Stars · 2 min read
Belle Delphine: Bath Water, Bans and the Art of Going Viral
The e-girl who turned trolling into performance art – and a business.
If you were online in 2019, you saw Belle Delphine – pink hair, ahegao faces and jars of bath water for sale. Behind the memes is Mary-Belle Kirschner, born in South Africa and raised in a small English town, who turned internet trolling into a brand that media outlets compared to performance art.
Timeline
- 2015Opens her Instagram account.
- 2018Starts cosplay and modelling content and launches a Patreon; TikTok trends make her famous.
- July 2019Sells "GamerGirl Bath Water" for $30 a jar – the first batch sells out in three days.
- July 2019Instagram bans her account, then followed by more than 4.5 million people.
- June 2020Returns from a long hiatus with a parody music video and launches OnlyFans.
- Nov 2020YouTube terminates her channel, then restores it, calling it a mistake.
From Cape Town to a small English town
Mary-Belle Kirschner was born on 23 October 1999 in Cape Town, South Africa, and grew up in a devout Christian household. After her parents divorced, she moved to England with her mother and settled in Lymington, Hampshire.
She has said she was bullied online at school and left at 14. She was treated for depression and worked as a babysitter, barista and waitress before the internet changed everything.
Cosplay, Patreon and the e-girl look
Belle opened her Instagram in 2015 and a YouTube channel in 2016, starting with a makeup tutorial. In 2018 she leaned into cosplay and modelling, launched a Patreon, and joined TikTok trends at exactly the right moment. Her Instagram jumped from about 850,000 followers in late 2018 to over 4 million by mid-2019.
Her pastel, anime-inspired look became a template for the whole e-girl aesthetic.
GamerGirl Bath Water
In June 2019 she promised fans a Pornhub account if a post got a million likes – then uploaded troll videos with nothing explicit in them. A few weeks later, on 1 July 2019, she opened an online shop selling GamerGirl Bath Water for $30 a jar. The first run sold out in three days.
The product became one of the most memed items of the year. Business Insider put her on its UK Tech 100 list and called her "a surrealist troll that became too much for Instagram".
Ban, silence and comeback
On 19 July 2019 Instagram banned her account, which then had more than 4.5 million followers. She went quiet in late 2019 after posting a mock "mugshot" that was never confirmed as real.
In June 2020 she came back with a parody music video and launched OnlyFans. Business Insider and The Spectator reported that the account was earning more than $1 million a month. In November 2020 YouTube terminated her channel, then restored it shortly after, saying the removal was a mistake by its review team.
Her place in internet culture
Belle Delphine is often described as one of the most influential e-girls ever. She herself has called her work "just jokes". Either way, she proved that a creator with a strong character and a sense of humour can build a huge audience on every platform at once.
Love the cosplay, e-girl and gamer girl style? Below you will find verified creators in the same niches.
Sources
This biography is based on public sources: interviews, news reports and her own public accounts. Belle Delphine is not affiliated with ModelsVerified and is not listed as a verified creator here.
