Piper Rockelle is on OnlyFans. It’s reopening a debate about child stardom.
Piper Rockelle has never been able to escape the spotlight, and she doesn’t want to anytime soon.
However she would like to set the record straight as she faces criticism for joining OnlyFans, a subscription-based adult content site.
On Jan. 1, the-YouTube-child-star-turned influencer, who recently turned 18, made nearly $3 million in her first day on the platform, according to her management team, Ruthless Media Partners.
Joining the adult platform is not a decision she came to lightly, Rockelle says, and she knows her impressionable fan base may be influenced by her choices. It's a risk that weighs on her, she says.
Rockelle turned 18 on Aug. 21, 2025. She waited six months to join OnlyFans on Jan. 1, and said that wait helped her feel sure of her decision.
Rockelle, in part, made the move in an effort to take control of her story.
She's sick of commenters dissecting the snippets of her life they see online − and she wants her young fans and critics alike to know that's all they're really seeing. Snippets.
Piper Rockelle is 'grateful' despite controversy
Zooming in from a high rise apartment in Los Angeles, she wears a shirt that says “Hating Me Won’t Make You Pretty.” Rockelle isn't at home. She's at one of the vacation rentals she utilizes to make content − a frequent occurrence these days.
A tattoo on her right wrist reads “be grateful." She is, she says.
Rockelle has read the comments calling her names − and the ones that preach she'll regret doing OnlyFans; she’s heard the online theories that her mom controls her. But being in the public eye, she says, is everything she's "ever wanted."
“If people are going to write my narrative and say that I've been exploited my whole entire life, go ahead, I'm exploiting myself,” Rockelle says.
“I enjoy doing what I'm doing,” she adds. “I really don't care what people have to say.”
In a simple T-shirt, through a laptop camera and with light makeup on, Rockelle looks and sounds like any other 18-year-old. But she's not − and she acknowledges that.
She frequently tells her fans she’s only in this spot because of the abnormal fame she experienced her whole life, allowing her to gain traction.
Coming of age in the spotlight
After a brief stint on the Lifetime reality show "Dance Twins," Rockelle rose to fame as a child star on YouTube, where her content was managed by her mother Tiffany Smith. In 2018, Rockelle started appearing in videos with a group of other tweens.
The group, deemed “The Squad,” would post orchestrated relationships, pranks and 24-hour challenge videos. Smith functioned as the manager and producer of the group.
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They experienced massive, viral heights. Rockelle amassed more than 10 million subscribers at the time — she has 12.2 million as of 2026 — and at her peak, she was earning up to $500,000 a month, according to data shared in the Netflix 2025 documentary, "Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing."
But in January 2022, Rockelle’s world came crashing down.
Eleven members of The Squad filed a lawsuit against Smith and her boyfriend, Hunter Hill, seeking $22 million in damages.
They accused Smith of “emotional, verbal, physical, and at times, sexual abuse” and claimed some members of the group weren't adequately compensated for their work.