Last year Belle Delphine, the 21-year-old internet-famous model, noticed that men were jokingly remarking on her photos saying they would drink her bath water.
Writing “I would drink your bath water” underneath people’s posts is a common online joke, but Delphine decided to take things one step further. What if her fans would actually buy bottles of her bath water?
“I laughed about it and then I thought it was a great idea,” Delphine recalls in a phone call from her home in London. Within months, she had sold hundreds of bottles of her bath water to obsessed fans for $30 (£22) per bottle.
Fans of Delphine, who are almost all male, posted videos of themselves drinking, vaping or cooking with the liquid, which Delphine insists was genuine. “I took a lot of baths,” she says.
The concept of thousands of men paying for Delphine’s bathwater may seem bizarre — or shocking perhaps to anyone not immersed in contemporary internet culture.
For those who have followed the gradual progression of fan culture, it may be unsurprising. Delphine is one of a new breed of mostly young social media celebrities to have found a way to harness obsessive, sexualised internet culture to make huge amounts of money — but in a dubious fashion that raises questions about exploitation and the lure of social media influencers to young people.
In just three years, Delphine, who was born in South Africa but lives in the UK, went from working as a part-time waitress and babysitter to internet celebrity and adult performer. She gained millions of fans and thousands of paying subscribers who are charged up to $35 per month for access to regular intimate photographs of the model. She typically dresses in a pink wig, cat ears and cartoonish makeup with a self-proclaimed "weird elf kitty girl" aesthetic.
This online fame has earned Delphine and her boyfriend around £10m, with their revenues now at £1m per month. It has also brought them obsessed stalkers who have attempted to visit their home — and a profile which she seems ambivalent about herself.
“I never wanted fame,” Delphine, whose real name is Mary-Belle Kirschner, says. “This was never something that I wanted.”
Either way, Delphine is part of a growing online movement.
Around the world, thousands of young people are now using subscription websites such as OnlyFans, a UK-based website which takes a 20pc cut of the earnings of its creators, to sell explicit photos and videos of themselves to fans for money. The site has attracted 450,000 people who post content on it, with a total of 30 million registered users.
The long term impact of the path this offers for many into sex work remains poorly understood. Analyst Thomas Hollands analysed the earnings of users posting content on OnlyFans. He found that many people using the site likely lose money when the time they spend producing content is factored in. The top 1pc of creators earn a third of the cash generated from subscribers.
Thousands of young people choosing to venture into sex work also raises the worrying possibility that they are at greater risk of being harassed online, blackmailed, groomed or sexually exploited and subjected to real world exposure that can affect their future career.
With so many young people struggling amid soaring joblessness because of the pandemic, many are being lured into this world with little thought about the potential consequences.
Alan Collins, a solicitor who specialises in abuse from Hugh James, warns that many young people are blind to the risks. "Some of the people I’m acting for are adults who have gone into this sort of work and see the plus sides and unfortunately it’s ended in rather tragic events for them which have resulted in them becoming the victims of very serious crimes with life-changing consequences," he says.
"Some of these people who think they are in control and know what they’re doing [and] can see it’s very lucrative, have had to pay a heavy price."
Bianca Devins, a 17-year-old amateur model who had attracted followers online, was murdered by a stalker last year who now faces up to 25 years in prison. And Alexis Robinault, a 26-year-old Instagram influencer, was found dead by police last month although the cause of her death is unclear.
For Delphine, however, her unique brand of sex work has so far, at least superficially, been a success story. She has developed a daily routine, with a typical day starting late at either 1pm or 2pm.
“I’ll stay up on the internet really, really late, like 3am, and then I sleep in really late,” she says. “Then I’ll just basically be on the internet my whole day. Just being in the loop because it’s really important to know everything that’s going on.”
Credit: Belle Delphine
Once she’s caught up on the latest internet trends and controversies, Delphine spends around an hour getting ready to take lewd photographs for subscribers, often with her boyfriend behind the camera.
Delphine doesn’t believe it’s her role to police the morality of her fans. She gives the example of married men contacting her, something she admits she feels “weird” about.
One married fan did go too far, however, when he sent Delphine photographs of his wife dressed up as her and wearing a similar pink wig. Delphine decided to repay the money. “That was a bit too far and uncomfortable for me,” she says.
The character of Belle Delphine has attracted notoriety for her outlandish stunts. As well as selling her bath water, she has posed in skimpy outfits with a dead octopus and sold autographed copies of the bible, something that Delphine was concerned might offend people.
Credit: Belle Delphine
She now lives in London with her boyfriend, who has chosen not to reveal his identity to the internet.
Her notoriety has come at a cost. Internet fame has forced the couple to install CCTV cameras for their house and her mother’s home after obsessive fans figured out where Delphine lived.
“It’s actually been quite a big problem,” Delphine admits. One of her earliest videos, a tour of her bedroom, was used by one fan to figure out where her family home was. People eventually started leaving notes on Delphine’s mother’s front door, unsettling the family.
“It changes things because now I see comments on the internet and I kind of feel differently about it,” Delphine says. Internet harassment is at risk of becoming real-world abuse if stalkers continue to visit.
There is little doubt that Delphine’s content and her decision to sell her bathwater has fueled this unwanted and obsessive behavior.
But Delphine believes there’s a clear line between regular fandom and obsessive, stalker-like activity.
“I think the line is where it impacts people mentally,” she says. “If their obsession with me is hindering their personal life and they don’t want to pursue girls in their real life because they think that I am the only girl for them, I think that’s a big problem.”
Large social networks present potential problems for content creators, however. Delphine has been banned from TikTok. Last month, she was temporarily banned from YouTube, a decision the company said was a “mistake”.
“These are people’s careers and in the real world you don’t just get fired from a job for no reason,” Delphine says. “But somehow on YouTube you can in a way just get fired for absolutely no reason.”
Notorious internet stars like Delphine and Swedish YouTube personality PewDiePie will continue to pose a problem for large sites for years to come as their antics clash with developing moderation guidelines.
For now, at least, Delphine and her boyfriend have a large amount of savings and the purchase of a house in the near future. It begs a final question: Is this all performance art? Delphine says no, it’s something altogether different. “I think what I’m doing is just jokes. I like playing with the internet. I think the internet is a really fun place to tease and mess around with and I think a lot of people take it too seriously.”
Свежие комментарии