Belle Delphine, Influencers and niche audience insanity in 2019
For those of you who’ve read me before — you’ll know that I write about a number serious topics — but I oftentimes really like the cover pop culture, specifically focusing on things like Memes. I just love Memes.
However, this story is a little different. It’s a tale of how influence has gone next level.
So, Gather around netizens — and let me tell you the pop culture story of Belle Delphine.
Belle Delphene is a popular Instagram Cosplayer and streamer, Who has gotten the ire of a number of her less outgoing fans over the course of the past few weeks.
For those of you that don’t know — a streamer is somebody who plays video games or engages with content, or an audience online — Typically on platforms like Twitch and #youtube And TikTok. Belle streams on the latter.
Much the anger online was due to Belle’s posting of a few semi-salacious videos and asking for the typical Internet engagement of retweets and likes.
What drew the ire of a number of her less outgoing fans — Was a promise where she stated that if she got a certain degree of engagement that she would post a video on pornhub.
Well that engagement happened — and she did go and post a video on Pornhub, only it wasn’t sexual — it was a video of her playing with kittens.
Now, her post ended up getting YouTube reaction videos, from a number of angry fans — that went into long winded diatribes about what their expectations were — from someone saying they were going to post something on pornhub.
I caught wind of what was going on at that point, from a number of fans that posted response videos on Reddit — that ended up in channels like r/funny.
And that’s when Belle came up with a bright idea to sell her bathwater for $30 a container 😳.
The original ad said “I am now selling my bathwater for all of you thirsty gamer boys”.
Give me a minute here …I have to shake my head..
Now that bathwater didn’t just sell — it sold out — Which led to #memes and tremendous amount of online Internet commentary.
And while the bathwater was advertised as, well “ornamental” — That didn’t stop people from drinking it.
This lead to further on line conspiracy theorizing — And accusations of herpes after the Daily Mail picked up the story.
(I’m still not sure if the daily mail is an actual publication — or Britain continuing to troll us 200 years later.)
That led to a Snopes article:
And Belle firing back about the ridiculousness of the claim.
Now while all of this probably seems completely ridiculous, to anyone who doesn’t follow Internet culture — specifically the subculture around gamer girls and gamer boys, and the sometimes Bizzarre affections of the latter for the former — The one thing that this did create was an interesting market for a fan collectible.
“Huh”, you may ask?
“Yes”, I answer.
“What”, you may say?
That used bathwater that Belle sold for $30 a jar — is now retailing For bids between $300 and $15,000 on eBay.
This reminds me of the Q disease — Which happened when John de Lancie Sneezed in a napkin at a Star Trek convention — and someone jokingly called it the Q disease.
Well someone bought that napkin for a couple hundred dollars after a live bidding session.
The Belle Delphene saga has led to other streamers and Cosplayers being asked for their bathwater — which led to a PSA from popular streamer Pokimane.
So what can you glean from all of this?
Did I just steal four minutes of your life?
No.
Otaku culture in Japan which is well-established across a number of different genres of anime, has fed Weeaboo culture in America.
Gamer culture — which is it’s own subset of a number of interlinked and interrelated subcultures — has now fully morphed to embrace the same degree of consumerism that the Japanese Otaku has.
Bell Delphene is the first to fully monetize a fetishized good within a mainstream gamer market.
However she certainly won’t be the last.
