The Dirt
ByJonathan H. Kantor
Content warning: The following article contains references to sexual violence, suicide, and NSFW content.
On the surface, Belle Delphine looks like any other cosplayer sharing photos online. She is cute, and enjoys colorful wigs and costumes. Plus, people seem to love her. Of course, once you get to know her work, you'll learn that she's an incredibly efficient troll who's made a career out of playing the e-girl/gamer girl.
It's made her famous, but her controversial activities indicate she's well aware of what works and what doesn't when it comes to making money online. She's a woman Business Insider called a "trollish provocateur," and for a good reason. Just when it looks like her antics have died down, she does something new that tops her last effort, and it hasn't failed her yet.
Whether you've heard of her from media reports of "Gamer Girl Bathwater" or that time she supposedly vandalized a car because someone stole her hamster, there's a good chance the name Belle Delphine has crossed your timeline at one point or another. She's been all over the Internet since 2015, but it took her a few years to go from your run-of-the-mill cosplayer into the troll she inevitably became.
Delphine has undoubtedly made a name for herself, and she's done so without any shame or explanation. She's managed to court some serious controversy over the years in her rise to Internet superstardom, and every time she does something provocative, she reaps the benefits in the form of cold hard cash.
The cosplayer trolls on PornHub
PornHub
Long before she started posting real pornographic content, Belle Delphine caused a stir when she announced she would open up a PornHub account. The announcement quickly made her insanely popular on the site. Ultimately, it was all part of an elaborate troll, and the videos she posted weren't sexually explicit at all.
Of course, her fans would have to learn that the hard way by clicking on her videos, which came with suggestive titles and thumbnails. Most of the titles of her videos are a bit too racy to post here. Still, there's one called "PEWDIEPIE goes all the way INSIDE Belle Delphine." You can see the sexually suggestive nature of that claim.
If you clicked on the video hoping to see YouTube star PewDiePie (who's got his own base of haters)interacting with Delphine, you'd probably be disappointed. It's a video of Delphine eating a photograph of PewDiePie, so it's not as if the title was misleading so much as it was a bit of a double entendre. All of her videos were like that, earning her the distinction of being an expert troll by many in the media.
While she didn't offer adult content at the time, she parlayed her hoax into driving traffic toward her Patreon. Fans who signed up got access to her "NSFW Snapchat," where she posted explicit photographs for her fans. Her PornHub account is still active and filled with troll videos, which have earned her 64+ million views and 372,000+ subscribers.
Belle Delphine sells her bathwater
Belle Delphine's Internet popularity was already on the rise with 4.5+ million Instagram fans when she made international news. In July 2019, Delphine posted a message promising to sell something a bit unusual. She launched a new product called Gamer Girl Bathwaterfor all her "THIRSTY gamer boys."
Delphine's small jars of used bathwater sold for $30, and all 500 samples sold out in three days. The stunt earned Delphine recognition from international media outlets and sparked plenty of rumors online. The most pervasive scuttlebutt suggested several people caught herpes after drinking the bathwater, but these claims were all untrue.
In reality, the claims of people catching an STI from Delphine only helped boost her popularity, and the stunt was an incredible success. Delphine's bathwater product spawned copycats in the form of companies claiming to sell jars of her urine. She received requests for some additional ... fluids to be placed in the bathwater. Still, Delphine reportedly only filled them with 100% bathwater.
While the stunt may seem like it came out of nowhere, Delphine explained where she got the idea in an interview with Metro: "So, there is a joke in the community among gamers where they will comment on a post, saying 'let me drink your bath water.' And although it's a joke, I just kind of found the idea of turning it into a reality and actually letting people own my bathwater funny."
The stolen hamster hoax
Every so often, Belle Delphine upsets the folks who control social media sites and gets her account suspended or removed. In July 2019, Delphine's Instagram account was suspended for reports of "nudity or pornography," which resulted in her departure from the Internet for a few months. When she returned to her millions of fans in October, she did so with a mugshot.
Belle Delphine posted a picture of her mugshot, saying she was arrested. The image shows Delphine in her natural brown hair with a bit of a smile and what appears to be running mascara, suggesting she'd been crying. The watermark at the bottom reads "© Metropolitan Police," and her Tweet came with a single comment: "I got arrested lol."
