Piper Rockelle isn’t pretending her move to OnlyFans was misunderstood — she’s saying it was never meant to be up for approval in the first place.
After launching her account at the start of the new year, Rockelle addressed backlash head-on, making it clear she’s done shrinking herself to fit anyone else’s expectations.
“You can call me what you want,” she said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “You can say I’m a sex worker. You can say whatever you want. I don’t give a sh*t. I really don’t.”
Rockelle framed the decision to join OnlyFans as a break from years of being told who she should be and what kind of image she was supposed to maintain. “I’ve tried to be that sweet little girl who is just a damsel in distress and is doing whatever she’s told,” she said. “It’s not who I want to be.”
That pressure started early. Rockelle grew up almost entirely online, first gaining traction on YouTube at age 8. As the face of a viral creator group known as the Squad, she spent her childhood filming pranks and scripted videos for millions of viewers while brand deals and ad revenue poured in.
But the kidfluencer machine eventually turned dark.
In 2022, several former Squad members sued Rockelle’s mother, Tiffany Smith, alleging abuse. Smith denied the claims, and the case was settled for $1.85 million.
Still, Rockelle says the damage to her reputation stuck — and worsened after Netflix released Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing in 2025. “People don’t want to work with me,” she said. “People want nothing to do with me.”
Turning 18 last August felt as if it were supposed to unlock a second chance. Instead, Rockelle realized the reset wasn’t coming. “I’ve never had a good reputation,” she said. “It would have been one thing if I was this sweet little peach girl who never did anything wrong… but I wasn’t. Why not just f**king add onto it?”
Then came the money — and the noise. Rockelle posted a screenshot showing that her OnlyFans earned more than $1 million in the first hour and roughly $2 million in the first day, numbers that immediately sparked criticism and disbelief. Even she admits she didn’t expect it. “It was actually quite insane,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting that. I really wasn’t.”
As for claims that she’s influencing other young women to follow the same path, Rockelle pushed back hard. “You can’t just drop the link and make a million in an hour,” she said. “That’s not realistic.”
For Rockelle, the decision isn’t about chasing approval or pretending her past didn’t happen. It’s about control — something she says she didn’t have growing up. “Nobody’s going to do what I want to do for me,” she said. “I have to do it myself.”