Cosplayer and OnlyFans creator Belle Delphine recently revealed that she doesn’t make any money from her 2019 viral “Gamer Girl Bath Water” stunt because PayPal charged her strange fees and kept the money for themselves. Almost five years later Business Insider Reports that internet celebrity’s “biggest L” has finally turned into a “W” as PayPal has decided to refund her the money she earned after calling her out online.
“Now that it’s been a few years, I can finally share the biggest L I’ve ever taken,” Delphine tweeted on May 6th. “Not only did I not make any money selling my bath water, I actually lost money in the process. “Without warning, PayPal closed my PayPal account and took the $90,000 I made from selling my bath water.”
She continued:
I couldn’t do anything, I tried calling them and they just said, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do!” I knew it would be a better news story to say that I made “sOoOo much money” selling my bath water “, so I just kept it a secret… In the end, I’m still glad I did it, as it was a really fun time on the Internet. It happened, and I still have all the bath products that people have with me bought, sent by post (which I did all by myself). Soooo… screw PayPal, I guess?
In summer 2019 dolphins began marketing their bath water for $30 a glass in a series of social media posts that went viral and became the perfect breeding ground for internet engagement, as is often the case with absurd, voyeuristic shenanigans that mix eroticism and parody. People bought the bath water. Some claimed to have it tested for human DNA and accused Delphine of fraud when it turned out it didn’t contain any. It turned out the bath water hadn’t even been shipped yet and they were just catching up on it to watch on YouTube. A wild time was had by all. She said this in a podcast earlier this year that she sold around 600 bottles in total.
Delphine now explains that selling the bathwater was apparently a violation of PayPal’s terms of service, and each violation cost her $2,500. She said the company told her what the problem was at the time, but the end result was that she apparently had all of her proceeds from selling the Gamer Girl bathwater confiscated. “So I don’t know if it’s because they don’t allow sex workers to use their platform, or if they had a specific problem with me selling bathwater… regardless of the fact that they didn’t even know about felt shit.”
PayPal apparently seized thousands from the account and closed it until recently Business Insider and others reached out to the payment processing company seeking comment on the situation. Although the $2,500 penalty was eliminated last year, PayPal reportedly decided to refund Delphine’s money just this month. “If I didn’t have one [social media] Afterwards they wouldn’t give me my money back,” Delphine said Business Insider. “Which sucks because what are normal non-social media users supposed to do in this situation?” I followed all the normal protocols but got blocked and gave up.”
It’s a version of what seems to happen all the time with online content creators, who are at the mercy of giant platforms and the financial institutions that power their monetization. People get stuck in the internal machinery of faceless institutions with no one to help them or explain what’s going on until it goes viral. For every Delphine who eventually gets their account problems sorted out, there are probably hundreds more who simply give up. After all, that’s exactly what she did until years later, on a whim, she decided to tweet about it.