What followed was an intensely bizarre story about how she was arrested. According to Delphine, she was picked up by the London Metropolitan Police Department after vandalizing a friend's car, which she did because said friend stole her hamster. The vandalized car's pictures were posted soon after with "B****! Give me my hamster back" spray-painted on the vehicle.
Delphine never revealed if her story was true or not, but media outlets took the time to research her claim. Ultimately, it was ruled another stunt due to Delphine's mugshot not appearing in the Metropolitan Police's mugshot database. The watermark on the bottom was also an indication, as the Met doesn't add that to its mugshots. In the end, Delphine proved she could troll her fans with an outrageous claim.
The cosplayer comes back with OnlyFans
After Delphine posted her "arrest" picture, she followed that with another video and then disappeared from the Internet entirely. She didn't return for several months, and rumors persisted that she received death threats for her content. Delphine has taken several breaks from online activity over the years, and when she ended this one, she made waves.
Delphine dropped a music video in June 2020, teasing she would make a "big bag" with an OnlyFans account. At the same time, she took the opportunity to post her new Instagram and TikTok accounts. Of course, the OnlyFans account got the most attention, and when she began posting on the platform, she made a ton of cash.
In November 2020, Delphine made $1.2 millionon OnlyFans, and according to her, she's managed to keep that momentum going, month after month. When she opened the account, she ported over all of the NSFW pictures and videos she previously hosted on her private NSFW Snapchat. There were some 4,000 images and 600 videos waiting for any fan willing to fork over the $35 monthly fee on day one.
When her OnlyFans account went live, her photos and videos were seminude. Still, it wouldn't be long before she crossed over into pornography. As of September 2021, Delphine's OnlyFans accounthas been liked more than 618,000 times, and if she genuinely is bringing in around $1 million a month, that means she has about 28,570 subscribers paying to see her content.
Belle Delphine moves to porn
Initially, Belle Delphine's OnlyFans account featured images of her that were either seminude or censored in some way. Most of the photos she made available on day one were taken from her private NSFW Snapchat and other sources. Still, she promised to post more adult-oriented content soon. On December 25, 2020, she followed through by posting her first pornographic video.
She started working as a cosplayer, and while her career saw this morph into more adult fare, she didn't necessarily abandon her roots. In her pornographic videos, she often wears the same makeup and brightly colored wigs that made her famous, so it's not as if she's entirely dropped the cosplay angle in her adult content.
While she keeps most of her explicit content on OnlyFans, she promotes it on her other social media accounts. Delphine posts tease videos and pictures to entice her millions of fans to make the jump over to paid content. This has caused controversy on several occasions, as she tends to step over the line regarding what content is allowed on sites like YouTube and Instagram.
No stranger to controversy
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people doing the same kind of work Belle Delphine does online (including actor Bella Thorne, who's raking in the dough). When she first started, her content garnered some attention, but it wasn't until she started making headlines for weird activities that her popularity increased. Her Gamer Girl Bathwater stunt pulled in a ton of cash alongside some serious publicity, but that pales in comparison to some of the other things she's done to earn views and clicks.
In one photoshoot, Delphine was accused of fetishizing or "promoting rape." Delphine posted pictures of herself in what Insider described as an X-rated display of a fantasy kidnapping scenario. In the now-deleted Twitter post, she described the shoot as "My perfect first date."
In response to suggestions she should have placed a trigger warning on the posting, she explained to Metrothat, "There is nothing wrong with enjoying power-play and BDSM where both people are consensual." She further wrote that the claims made against her were akin to those that have long plagued the video game industry as a cause of violence. Ultimately, Delphine removed the offensive photos, which may have been due to calls to have her "canceled" on Twitter.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
The social media bans
When Belle Delphine made her return to the online community, she began posting videos on YouTube. Her videos were less about cosplaying and more akin to pornography but without the nudity or anything overtly explicit. During this time, most of her content consisted of music videos she made, and it wasn't long before YouTube pulled the plug.
Delphine had her account suspended after multiple complaints brought her content to the site's attention. This was nothing new for Delphine, and over the years, she's managed to have her accounts suspended or closed. At one point, she received a permanent ban from Instagram, which may not have stuck. She was also booted off TikTok but has since returned to the platform.
