newsweek.com

Cosplayer Belle Delphine Trolls Fans With Unsexy Pornhub Videos

  • ️Fri Jun 21 2019

By

Hayley Prokos is an entertainment fellow at Newsweek. On the beat, she reports on viral news, as well as film, television, books and more. Before joining the NW Culture team, she covered international travel and women's health. Prokos is originally from the suburbs of Chicago, though she currently resides in the Greater Los Angeles area, where she's grown fond of the nearly 300 days of sunshine per year. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2018. And yes, she wrote this all in the third person, for which she is terribly sorry.

Fellow, Entertainment

Instagram star Belle Delphine faced a vociferous backlash from a slew of her 3.5 million followers after she promised to create a Pornhub account on Sunday if her photo reached 1 million likes.

The picture garnered nearly 2 million likes by Friday and Delphine didn't exactly follow through on her promise. Though Delphine, 19, uploaded 12 videos with provocative titles and cover images to the adult site, the videos weren't what some fans had hoped. It consisted of decidedly non-explicit content.

Belle Delphine follower 2
Fans comment on belle.delphine's apparent prank. Screengrab

Some aggrieved netizens encouraged others to unfollow her en masse to torpedo her career—a fit punishment for being misled by the cosplay star. The angry, vengeful and explicit reactions seemingly point to the sense of entitlement that some fans have with their favorite influencers, and the ways in which online communities can sometimes foster misogyny and toxic masculinity.

One of the videos, called "PEWDIEPIE goes all the way INSIDE Belle Delphine," is a minute-long clip of Delphine eating a picture of YouTuber PewDiePie and winking throughout.

The comments under her recent photos range in nature from angry to humorous. One Instagram user told Delphine "you've got a bounty" and "all the gamers are coming to find you."

YouTube commentator Philip DeFranco expressed regret that he wouldn't be able to cover Delphine's content on Friday, as he noted: "The reactions are... something."

Delphine responded to DeFranco and to a number of comments on the Instagram post that sparked the controversy and seems to be taking the complaints in stride.

Pornhub commented on its official Instagram and Twitter accounts. When Delphine made her promise to open an account, the company wrote in a comment that it was "the best news." Later, it joked about how good PewDiePie must've tasted.

Newsweek could reach neither Delphine nor Pornhub for immediate comment.

Belle Delphine
Belle Delphine poses for an Instagram post, on June 10, 2019. Screengrab from belle.delphine