It's Hard Out Here for a (Digital) Pimp
Sex sells online — but who really profits?
July 2019, Hove, England. The summer before Covid, Belle Delphine got famous. Like, really, really famous. Originally a PG-rated cosplayer with a mild online audience, her sudden pivot to bizarre, edgelord-esque thirst traps and shock content was immediately rewarded with a swell of more than 3 million additional Instagram followers — over a 400% increase to the modest fanbase she started the year with.
She drove engagement by posting lewd videos of herself draped in e-girl aesthetics, often wearing wigs, stockings, cat ears, and an ahegao facial expression. Her content consisted mainly of provocative glamour shots and vanity posts — but every so often, she would post an unsettling video of herself playing with dead animals or eating raw eggs, accompanied by confusing and upsetting captions. One such video even depicted Belle dancing around with a gun as a song referencing suicide played in the background. Either of these types of videos alone would have grown her following, but taken together, she — quite understandably — blew up.
The 18-year-old Delphine quickly capitalized off her newfound fame, creating a PornHub account that heavily featured clever, misleading titles that trolled the viewer by leading to parody videos which did not include any sexual content.
For example: “Belle Delphine gets SCISSORED,” in which she used scissors to exaggeratedly cut pieces of paper, “PEWDIEPIE goes all the way INSIDE Belle Delphine,” wherein she ate printed pictures of the YouTuber, and “Belle Delphine strokes two BIG cocks,” in which she literally stroked two roosters (which were, in fact, quite plump).
That year, with so many new eyes on her online persona, Delphine found an opportunity to flex her entrepreneurial muscles. She began selling her own bathwater online as “GamerGirl Bath Water,” which she advertised by posting a photo of herself in the bathtub with the disclaimer, “[t]his water is not for drinking and should only be used for sentimental purposes.”
People were very interested in this product.
“Delphine is perhaps the best example of a young woman taking using her sexuality to her advantage, taking her career into her own hands, and profiting off of those who deserved it — like a neko Robin Hood.”
Within 3 days of the bathwater hitting her online store, she sold out her entire stock. Beyond the money she earned on the endeavor, though, she accumulated attention, controversy, media coverage, and most importantly, immortality via memehood.
Belle Delphine had successfully dragged terminally online fetish culture into the daylight, normalized it, and even profited off of it. For years, she successfully ran a genius platform of poking fun at porn audiences while simultaneously profiting massively from them.
Her best content, which existed somewhere in the cosmos between pornography and performance art, dangled her sexuality in front of her audience, but importantly, never actually delivered it in earnest. Although she did eventually delve into the world of hardcore porn when she launched an OnlyFans account in earnest, the real stuff never actually brought her as much money, fame, or allure as her tongue-in-cheek trolling did.
Delphine is perhaps the best example of a young woman taking using her sexuality to her advantage, taking her career into her own hands, and profiting off of those who deserved it — like a neko Robin Hood. But unfortunately, although sex has never sold better than it does on the internet, not all women in the business are in control of distributing their own product.
As is generally true for all the darkest parts of the internet, online porn is deeply entangled with the world of live streaming. Although platforms like Twitch were notorious for swiftly banning any streamer who had the audacity to include nudity (even accidental) in their stream, this hard-line stance began to soften in 2021.
Amouranth, a popular professional cosplayer who quickly shot up the charts once she began streaming, was one of the main contributors to the popularity of a new, aptly-named genre: “hot-tub streams,” wherein she and other female streamers would perform streams in revealing swimwear from — you guessed it — a hot tub.
Users and creators alike were confused when this new category began dominating the viewership of the platform. Most popular streaming channels focused largely on gaming, commentary, or people acting poorly in public, but the women in these hot-tub streams weren’t doing much at all aside from flirtatiously interacting with chat. Essentially, they were softcore camgirls, with the added benefit of operating on one of the largest entertainment platforms on the internet.
Like Belle Delphine, Amouranth kept her sexuality just out of reach of her audience for years and profited heartily from it. However, unlike Delphine, she was working long, arduous hours for her money. She streamed almost every day for dozens of hours at a time, often seeming tired, unfocused, and miserable. Eventually, she even began doing explicit porn.
Although she was not in a public relationship, it turns out that Amouranth had a secret husband who was controlling her finances and forcing her to stream. In October 2022, while he audibly hurled insults and obscenities at her from behind the camera, she tearfully admitted to her audience that her husband had threatened to murder her dogs if she didn’t comply with his demands. She claimed that she didn’t have any desire to create sexual content.
However, even after he was out of the picture, she continued to livestream and produce porn — likely because it had become her only dependable source of income. After almost a decade of lewd content, her career prospects outside the space had dwindled. The course of her life had dramatically changed because a man forced her down a path she hadn’t anticipated. All she was guilty of was trying to survive a bad situation.
Sadly, Amouranth’s husband wasn’t the only man forcing women to do porn on the internet — and some were even more cartoonishly evil in their pursuit of profit.
In 2020, the FBI published a news release detailing sex trafficking, fraud, and coercion charges levied against Ruben Garcia and Michael Pratt for their involvement in a scheme to trick barely legal women into creating pornography videos for GirlsDoPorn (at the time, a well-known pornography company).
The men posted advertisements online purporting to seek women interested in traditional modeling. Upon responding to the ads, the models were told that they would actually be performing in pornographic videos — which, they were assured, would never be posted online or released to the public. Within a day or two of agreeing to participate, Garcia and Pratt would schedule flights for their victims. The quick timeline was designed to ensure that the women would not have enough time to renege.
“Garcia and Pratt callously ignored each and every request to remove these nonconsensual videos from the internet. They were each sentenced to over 20 years in prison for their crimes.”
