The Reign of Rayne: Internet Princess

by Beaina Bedrossian

Sometime during the monotonous, nebulous depression that was 2021, my endle ss scroll through the TikTok For You page led me to now 21-year-old Rayne Fisher-Quann. Despite the somewhat off-putting quality of her videos, which at the time she was filming on an Android, she caught my attention with her eloquent and thoughtful deconstruction of the popular narrative surrounding women with mental illness, and, from there, I was sold. Rayne, a girl my age, who spoke with the same intonation and vocal fry as me, was able to almost perfectly articulate my thoughts on many of the most relevant issues I cared about.

On both her Substack and her TikTok, Rayne centers cultural criticism and often uses specific instances of celebrity gossip or online drama to explore the new and pervasive ways in which patriarchal and capitalist hierarchies are upheld. Her takes on the most relevant issues within modern-day feminism and leftism have gained her an audience of over 230,000 followers on TikTok and have made her a self-proclaimed “Internet Princess,” or, in other words, an icon. I sat down with Rayne to discuss the role of icons within feminism, the propagation of an online leftist/feminism movement, and how she is affected, both personally and in her work, by her influence within her niche.

What do you think a feminist icon is or should be? Are they useful for the end goal of liberation or does the status of “icon” distract from the work of community organizers and activists, cultural critics, artists, and politicians?

I’m sort of wary of the role of the icon, and the consequences of the role of the icon, both for the feminist movement, for the general population, and also for the icon themselves sometimes. I often feel uncomfortable with the label applied to myself, because like everybody else in the whole world I am a pretty normal person, I do some good stuff, I do some bad stuff, I do some stuff that is feminist, I do a lot of stuff that isn’t feminist because most stuff isn’t actively feminist. I think feminism is a movement of structure, I don’t think it’s like an identity label that people can just adopt, I don’t think that we should feel pressure for every single thing we do to be actively feminist, and I do kind of worry that, especially with the ease that people are marketed as icons these days, that it can also set people up for failure a little bit because feminism is a movement of structure and all leftism is a movement of structure, so I do also worry that in any part of leftism searching for leaders and icons rather than uplifting the work of the collective can be counterproductive, I think it can often be quite liberal, and serve liberalism by creating these commodifiable, marketable icons. The most important work

quite frequently is not glamorous. I value the work that I do, I love being a writer, and I think that a lot of people find value in my work. I’m very very lucky to be in that position, but all of my friends who spend the time that I spend writing organizing, and on the ground, are doing more for feminism than me to be totally honest. So I do kind of feel uncomfortable with the label applied to myself and I think it is frequently applied to the wrong people, but I think that at the very least you would just have to do a great deal of extremely impactful work to earn the title, like, I would easily consider Angela Davis a feminist icon.

Do you feel as though popular liberal feminism warps our perception of who is or isn’t an icon?

Absolutely. I think that liberal feminism is very interested in the commodification and branding of feminism, and so I think it is very interested in the production of icons. There are many examples, I feel, where you can kind of tell certain people who are marketed as feminist icons, it’s rarely like a from the ground-up thing, it is very frequently like it feels like there’s some institution that is deciding that these people are feminist icons, rather than them genuinely being any part of a grassroots movement. Icons are very marketable, for better or for worse, there are many aspects where having an icon or leader in a leftist movement is a great thing for the proliferation of the movement but also there is a negative aspect to that as it is very in line with the hyper-individualistic liberal ideology. I think that there is also something about a culture of icons rather than a culture of celebrating movements that encourages people to get into a sort of very individualistic, performance-focused version of feminism that, again, I’m very wary of.

You’ve said on TikTok before that TikTok will never be a revolutionary tool. Do you think that online discourse is entirely pointless, or just that it is often unproductive and reductionary?

I think that we are kidding ourselves if we think that any part of these platforms is on our side or is interested in being used for genuine good or in service of genuine liberation. People have talked about in great length how people of color, specifically Black people, Black women, or even people who like, don’t have access to good lighting or technology are systemically silenced and disserviced by these tech platforms/companies and algorithms, which is why I think it’s foolish to think that these platforms are the be all and end all of what leftist discourse and conversation should be or revolutionary action should be. I think you can use TikTok or Twitter to like, spread information about mutual aid funds or about the steps that people can take to get involved in their communities. I think that any tool that can be used to proliferate information can be helpful, and can be a step in getting people to a further place. And I do also think that the internet is useful for a lot of the stuff that I do, which operates I guess on a more personal level. I think TikTok is great for giving girls advice about when they should dump their shitty older boyfriends, I think that’s something it’s useful for. And obviously, that’s a relatively small thing, but it’s something that does impact the lives and conditions of young women.

That reminded me of this video about censorship.

Totally, like Black people have their videos taken down all the time, I went through a period where even my videos were being taken down constantly, if I mentioned anything about criticizing men as a sort of class or oppressive group. I got suspended three times and my account almost got deleted. It really puts into perspective how these platforms are not on our side, and the perspectives that you hear on TikTok are not the full range of perspectives that exist.

