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t midnight on Jan. 1, as the new year was unfolding, former kid influencer Piper Rockelle launched a page on OnlyFans. In a screenshot she later posted to Instagram, she showed that she earned $2 million on the first day. Though Piper isn’t the first former kid influencer to join OnlyFans — Lil Tay made $1 million in an hour after joining days after her 18th birthday — Rockelle’s fans were quick to question her decision.
Rockelle has lived most of her life online. Starting when she was eight, she was a breakout kid influencer reportedly pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from YouTube revenue. In her tween and teen years, she was securing brand deals and commanding audiences of millions as the head of an influencer collective called The Squad which made YouTube videos featuring viral pranks and scripted skits. In 2022, when a group of former Squad members sued Piper’s mother, alleging “emotional, verbal, physical, and at times, sexual abuse,” Piper felt that she been miscast as a victim. (Piper’s mother, Tiffany Smith, denied the allegations and the lawsuit was settled for $1.85 million.) And when Netflix released a blockbuster documentary Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing in 2025 tracing the origins of her fame and the claims behind the lawsuit, Piper became a pariah. “People don’t want to work with me,” she told Rolling Stone a month after the documentary’s release. “People want nothing to do with me.”
She hoped her 18th birthday on Aug. 21, 2025 would change all of that. She told Teen Vogue last summer that she thought becoming a legal adult would be the shift she was waiting for in her life. Maybe brands would want to work with her again. Maybe her acting or singing career would get off the ground. She became close friends with some of the OnlyFan’s most prominent creators and began teasing her fans about the possibility of joining their ranks.
Now, she’s made her choice and she doesn’t care what you think about it. “You can call me what you want to do. You can say I’m a sex worker. You can say whatever you want,” she says. “You can say that I’m a sell-out, that I sell my body. I don’t give a shit. I really don’t.” On a FaceTime call with Rolling Stone, Piper applied lip gloss and played with her newly highlighted hair from her Los Angeles bedroom as one of her dogs rested nearby. Piper talked about her choice, whether or not she considers herself a sex worker, and how the money she’s made is helping her chase her dreams of opening a cat rescue and building her own house. During the conversation, Piper is adamant that she has made the right decision. She feels more like herself than she ever has. “I’ve tried to be that sweet little girl who is just a damsel in distress and is doing whatever she’s told,” she says. “It’s not who I want to be.”
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What made you decide to join OnlyFans?
I knew that it was going to get a lot of hate and stuff like that, but it was something I was always talking about. And I feel like my life has all just really led me in the right direction. This direction looked very clear and open and only had very good benefits from it. No matter what people say or try to tell me what to do, not to do, it was just ultimately something I just really wanted to test the waters. If it failed, I was willing to know that I failed. But I wanted to stay on the internet, and I wanted to make money, and it was a perfect little plan. I’m so happy I made the decision.
You posted a screenshot to Instagram which showed $1 million in the first hour and $2 million in the first day.
It was actually quite insane. I wasn’t expecting that. I really wasn’t. I knew that there was a possibility, but you always have to expect to be disappointed, but I was not disappointed at all.
What were your fans’ reactions? You’ve been teasing the OnlyFans drop for months.
I let them know, “Hey, if you don’t accept me, you don’t have to be here.” Like, dead ass, go. Because I understand that it might be hard for some people to see someone who they’ve grown up with have so many different weird little lifestyles that they’ve had. But there’s a lot of amazing people out there that are very accepting.
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In a recent TikTok, you talked about trying to let go of fans who aren’t letting you grow up. What did you mean by that?
People were having a harder time letting my childhood go than me. You know what I mean? I think that’s understandable. But I’m not going to be a kid forever.
What do you make of the comments and videos that claim you’re influencing other young girls to start OnlyFans accounts?
