Entertainment
‘Bad Influence’ on Netflix: Catching Up With Piper Rockelle and Tiffany Smith Today
Ring lights, camera, action! Netflix’s “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing” (now streaming) explores the darker side of young YouTube star Piper Rockelle’s path to internet stardom and over 12 million YouTube subscribers.
Rockelle, now 17, began in pageants as a toddler, Patience Rock Smith, younger sister of Piper’s mom, Tiffany Smith, says in the three-episode docuseries. Single mother Smith was the force behind Rockelle’s career. In clips of Lifetime’s reality show “Dance Twins” included in “Bad Influence,” the momager is seen pushing her young daughter to the pinnacle. “This is a great time for you to win first place,” Smith said. “I would like that.
Producers also spoke to ex-members of Rockelle’s “Squad” — other kid influencers who worked on videos and skits together and even pretended to have relationships — and their parents. “We were shooting 10, 15 videos a day,” Sophie Fergi, 17, says in “Bad Influence.” She told them they’d start shooting at 11 a.m. and go until 1 or 2 a.m. “I would sleep for, like, two to three hours, wake up at 6, 7-ish and do school, shut down my tablet and then I would have to prepare to film,” she explained. “We did not get a break at all.”
Members who departed the Squad claim they were blacklisted from the group and hold Smith responsible when their online opinions and subscribers later plummeted. In 2022, 11 plaintiffs between the ages of 10 and 16 brought a civil suit against Smith, Hill and Piper Rockelle Inc. detailing nightmarish conditions while working on “hundreds of videos” for Rockelle’s channel between 2017-2020.
They endured “emotional, verbal, physical, and sometimes sexual abuse” from Smith, the suit says and asserted they were not paid despite their appearances on Rockelle’s channel generating windfall revenue, “often in excess of several hundred thousand dollars per month.”
Smith retaliated with a $30 million countersuit. The lawsuit was settled in October by the parties for $1.85 million. Filmmakers said Smith, Rockelle and Hill rejected the claims made in the docuseries and lawsuit and declined interview requests.
“Honestly, I just want to get away from all of this because it’s really painful to endure every day. And not surprisingly, my mental well-being has been affected more than anyone realizes,” she said. She asserted the allegations are “mean, untrue, and honestly all about money. My mom did not do any of those things that they said. And I’ll stand by my mom to the end.”
Piper Rockelle now: ‘It takes a lot out of me’
Piper Rockelle is still making a living off of social media with 6.1 million followers on Instagram and 14.7 million on TikTok, where she records herself dancing and with her boyfriend, another influencer who is known as Capri.
Although YouTube demonetized her channel in 2022, shortly after a lawsuit was filed against Smith, Rockelle continues to post videos for her 12.1 million subscribers. One posted in November provided fans with a behind the scenes glimpse of her life as an influencer.
“Of course I shoot vlogs like this, but I don’t actually get a lot out of it other than the satisfaction from knowing you guys like watching them…” she stated, adding that she pays bills with brand deals and TikToks.
“I don’t have any space to complain about my life because things could be much worse,” she stated on the video. “But what I do have to say is that it is hard work on my part. I’ve never had a regular job, but whatever I’m doing now, it does feel like a job. It takes a lot out of me.”
As compared to her daughter, Smith lives a more secluded life. “I do not want to be in a TikTok,” Smith protested in the prank video for Hill’s YouTube series. “I do not want people making little edits of me and making fun of me.”
For the video, posted on December 16, 2022, Hill tried flirting with Smith to get her awkwardness on film. “Flirting with Tiffany is going to be very awkward,” he declared. Hill had played Rockelle’s brother on social media, but Smith and Hill, aged 28, were dating.
Hill most recently posted a YouTube video for his 656,000 followers in May 2024. He has 339,000 Instagram followers.