I wanted to bring up your Substack, and ask if maybe you think it’s a better platform or space online that is more useful as a revolution-

ary tool than social media since you’ve talked about preferring your long-form content before.

Something that I really like about Substack, for me personally, is it is an anti-censorship medium. If I say offhandedly “I hate men” my Substack will not get taken down. Which is great. But at the same time that has also allowed like a variety of extremely negative and harmful voices to exist on Substack. Substack has also gotten in huge trouble for platforming so many insane opinions that I feel ashamed to be on the same platform sometimes.

But what I do think is very valuable about it is that it is really important that people fight the sort of cultural push to get rid of nuance and critical thinking, this sort of anti-intellectualism push on social media, I think there is a lot of power to be had in like, thinking really really critically about things and seeking out as many perspectives as you can, and not just like getting a surface level view on every issue that comes up on your TikTok For You page. I think our attention is an indescribably valuable thing, which I do think is being purposefully and systemically attacked and destroyed by the platforms we exist on. I think that is exceptionally dangerous for the leftist movement, and I also think its really great that I’ve started to see a ton of people, a ton of young girls, a ton of

people who are part of the feminist movement or the Black liberation movement, start these sort of guerilla Substacks and blogs and stuff like that where they really dive into these issues and I feel so happy that this is becoming a more popular mode of communication. There are so many things that I’ve said on Substack that I never could have said in a two-minute video on TikTok, because it is just like not a platform where that kind of discourse is allowed to exist or thrive or is even productive a lot of the time. So I feel often very inspired and very happy that there is such a large and growing audience of people that are interested in really diving into the issues that are important to them.

What or who inspires you to produce the content that you do surrounding cultural criticism and feminism?

For me, abolitionist feminism was like the thing that changed my whole life. It transformed my mental health; transformed my relationships, changed the way that I relate to myself and my mental illness, and the people around me. And that’s people like Mariame Kaba, adrienne maree brown, I think is such an inspiration, obviously Angela Davis. I feel very inspired by adrienne maree brown in a ton of ways, because I think that her work really exempli-

fies the things that I aspire to do, which is like, I feel like she writes in a way that is the most perfect possible interpretation of the personal as political. Because I think that the personal as political is something that has become bastardized and quite negative in a lot of ways, but I think that adrienne maree brown’s writing really encourages us to transform our interpersonal relationships and our relationships with ourselves as a step towards transforming the world around us and transforming our communities. Brown views interpersonal relationships as something really beautiful and radical and sacred, and that’s really something that I hope to do too, to encourage people to value their relationships and value the world around them and use that as a very important part of their leftist practice.

How does having a following influence your work, or even your perception of yourself as a feminist? How do you navigate the pressure to exist online as a “feminist” or “leftist”?

There are a lot of parts of me that are honestly not suited to having a large audience, it’s not, to be completely honest, something that I particularly love or something that’s good for me. I’m almost like, extremely sensitive to criticism, I have a type of OCD that is extremely occupied with the moral ramifications of my actions, and when you have an audience or reach that approaches the millions sometimes, it is genuinely untenable. Because there’s an infinite array of ways that people can engage with and interact with and be triggered by the things that I say, and that’s tough to deal with. As much as I want to, and believe that I have a responsibility to serve my audience in some ways, I also am like, a whole person. And it’s important for me to keep that too and not just turn myself into a kind of like brand or television channel that is completely at the will of the people who consume me. So it’s very hard to balance those things, like I said before, I think it is extremely easy for very normal people to be turned into feminist icons, almost against their will, and it’s tough. Like, I’ll tweet something bitchy about “The Bachelor” or whatever and people will make Twitter threads or Reddit posts about how they were disappointed in me for saying something catty about people on “The Bachelor," and that’s something I take seriously when it happens. I hate the feeling of disappointing people. But I also really believe that this is like Roxanne Gay’s “Bad Feminist,” not everybody can have every single thing they do be perfectly feminist all the time, I don’t think that’s a sustainable goal or standard to hold anybody to, with any size audience or any kind of person. And yeah so there is a great deal of pressure, I’m probably the first person to say that the internet is not great at seeing people as whole, multifaceted people, particularly women.

What is your relationship with your audience like? How important is their perception of you? Does it influence anything beyond your work, like your aesthetic? Do you try not to think about it?

Both. There is that pressure, and I try not to think about it. I mean, the writing scene right now, the popular writing scene, is very dominated by women which is great in a lot of ways, but I often think that this is because writing in particular has become such an aestheticized and branded medium. I think that there is an archetype that people sometimes expect of me, like the waifish, cigarette-smoking, tortured writer, and it’s tough because that’s not something I’ll ever be able to super effectively emulate. At least, not to a conscious degree. A lot of people on the internet pull it off very purposefully and do it very well and I think kind of a problem with the way that people engage with writers a lot on the internet is that there is kind of this pressure or this idea that it’s not only that you should be writing things that people want to hear, but that you should like be or look like a person that people wanna be, and then they think that through reading your writing, they can more easily become you. And that is 100% a thing with me, I don’t know it’s real-