Upon arrival, they were forced to sign contracts before being offered alcohol and drugs. During the shoots, the camera was usually placed directly in front of the hotel room door — the only available exit on set.
If the victim changed their mind and asked to stop filming, Garcia and Pratt would proceed to blackmail and intimidate them, threatening to initiate lawsuits, cancel return flights, and post the videos publicly online (which, unbeknownst to the women, they were already planning to do). Then — as a final ‘fuck-you’ cherry on top — they paid the girls much less than originally promised.
Garcia and Pratt callously ignored each and every request to remove these nonconsensual videos from the internet. They were each sentenced to over 20 years in prison for their crimes.
While some of these online predators, like Garcia and Pratt, take a scattershot approach to their victimization of women, and others, like Amouranth’s husband, focus on long-term single targets, a few select degenerates opt to blend the two approaches, becoming legitimate ‘digital pimps’ who compel stables of women to perform sexual acts online.
One such man is Andrew Tate. During the height of his fame, Tate, a slack-jawed, cue-ball-headed, salmonella-infected meat stick whose name precedes him, spoke often and openly about his status as a “pimp." He was a practitioner of the “loverboy method,” also known as “Romeo pimping,” wherein he would find and date young, vulnerable women, present them with gifts, and treat them to expensive dinners and lavish vacations.
Then, he would convince them to leave their homes and move to Romania with him, promising marriage and homeownership. Upon arrival, he would steal their passports, physically and emotionally abuse them, and intimidate them into becoming pornographic performers.
He was eventually charged with sex trafficking in Romania, and with rape, human trafficking, and actual bodily harm in the UK.
Though not all digital pimps are as stupid and forthright with their heinous crimes as Andrew Tate, they often use many of the same predatory tactics. There is an entire industry made up of “OnlyFans managers,” who, while they might not steal any passports, trap women in inescapable financial situations. Some of them — like notorious infertile narcissist and meth addict, Clavicular — are actually quite famous, and use their fame as leverage against the women they pimp out.
One such ‘manager’ is a young, mealymouthed little hobbit by the name of Jack Doherty, who initially rose to internet fame by flipping small office items on camera and getting kicked out of his local Wal-Mart. Jack, who wrecked his supercar in 2024 while texting and driving and was arrested in 2025 for amphetamine possession, has somehow amassed a YouTube following of over 15 million, despite being undoubtedly one of the ugliest and most illiterate gremlins you ever saw or heard. And — of course — he’s also a popular streamer.
Jack is, in some ways, an inspiration: he’s not tall, he’s not handsome, he isn’t charismatic, he has no discernible skill or talent, he’s pale, he clearly doesn’t exercise, he can barely form a coherent sentence, and he never learned how to dress himself; yet, he successfully runs his own OnlyFans account which purportedly generates significant annual revenue. He actually did so well that he eventually expanded into management, which he treated the same as all of his other online endeavors: carelessly and with no reference to governing law.
Like an even more mentally disabled chibi-Andrew Tate, Doherty would allegedly reach out to small female creators via Instagram DMs, offering to fly them out to South Florida to appear on his YouTube channel — a life changing opportunity, given the size of Jack’s platform — and to add them to his OnlyFans ‘team,’ which, he claimed, offered unparalleled viewership opportunities.
Once a girl agreed to his offer, Doherty would demand control of not only their OnlyFans page, but all of their social media accounts. Reports vary as to his exact split of his talents’ profit, but they’re unreasonably high — somewhere between 50% and 80%, depending on the source.
Most notably, Jack’s ex-fiancée, McKinley Richardson, alleged that, while they were dating, Doherty pressured her into signing an OnlyFans management contract after she initially declined. She gave him full control of all of her social media accounts and signed over 50% of her total revenue. Allegedly, their prenup included a clause requiring Richardson to pay Doherty a lump sum of 10 million dollars, and sign over 100% of her OnlyFans revenue in perpetuity, should she ever cheat on him.
“[A] man like Jack Doherty, whose IQ is not much higher than his height in inches, is bound to make a costly mistake sooner rather than later.”
The ages of the women he targets are often suspect, as well. His livestreams frequently feature underaged women; most notably, during his 2025 “Yacht Stream,” he allegedly invited two 17-year old girls onto his boat, where they remained for hours in the presence of alcohol before he finally kicked them off (apparently, immediately after discovering their true ages).
Other streamers, like Natalie Reynolds — who has a significant personal and professional history with Doherty, with whom she regularly streamed and created content for years — alleged that Jack has a pattern of emotionally conditioning these young girls for years. According to Reynolds, he introduces them to his high-visibility world of attention and fortune, grooms them, and then immediately pressures them into management contracts on the day they turn 18.
Although plenty of women have spoken out about Jack’s illicit tactics, he has yet to face significant public or legal backlash. The wait shouldn’t be that long, though: a man like Jack Doherty, whose IQ is not much higher than his height in inches, is bound to make a costly mistake sooner rather than later.
Sex work is real work — and online sex work is, too. But as empowering as such online sex work can be when the worker herself profits from it, it is equally as disenfranchising when those profits are stripped away.
Just like in the physical world, these gray market industries are dominated by cowardly and predatory men who want to make their money off of the hard work and positioning of others— men who, like Jack Doherty, willfully exploit others, who hide behind their money, privilege, and bodyguards, who shout much more than they listen, who allow their insecurities to govern their behavior, and who cannot stop lying, bullshitting, and manipulating anyone with the misfortune of being near them.
Doherty, like the signifying monkey in Rudy Ray Moore’s Dolemite, should be much more careful with what he does and says. His downfall is inevitable, it will be self-wrought, and it’s coming very, very soon.
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What an excellent piece!