Reigning The Internet With Rayne Fisher-Quann
Cultural critic Rayne Fisher-Quann discusses parasocial relationships, her upcoming book, and the performance of being a woman on the internet.
By Cora Lee
Photos by Marcus Maddox
Published
Hot Girl Lit is a monthly column that catalogs hot reads by hot writers.
True to the title of her newsletter, Rayne Fisher-Quann is an Internet Princess. She came into her royalty by accident when the TikToks she made for fun started to resonate with over 250 thousand strangers. Her cultural criticism outgrew the short-form video essay and she pivoted to Substack, where her newsletter swiftly gained traction—she now has over 68,000 subscribers. Her readers leave adoring comments to thank her for giving a voice to the hard-to-describe feelings that accompany being a woman in the world. Rayne is a college dropout with zero formal training as a writer, yet at age 22 she is making a living off of her essays (a dream I only thought possible in the Sex and the City universe). And she's not even a nepo baby!
I first came across Rayne Fisher-Quann not as a TikTok phenom, but as a writer. When I told her this, she took it as a compliment—she is remarkably modest, almost to a fault. She would explain something deeply profound and then add, with sincerity, "I don't know if I'm making any sense." She uses words like impetus or ubiquitous or gauche but sounds natural saying them. Reading her work is like watching a sharp young mind make sense of the world in real time. She is insightful, engaging, and has tapped into an audience that adores her. After our 50 minute phone call, I adore her, too.