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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Amelia Gentleman

The strange surveilled life of Piper Rockelle: why did a former child influencer decide to go on OnlyFans?

Piper Rockelle, wearing a pink minidress, poses in a garden for a self-taken video
Piper Rockelle at the rental home in Los Angeles where she filmed content this year. Photograph: Jessica Pons/The Guardian

‘Honestly, the answer is kind of gross,” says Piper Rockelle, in a recent TikTok video, reflecting on why she is so popular on OnlyFans. In the clip, she fidgets her fingers and swings in her swivel chair. “It’s because I look so young. I mean, I am really young. I’m literally like fresh turned 18 … and people kind of like that, unfortunately.”

This is an accurate and honest assessment. At the end of last year, not long after turning 18, the former child star and teen influencer began an online countdown, telling her millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram that she would be launching herself on OnlyFans on 1 January. Every day or so since, she has posted pictures of herself on the platform, sometimes posing in a typical teenager’s bedroom – a pink cuddly stuffed pig on the bed behind her, fairy lights on the wall – wearing teddy-bear-themed pants and bras, or fluffy underwear decorated with bunny-rabbit faces and floppy ears.

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