If you haven’t heard about Addison Rae’s fandom, are you even on TikTok? The 20-year-old Louisiana native is the third most followed TikToker on the app, amassing over 82 million followers to date, following closely behind Charli D’Amelio and Khaby Lame. It’s not hard to see why — for starters, she’s a bad bleep. She is expanding her talents and slowly making her way into Hollywood by starring in Netflix’s new movie He’s All That, a remake of the 1999 film She’s All That, which is set to release next month. Addison recently released her own debut song titled “Obsessed,” which has over 17 million streams on Spotify, and she has been on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (which was met with a lot of backlash). On top of that (as if that wasn’t enough), she launched her own beauty line called Item Beauty last year, and as of August 2020, she has a net worth of $5 million. No biggie.
Yet despite all of her successes in her career thus far, I must ask this question that just won’t escape my mind: Who is actually an Addison Rae fan?
I know that sounds a bit harsh, but I’m being serious. I have never met an Addison Rae fan in person, and I don’t think I’m the only one who hasn’t. Given her success and quick rise to fame, I would think that she would have millions of fans, some of which would undoubtedly have to be at least one person I know — but if anything, it seems to be quite the opposite.
So, who are Addison Rae fans, and perhaps more importantly, where are they? If I was an Addison Rae fan, where would I be?
After doing a bit of Googling, I discovered that Addison’s fans are called Sunraes, and there are numerous Sunrae fan accounts on TikTok dedicated to the social media personality. But none of the fans behind these fan accounts actually show their faces and reveal who they are — for the most part, the only videos they post are fan edits. In other words, I hit a dead end.
I decided to expand my research and think a bit outside of the box to deduce who Addison Rae fans are by researching who is even on TikTok in the first place — since this is likely where the majority of Addison’s fanbase lives. According to Statista, the majority of active TikTok users are between ages 10 to 19 — which would likely suggest that most of Addison’s fans and followers on the app are pre-teens and teenagers. And most TikTok users seem to identify as female, accounting for 61% of active users on the platform.
Still unsatisfied with my investigation of whether Addison Rae fans truly exist, I set my sights on conducting some research of my own through the power of social media. I decided to conduct a set of three quick polls among three different groups of people.
I first messaged my fellow Her Campus summer 2021 editorial interns Carolina, Emily, Logan, and Olivia. Part of our responsibilities this summer involve being updated on anything and everything in Gen Z pop culture, so I figured they would have an answer to my million-dollar question: Do you know any Addison Rae fans? And to my utter disbelief (yes, that’s sarcasm, dear reader), none of them knew of any Sunraes.
But just asking four of my peers wasn’t enough. I expanded and reached out to the Her Campus National Writers Facebook group, inquiring whether any of them knew of any Addison Rae fans — and 13 responded and said they did not know any, either. However, I will note that one writer did comment and say that she is not a “hardcore fan,” but that she does like Rae — progress, but I still don’t think it counts.
Lastly, I utilized the good ol’ poll feature on my personal Instagram account and asked the very same question — one final plea in my search for one, just one, Addison Rae fan. Most of my followers on Instagram fall under the age range that is Gen Z, so I figured that their input would be beneficial to my ongoing investigation, considering most of Gen Z is on TikTok and knows who Addison Rae is. Within a couple of hours, almost 90% of my followers said they did not know any Addison Rae fans — with only 12 people out of over 100 participants saying they in fact knew one.
At least I know the Sunraes really are out there now — but how are there so many of them, if they’re so impossible to track down?
So, after several days investigating the mystery that is the Addison Rae fandom (which I spent more time researching than I’d like to admit), I have drawn a final conclusion. Although Addison has a small, practically non-existent group of Gen Z supporters as far as I can tell, one thing is for certain: like it or not, she is successful. And frankly, perhaps part of the appeal of Addison Rae is that people love to hate her. Even though people like to tear her apart on the internet (whether for her relationship with Kourtney Kardashian or her TikTok dance credit issues), this hate unintentionally continues to garner her more attention, and in turn, more support. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be as successful as she is. So hate her all you want, but somebody out there is clearly in her corner — even if I can’t find them. After all, she’s still worth $5 million.
And if you are an Addison Rae fan, message me — I just wanna talk.