I’ve said several times that you can’t just drop the link and make a million in an hour. That’s not realistic. Everyone knows that. I can’t force anyone to do anything. I can’t influence anyone to do anything. If they want to be like me, then be like me. That’s their choice. I try to just preach what makes me feel better. I try to preach to them what has always helped me. I tell them all the time, “Listen, stop waiting until tomorrow to chase what you want. Stop waiting for someone to give you the green light. If there’s something that you want to do and people don’t accept it, stop waiting.”
How does this work as a job? Are you spending hours every day responding to people on OnlyFans and posting content?
I do a lot. I’ll have set days where I will get a bunch of my favorite clothes together and I will just take all the photos and make cute little videos and stuff like that. And I do all the chatting. I send little voice messages to everybody. And I try my best to keep in touch with everyone as [much as] possible. It’s crazy. It’s a lot of work, but money that you can’t take for granted. Again, this isn’t something for everybody. I think everyone knows that. I will preach that.
Courtesy of Piper Rockelle
What does the money you’ve made mean to you? What are you doing with it?
Well, [my] first big purchase was a car for my grandma. Every day, I’m saving it up so that I can have my cat rescue [facility]. Every day, that’s a work in progress. And my biggest dream is to start building a house somewhere.
Do you consider yourself a sex worker?
I think that the word sex worker is a very bad sticker to put on someone. But unfortunately, sex is inevitable. It’s human nature. Looking at others has been around forever. This is not a new thing that has just started. It was created for a reason, and it gives people jobs, and people watch it. It’s terrible, but that’s the world that we live in.
If people consider me a sex worker, then they do, but I don’t consider myself doing that. I’m doing this for my future, and I enjoy taking these photos that I’m taking, and it’s performing well. I think that a lot of people have to have crazy, crazy amounts of morals to not take up these opportunities that are being thrown at me.
Have you thought about how long you want to be on OnlyFans? Is this a long-term plan or are you looking to make a certain amount of money?
Yeah, I think I will know when the time is right within me and financially. I don’t think there’s any amount of money that’s going to make me stop because that’s going to just prove that I was doing it 100 percent for the money. But I think the time will come. You know what I mean? Everyone gets a little too old to do things. I think that you’re only in your younger body for a certain amount of time. I’m going to grow old. I’m going to get not as attractive to most people.
A great thing with this job is I have to keep up with myself. If I want to feel confident in these photos, I have to make sure my skin looks good, my makeup’s good. I feel good within myself. It’s honestly given me a great confidence boost.
If it’s not 100 percent about the money, what is it about?
I think it’s about just proving everyone wrong. You guys have been telling me [not] to do this one thing that has gotten me to where I want to be. This has gotten me to help my animals. This has gotten me to help my family. I’ve retired my grandma. I’ve paid off her house.
The people who have taken time to bash me on the internet and say that I’ve been exploited my whole entire life and say that I did this and this and this and this, they can’t turn around and become an OnlyFans model. They can’t do that because they’ve preached their whole entire lives about not exploiting yourself and not showing off your body. It’s just proving everybody wrong.
Maybe in a few years, I’ll be like, fuck, I shouldn’t have done that. But you’re supposed to live with no regrets. So, that’s what I’ve been trying to do.
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In our last interview, you said you wanted to focus on acting and singing. Is that still something you want?
I would love to sing. I was holding myself back from doing OnlyFans because I was getting word that there could be possibilities for me to act [professionally]. But listen, I have gotten close to actually having cute little things to do. But then something comes up about my past and what people have said about me, and it always takes away from me. I’ve always been like, You know what? Nobody’s going to do what I want to do. Nobody’s going to do it for me. I have to do it myself.
I’ve never had a good reputation. It would have been one thing if I was this sweet little peach girl who never did anything wrong in her whole entire life, but I wasn’t. If you look at my name, it’s always been something terrible. Why not just fucking add onto it? You know what I mean? I’ve never had a peach-clean slate, no matter how hard I tried. I don’t really want it. It’s boring.