Delphine always finds her way back online (so far), but the bans do come at a cost. When her Instagram account was first banned, she had over 4.5 million followers and lost them all. She's had multiple Instagram accounts closed at different times, and her original Facebook account is nowhere to be found, though it's likely she closed that in an effort to purge her early material.
As of September 2021, Delphine has several active social media accounts. She's come back to Facebook (and left again), has a YouTube page, a Twitter, and numerous Instagram accounts, though it's not clear if she's operating them. She also has a Patreon and OnlyFans, both of which bring in an estimated $1 million to $1.135 million every month.
The death rumor
Death rumors hit the Internet every so often, and these are usually debunked by whichever celebrity is targeted. Sometimes, they pop up out of the blue, and in other cases, they can show up when someone does something specific. In Belle Delphine's case, her activities and a long period of inactivity made her the subject of an Internet death rumor.
The rumors started circling when Delphine posted something rather controversial to her Instagram account. She put up a picture with the text, "Swipe right for a public announcement from me." The subsequent video featured Delphine dancing to a song about suicide. She then makes a gesture suggesting she may be hanged before bringing a gun into the frame.
The nature of the video and accompanying music led many of her fans to worry about Delphine's safety. Comments on the now-deleted post consisted of people asking if she was okay and whether or not she might hurt herself. The rumors persisted, primarily because Delphine disappeared from the Internet for a few months.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Belle Delphine's Patreon continued taking money
rafapress/Shutterstock
In March 2018, Belle Delphine started a Patreon account, where she posted her racier photos to paying customers. Her Patreon included several membership levels, and at one time, a member could pay $2,500 to have a one-on-one Skype session with Delphine. These days, her Patreon has fallen behind her much more successful OnlyFans. Still, before she made that transition, it was incredibly popular.
At one time, her Patreon boasted some 4,400 users, and this was after just a few months on the platform. She ran into some controversy when she took one of her many short absences from the Internet. In August 2019, she essentially disappeared from her social media accounts, which wouldn't have been a problem for most sites, but it created a problem with Patreon.
Her subscribers signed up for access to existing and future content, so rumors spread that she was scamming them when Delphine went dark for a few months. She quickly lost more than half of her subscribers and was left with around 2,000. Delphine eventually returned with her "I was arrested" stunt, and her Patreon numbers never recovered. As of September 2021, her Patreon still boasts just shy of 350 patrons.
She allegedly sold other women's nudes
When Belle Delphine was 17, she was already building an audience through her cosplay pictures and was well on her way to establishing herself in the community. At this time, she was approached by an older man who asked that she hand over control of her Facebook account. His plan was to release nude photos of other women while passing them off as Delphine.
Delphine would receive a percentage of the profits, and she agreed to go along with the plan. According to Delphine, she "stopped working with him very soon after because I didn't like him" (via Insider). He asked for her mother's credit card number, and the situation became untenable for the young cosplayer, so she walked away.
Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, though it wouldn't come to light until January 2019. A sex worker named Minty Darling alleged that Delphine sold Darling's nudes without her permission, claiming them to be her own. Delphine offered what little money she made from the arrangement, but was rebuffed. Eventually, the two women came to a private settlement.
Another sex worker named Indigo White accused Delphine of trying to bury the story. In her video, White goes into detail about the allegations and the evidence proving what happened. When Delphine became aware of White's accusations, she unapologetically attacked her online.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
What's next for the provocateur?
Belle Delphine has courted controversy throughout her entire adult career, making content online which has brought her a lot of attention. While she doesn't post many videos on her own YouTube, she does go on other members' podcasts and is interviewed every so often by big names in the industry, including Philip DeFranco, Logan Paul, Ethan Klein, and many more.
In her appearance on Philip DeFranco's "A Conversation With," Delphine went into detail about how she got to where she was in the industry, how much money she was making (without stating exact figures), and her plans for the future. In it, she calls herself a "girl who is on a destruction course of the Internet who just happens to have pink hair," and that may very well be how she sees herself.
Through their conversation, Belle Delphine explains that she wants to have a simple and comfortable life in a nice country house. That may seem contrary to her online activities, but Delphine admits that she's always been "very switch and flip," explaining that her interests tend to shift all the time. Given her history on the Internet, it seems that while she's likely to continue posting controversial things online, there's no telling what that might entail.