ly weird. I have written extensively about my criticisms of the commodification of media and the way that people consciously consume media to make themselves more easily consumable. Like, conspicuously consuming media in order to build a brand and the ways in which I am very critical of that, and the ways in which we should resist the aestheticization of our intellectual pursuits. And at the same time, I searched my name on Spotify to try and find my own profile and I found 15 playlists called, “Rayne Fisher-Quann era” description: cigarettes and like, pondering suicide. It’s weird to watch. Again, I’ll search my name on Twitter and people are like “Rayne Fisher-Quann is the ultimate hot sad girl” which is like, first of all, I’m not that hot, second of all I’ve spent my whole life trying to fight the idea that I am an incurably sad person, that idea is my enemy. It’s the thing that has tried to kill me, you know? It’s odd to see people engaging with my work in a way that’s like, “I wish I could be as sad as her” or whatever. It’s sort of a tangent, but there are a million different ways this presents itself like there’s weirdly a pressure to be skinny when you’re a writer when there could not be less direct of a correlation. There’s an over-romanticization of these things that ties into aesthetics. And it’s definitely a difficult thing to contend with. It’s just weird to see people build these conceptions of who I am that are so different from the person I am and try to be, particularly when you get into these really interesting kinds of aesthetic ideas. I feel like people try to push me into this archetype that isn’t something that I’m ever going to be.

What do you feel the role of an intersectional feminist “icon” should be? Is this how you view your own role? Does it shape your ethics?

Like I said before, an intersectional feminist icon is a title I think should be used very sparingly. When I think of an intersectional feminist icon I do think of someone like Angela Davis or Mariame Kaba, like people who through their work and through their contributions to their communities have shifted the consciousness. People who provide a physical example of how we should live our lives and how we should do our work and how we should care for other people and how we should care for ourselves. I can’t think of a better definition of an icon than that, and I think that there are truly very few people who fit into that definition. I would definitely not be so bold as to put myself on the same level as Angela Davis. I don’t consider myself to be an icon, I think that particularly at this point, I would be setting myself up for failure. I think it comes with a great deal of responsibility and pressure, and I hope for the rest of my life I can keep working and keep doing better work, and I hope to impact as many people as possible. But I think that aspiring to be an icon is kind of a fool’s errand. As somewhat of a narcissist it’s definitely something I’ve thought about, but I don’t think it’s the best use of anybody’s time. The thing that we should aspire to do is to be good to other people, to be good to ourselves, and to do things for our communities; to try and make people’s lives better, even on a small scale.

In your essay, “Who’s Afraid of Amber Heard,” you say “the act of saying you’re a feminist and the act of engaging in feminism are two entirely disparate inclinations, sharing little in common when they’re not actively at odds with each other.” In this vein, what advice would you give to our readers who want to grow in their feminist practice and engage in feminism? (any media we should be consuming, etc).

Great question! I think that the biggest problem here, the thing that I was trying to describe, was that it’s really really easy for people to think that they’re a feminist now. We have almost reached a cultural point of like, oversaturation, where like pretty much anything can be argued to be feminist at this point, in a very bastardized way. Mostly to provide normal people with like, moral validation for every action, in a way that I think

ends up being very destructive to the feminist cause. And that’s definitely something that I went through, I feel like almost every girl goes through a phase where they’re like “I’m doing feminist praxis when I wear makeup because that’s my choice,” it feels very good it’s very validating. Being a woman is very hard, and I completely understand people wanting to latch onto the phrase “feminist” to ease the shame and suffering of womanhood, but the definition that I use to determine what is or is not a feminist belief or action or piece of feminist ideology is like, whether this thing can actively be said to further the liberation of all women, all classes, internationally, not just in the west. There are so many actions that we do every day that depend on the continued subjugation of women in the Global South. I think that it’s really important to understand feminism as a movement that is fundamentally structural, that is fundamentally interested in the destruction of systemic forces. It’s really important to remember that not everything that we do has to be feminist. Your life gets a lot easier when you realize that it’s okay to be a normal, complicated, medium person, like most of the time, you don’t have to be ashamed about that. It’s okay to just watch “The Bachelor.” That’s the thing that has helped me the most. I think a lot of being an effective feminist does start inside of ourselves, with unlearning shame and our desires for moral and interpersonal purity, only then can we start making decisions and believing in things that are truly radical and truly seek to create liberation. I think everyone should read abolitionist theory, I think everybody should read “Pleasure Activism” by adrienne maree brown. I think everybody should read decolonial theory. Among young white feminists, that is something frequently overlooked. Especially considering the name of feminism is so frequently used to encourage the subjugation of women in the Global South and non-western women. Moral imperialism is a really big deal, and decolonial theory is essential to unpacking that. They should read about Palestine, and they should read “Are Prisons Obsolete?” “Feminism for the 99%” and “Women, Race and Class.”

Using the label of “icon” incredibly sparingly, and instead focusing on ourselves and our communities, rather than striving for the superficial recognition of society at large, allows us to build our relationships with ourselves and each other, and grow in our feminist practice. We are all, like Rayne, just normal people. And the keys to our liberation exist inherently within our collective consciousness, not the constructed image of an icon.