy. On April 9th of this year, a TikToker posted a video comparing Cooper to an ambulance chaser — someone who shows up when women are at their most vulnerable, and extracts their trauma for content, and profits from it. Earle reposted it. Reposting someone else’s TikToks, as y’all know, is the social media equivalent of shots fired.

Four days later, Cooper posted a TikTok that was more direct: “The passive-aggressive reposts and the likes and the commenting on things — I gotta call you out here. You’re gonna need to get specific and just say what you gotta say about me. There’s no NDA. No one is stopping you. Stop hiding behind other people and just say it yourself. What’s the beef?”

“I’m really tired of waking up and seeing you using this fake drama to distract from other sh** going on for you. I know what happened and so do you. So talk.”

Earle’s response was to comment “Okay on it!!” and then post a TikTok of herself being woken up post-Coachella to watch Cooper’s video, visibly delighted, telling her friends, “That just literally made my whole day.”

Alix Earle is currently filming a Netflix reality series. Alex Cooper just basically gave Earle the greenlight to go scorched Earth on the planet’s largest streaming platform.

Things got uglier. Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia — remember her? — has her own history with Barstool Sports (where Cooper got her start), and she jumped in to say that she’d heard two years ago that “Alex Cooper is a very, very mean girl.” Cooper responded by posting screenshots of friendly DMs between them to prove they had a good relationship. LaPaglia responded on her podcast by saying, “It’s not me versus you, babe. It’s me and the whole world versus you.” Oh, snap.

Dave Portnoy, Barstool’s founder and generally awful person, initially claimed the beef was over a Carl’s Jr. Super Bowl ad that Earle got instead of Cooper, then walked that back. The theory gaining the most traction — and the one that Bloomberg, of all places, reported on — is that this is a business dispute disguised as personal betrayal. Cooper’s Unwell Network has been having a rough time: employee turnover, internal friction, and underperforming podcasts (Cooper’s husband is not making things easier). Earle leaving — or being pushed out — was apparently the beginning of something bigger.

So, what’s actually going on? I mean, who knows. The ambulance chaser thing is not nothing. That’s kind of the Call Her Daddy brand — I spent a few months listening to it a while back before I pulled what’s left of my hair out. It’s basically women who just went through something awful coming on to discuss their most painful experiences.

Cooper’s accusation that this is all “fake drama” designed to distract from something else going on in Earle’s life is also interesting because it’s the kind of thing you say when you want to imply you know more than you’re saying. Maybe she does. We don’t know what “I know what happened and so do you” actually refers to.

What’s almost certain is that Netflix has a lot to gain here, because Earle appears to be holding her tongue publicly until she can use that platform to air her dirty laundry. I have no real interest in Alix Earle or Alex Cooper. But I like mess. And I’ll probably check in to see what the drama is all about.