Mary-Belle Kirschner, better known online as Belle Delphine, is a 20-year-old gamer girl, egirl and internet personality who started posting makeup tutorials on YouTube in August 2016. Since then, she has become one of the most famous egirls and has made headlines for selling her bathwater to horny teenagers. Who exactly is Belle Delphine?

Born in South Africa, Belle Delphine eventually moved to the UK where she still lives today. In 2016, she uploaded on YouTube her first video, a makeup tutorial on how to achieve a perfect cat-eye. At this time, she had a simple aesthetic—natural hair colour, basic teenager clothes.

Only in 2018 did Belle Delphine start presenting typical egirl characteristics such as having pink hair and wearing cat ears. She calls herself a “weird elf kitty girl.” Along with this new style, she also started posting cosplay pictures as well as PG-13 and NSFW pictures online.

Belle Delphine became most known for her ‘ahegao’—a facial expression meant to mimic the orgasms of hentai characters.

Along with her ahegao selfies, Belle Delphine posted on her Instagram account videos of herself flirtatiously eating a raw egg, putting googly eyes on a dead octopus and eating pictures of her followers and other internet personalities.

Speaking to The Guardian in July 2019, Belle Delphine said: “I’m lucky. I can do crazy things and get to see the world react to it, and there’s definitely enjoyment in that, even if it’s sometimes a little scary. I get a bigger reaction to my weirder content but I think that’s only possible because I also make risqué content.”

Yes, she actually did. The idea came from her followers, who used to comment under her Instagram posts that they would drink her bathwater. One day, while thinking of new ideas to make money, Belle Delphine decided to bottle and sell her bathwater online.

She’s fooled her fans before. She once posted on Instagram a picture of herself wearing fishnet stockings and “F*ck Me!” pasties and told her followers in the caption that if the photo got 1 million likes, she would create a Pornhub account and post pornographic videos.

The picture did get more than 1 million likes and Belle Delphine sort of kept her word. She made a Pornhub account and uploaded 12 videos which included a video titled ‘Belle Delphine gets SCISSORED’ where she was shown cutting up paper with scissors, and another one titled ‘Belle Delphine plays with her PUSSY’ where she played with two stuffed cats.

Belle Delphine once posted mugshot pictures that included a watermark from the London Metropolitan Police. While many were quick to assume the story was real, others noted that Metropolitan Police doesn’t put a watermark on its mugshots in the first place.

https://twitter.com/bunnydelphine/status/1181226370711670790

Although it remains unclear whether she was truly arrested or not, it seems that Belle Delphine used this as another way to make her fans talk and engage with her online.

Apart from selling her bathwater, Belle Delphine makes money on other online platforms such as Patreon and Snapchat.

Belle Delphine charges up to $2,500 a month for access for her exclusive ‘lewd’ Snapchat content and has more than 4,000 followers on Patreon.

After her Instagram account got deleted in July, 2019 for some unknown reason—although posting pornographic content seems like the obvious one—Belle Delphine hasn’t been as present online as before. Many other accounts claiming to be the egirl popped up soon afterwards but none has been proven as the real one.

Belle Delphine is still active on Snapchat and Patreon—still making money. In a world where social media influencers all look the same, Belle Delphine has succeeded in tapping into the right online subculture and by creating content that is as weird as it is fascinating.

You’ve probably heard or read the term soft boy somewhere online. Also spelled softboy or softboi, the term is used to describe a specific type of man. Here’s exactly what it means and a few examples of typical soft boys.

Urban Dictionary has more than one definition for the word soft boy but all of them seem to agree on a few points. Although the term is used to describe boys, soft boys have features and behaviours that most would qualify as almost feminine. They also have a sensitive side that differentiates them from the previously used term fuckboy.

“Similar to a fuckboy but without the cocky attitude. The softboy will butter a girl up by appealing to her emotions and showing a ‘sensitive’ side long enough for her to sleep with him, whether or not he actually cares about her or not. Then, like the fuckboy, he can’t and won’t commit. Differs from the fuckboy because he goes for the heart and emotions rather than just the body,” says one of Urban Dictionary’s definitions.

@beam_me_up_softboi is the Instagram account that shares with its followers screenshots of conversations with typical soft boys trying to impress girls with their indie music knowledge and their fake philosophy of life.

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the original and best softboi EDIT: i can see the comment section getting very eggy. my stance on this conversation is that: neither are great, if blue actually didn’t watch it or they watched only a short amount of it then maybe they shouldn’t have said that they liked it. grey however (from this short snippet of interaction we can see) also possibly did not need to draw such dramatic conclusions from these actions or bring “intellect” into it. when i read this in my head i think it sounds funny (as is the case with most of the ones i post) - imo, and contrary to some comments, it is NOT that deep it is NOT “the reason men make revenge porn” it is not a damning critique of either of their personalities. it is simply mildly funny (although considerably less so now i’ve spent 10 minutes analysing it)

A post shared by we r all indie softbois here (@beam_me_up_softboi) on Apr 17, 2020 at 4:17am PDT

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dang

A post shared by we r all indie softbois here (@beam_me_up_softboi) on Apr 14, 2020 at 1:54pm PDT

As much as this can be true for some, not all soft boys are manipulative liars. Soft boys can also be recognised by their soft and gentle attitude.

Many believe that soft boys come as a package, meaning that yes, they are nice and easily likeable, but they also have a very precise aesthetic that makes them recognisable from afar. From wearing pastel tracksuits and having soft, natural hair, soft boys are, well, soft inside and out.

Many agree that soft boys are a watered-down version of K-pop and its boyfriend aesthetic which then influenced western culture. In K-pop, the boyfriend look describes an outfit made of pastel tones, muted colours and having a classic hairstyle.

This style is named the boyfriend aesthetic as it is an outfit that a man could wear to meet his partner’s parents in.

As mentioned in The Guardian’s What is a softboi? You might be dating one – and you don’t even know it, Timothée Chalamet is probably the perfect and most used celebrity example of a soft boy. His explicit embrace of femininity and rejection of traditional masculinity has struck a nerve with audiences of all ages who have marvelled at him (for good reasons).

Very similar to Chalamet is Harry Styles, who recently also showed a different approach to masculinity by wearing nail varnish, pearl necklaces and more feminine apparel.

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Harry arriving at the BRITs | February 18, 2020 @gucci Fall 2020 Shoes Harry opted for a pair of Gucci’s modified Mary Janes from their fall 2020 collection. Worn with: Gucci suit and shirt, Gucci sweater

A post shared by Harry Styles Fashion Archive (@hsfashionarchive) on Feb 18, 2020 at 11:03am PST

Less famous but also coming under the soft boy umbrella are actors Cole Sprouse from the series Riverdale and Noah Centineo who starred in rom-coms such as The Perfect Date and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

Whether you decide to use the term or not, soft boys have inundated social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and are here to stay. And, to be honest, with toxic masculinity finally being challenged, it’s the perfect time for us to accept soft boys as a gentler, kinder sort of man.