The Transubstantiation of Belle Delphine
By: Maria Laplace
Tags: Philosophy, Writing, Economics, Sociology

By now, I presume, most internet denizens are aware of the events which have recently unfolded regarding the sale of the used bathwater of an Instagram celebrity. For those blissfully unaware, a short recap. On the second of July, 19-year-old Instagram star Belle Delphine, began advertising that she was now selling her bathwater. Delphine is a cosplayer and self-described “gamer girl” with 4.1 million subscribers on Instagram. By the fifth, it had sold out. The water was sold at 30 dollars a bottle, and aimed at “THIRSTY gamer boys”. How did society reach this point, wherein the used bathwater of a celebrity of dubious origin (truly, a celebrity as Bauman describes — known only for being known) became a valuable commodity, to such an absurdity that bids on an eBay resale of the bathwater reached a height of 15000 dollars? Delphine herself is all too aware of this absurdity, her twitter advertisement wryly comments: “this is what humanity has come to :)”. While the sale of the bathwater is a mundane exemplar of cynicism, costing Delphine nearly nothing but with an unbelievable profit margin for selling even a small amount, it is in examining the buying of the bathwater that the true meaning of the bathwater becomes clear. For this is not, I posit, a story about a wisened conwoman, but rather a story about a morose and lonely buyer; buying for, as Delphine writes, “sentimental purposes”. A story about loneliness, and to be more precise, the commodification of the temporary alleviation of loneliness.

One of the consequences of the neoliberal project, pursued now for some forty or so years, was that the philosophy of neoliberalism overflowed from economic policy and bled into our individual lives. Foucault observed it as being a total philosophy, describing individuals as entrepreneurs of the self who must play with their own limited “capital” and to build on themselves like an expanding business (I recall a moment in which my father told me that getting a driver’s license was an investment in the self, the depth of capitalism’s influence expressed in the use of financial terms to describe personal growth). Expanding on this, if all people are capitalists and the basic activities of life are business, be it growing social capital by going to school or making friends to attempting to increase financial capital by insisting you deserve a raise for your years of service, then all things must take place in the space in which capitalism operates: the market. The philosophy of neoliberalism, which changed our perspective on the self and our relationships to capital forces, forces us to also change our view and see market forces in things. This is, I think, an instance of the virtual becoming reality (Žižek). Neoliberalism pushes more of life into the capitalist mode of thought, and thus ultimately, production, and as everything becomes relegated by and thought of as part of the market, it only follows to see that everything becomes commodified, and thus made marketable.

The sad consequences of this manifests itself as capitalism attempts to profit off of every aspect of life. Shortly to say, every aspect of life becomes a business in which cures can be bought and sold. At present there is discussion of the concept of a sexual marketplace, or whether or not such a thing Is merely a misogynistic ideological construction. (Of course, all visualizations of markets outside of real, material commerce are ideological constructions, but this is the nature of how neoliberalism operates.) There are grains of truth to this line of thought, though, and they take the form of the market’s answer to the need of people to be connected. It is the shape and form of OkCupid, Tinder, etc. To make these connections, people go on such websites and advertise themselves to attempt to draw attention to their potential value as an asset in the reader’s life. Our personal lives do become marketized, because capitalism constantly seeks for new avenues in which to expand its potential for profit. We as people become commodified and abstracted for “sale” on the market of social networking. But when someone goes on these mediums they do not seek to “buy” or “acquire” individuals in particular, but rather they seek the connection with people. We sell our personalities, but when we seek to buy, we don’t go to buy personalities, that is merely incidental. We look for sentiment, and meaningful connection.

It is not a secret that loneliness is so endemic in modern society that it has become increasingly addressed as an “epidemic”. Last year, a publicized study on Cigna reported that “nearly half of Americans sometimes or always feel alone”. Social connection is one of the most basic human needs, and there is no shortage of ways to alleviate this without even leaving your room, but Cigna also notes, “Social media use alone is not a predictor of loneliness” and thus not really a cure or contributor to the problem. Nevertheless, usage of social media seems to be a pretty obvious remedy intuitively. Most internet users have likely seen a certain goofy image of a kid who is tormented by a difficult social life, alone at school and with squabbling parents at home, and cries. The next frame is the kid smiling — though still tear stained — as he turns on his release: PewDiePie. The fact that the tears still flow while he watches PewDiePie is a likely unintentional irony, that PewDiePie doesn’t solve the problem at all, it is merely an escape. PewDiePie is a brilliant marketer, and is of course one of the first people to really capitalize on Gen Z with his early quirky and loud humor, then coasting along and staying relevant by “growing up” with his audience. Perhaps this is merely my pessimistic cynicism, but I cannot help but wonder if he smartly knew his audience, and more precisely why they watched him, and concocted this genius scheme to continue to profit off of them by shaping himself into a long-time companion. This generation of YouTube and Twitch celebrities sell the simulacrum of friendship, knowingly or unknowingly. I think this is most obvious in how, around the time of Game Grumps, Let’s Plays became extremely popular, often with the players being a group of friends, and the viewer can lose themselves in the crowd while they watch, and pretend they’re one of the gang. Everyone longs for connections like that, and if we cannot easily get them, most people find a substitute.

Ms. Delphine and her medium, Instagram, is fundamentally no different. Instagram and Snapchat offer us brief looks in real time into people’s lives. They can make us feel like we’re a part of them. The connection we feel is half-baked — incomplete but easily perceived as real. In the age of the “incel”, young men are the most vulnerable to this, for they are taught about the magic of love, the need for men to be forward, aggressive go-getters, and are likely tormented by their sex drives, but for whatever reason cannot meaningfully fulfill this impetus which is imprinted on them since childhood. This craving of young men for female attention first caught my attention when I noticed a few years ago the increased popularity of certain bizarre female streamers on Twitch. The streamers would do calisthenics on camera, dress provocatively, perhaps play a video game but the camera on the game is far smaller than the camera on the streamer… The point is of course to lure in these young men, who then do stupid things with money, or subscribe to increase the streamer’s visibility. But it doesn’t need to be just this demographic. Be it a big video game stream or a Twitch girl, all the same, when you donate money to them, they read your name out loud. And you feel connected. You purchased acknowledgment, and your existence is validated externally. In ages past, one might purchase the relic of a saint, even if it’s suspected to be fake, because it helps to establish a connection with God. Now, you can purchase the reliquary bathwater of a gamer girl, because it helps to establish a connection with a pretty woman. The main difference between being acknowledged by these streamers, and the bathwater, is that you cannot drink the acknowledgment, nor do you run the risk of contracting a disease for doing so.

So we have it that the purchased water is not valued for water, but for its higher symbolic value. The connections humans make, and need, are priceless, but if they cannot be formed normally, there are substitutes that do have a price. But there ensues one final tragedy, one last perversion of our needs and marketized lives. As of writing this, it has been alleged that the water isn’t bathwater at all, that it contains no human DNA, and thus having not been used in a bath, is merely jarred tap water. If true, Delphine had falsely advertised the water, and is thus vulnerable to legal ramifications. The irony of this is profound. Surely some people bought the water as a mere joke, and will appreciate the pretext for a possible refund, but anyone who purchased it for its symbolic value, people who desired makeshift connections and meaning will find only another hollow signifier. In this manner the baleful art of capitalism is laid bare: the power of capital and the market has created for us new needs it can never truly fulfill, and new ways of fulfilling needs that can never truly be so.