Bella Poarch is a Filipino-American social media personality and singer rose to prominence after creating the most liked TikTok video. The video was uploaded to TikTok in August 2020, and featured a zoomed-in view of Poarch’s face lip-syncing and bobbing her head to the beats of Millie B’s viral song, “Soph Aspin Send”, also known as the M to the B song.
Bella Poarch was born on February 9, 1997, in the Philippines. Her parents were poor and could not really afford to take care of Poarch. Vogue reports that from the birth of Poarch to when she was three years old, she primarily lived with her grandmother, who practically raised her in the slums until Poarch was adopted by another family. She consequently moved in with them at their farm in the Philippines.
As a result of her adoption, Poarch holds citizenship from both the Philippines and the USA. Poarch holds faith in Christianity since her biological parents and grandmother were Christians.
Poarch’s adoptive father is a white American and her mother is Filipino. Her father is ex-US military and met Poarch’s adoptive mother in Saudi Arabia where he was stationed, following which they settled down in the Philippines.
Bella has three adoptive siblings, including two elder sisters and one younger brother. Following her adoption, she started living with her adoptive family on a farm in the Philippines.
In an interview with H3, Poarch stated her life at the farm involved her doing a lot of hard work like taking care of the animals, feeding them, bathing them, etc., before she could go to school. She studied at a local high school in her neighborhood during this time. Poarch on multiple occasions has spoken about her adoptive father being verbally and physically abusive. Though this abuse was only directed towards Poarch and her younger adopted brother, her mother refused to get involved.
Vogue reported Poarch’s abusive time was not limited to the farm in the Philippines. Her family, except for her elder sisters, shifted to San Francisco to live with an aunt for a couple of months before finally settling down in Texas.
Following her arrival in Texas, Poarch enrolled herself at a private university and completed her graduation. In the H3 interview, Poarch recalled the heavy abuse she and her brother had to endure continued until she enlisted herself in the military. Eventually, the abuse decreased when her father was required to go through a bypass surgery, but persisted, which took a toll on her mental health.
Looking for a way to escape her toxic household, Poarch decided to join the Navy when she was approached by a recruiter in 2015, which she stated in an interview with Philstar Global. Her father and mother did not bid her a farewell when she was leaving for her training, and her father went as far as stating that she did not need to come back here if she failed her training as this was not her home.
Poarch graduated from the training academy and became an active member of the United States Navy. Her four-year-stint in the Navy saw her serving in Japan as well as Hawaii.
Shortly after retiring from the Navy, Poarch joined the popular video-sharing app TikTok in April 2020. Poarch had no idea she was going to become an overnight sensation and quickly saw her account gain over 80 million followers in less than eight months. This was mostly thanks to her record-breaking video that boasts over 57 million likes, more than any other video on the app. Poarch’s TikTok account is currently the third-most followed account after Charlie D’amelio and Khaby Lame.
Poarch often posted her acoustic covers of popular songs while playing the ukulele on her TikTok account, which eventually became so popular that it helped her earn a music record deal with Warner Records in 2021, which was followed by the release of her debut single, “Build a Bitch”.
Poarch won the Streamy for Breakout Creator of the Year in 2021, won the iHeartRadio Music Award’s Social Star Award, and she is also an honorary mention in Forbes 30 under 30 in the social media category list of 2022.
Poarch first joined TikTok in early 2020 when she reportedly created her TikTok account In January. Her account initially experienced a very slow start with her first few months not being noteworthy at all due to her not being active on TikTok. The following April saw Poarch get active on TikTok for the first time, with a lot of her content being primarily based on gaming and cosplay.
Poarch started gaining some attention during this period of time, but truly stepped into the spotlight in August when her zoomed-in lip-syncing video went viral on TikTok. In the video, Poarch can be seen rhythmically bobbing her head to British rapper Millie B’s song ‘M to the B’, also known as “Sophie Aspin Send”. The video went viral and became the most liked video in TikTok’s history with a whopping 57 million likes as reported by Vogue.
Poarch became an overnight superstar and eventually decided to follow up on her TikTok success by joining Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch in the subsequent months.
Apart from being one of the top three content creators on TikTok, Poarch commands an impressive presence on all other leading social media platforms as well. Currently, Poarch has an impressive 89.6 million followers on TikTok, 5.94 million subscribers on YouTube, over 171,000 followers on her Twitch account, a popular streaming platform, and over 1 million followers on Twitter. She also has over 14 million followers on her Instagram account, which provides more insight into her professional and personal life.
Poarch is well aware of the influence she wields and in a bid to convert her massive following into a commercial stream of revenue, Insider.com reported Poarch collaborated with RIPNDIP, a clothing brand, to create her limited-time clothing line, RIPNDIP X Paca in 2020. It features Poarch’s giant alpaca stuffed toy that has featured in a number of viral TikTok videos.
In December, later the same year, Poarch’s skyrocketing popularity caught the attention of two of the largest professional esports organizations in North America, 100 Thieves and FaZe clan. They were rumored to be attempting to sign Poarch to their respective brands as their star content creator as revealed on the 100 Thieves podcast which featured the CEOs and owners of 100 Thieves, CouRage and Nadeshot.
After becoming a TikTok star, Poarch diversified her content and often posted videos of her singing covers of popular songs on her social media accounts, which garnered enough attention to warrant a record deal with Warner Records in May 2021.
Poarch formally announced her signing by releasing her debut single ‘Build a Bitch’ later that same month. Billboard described the music video, which features a number of influential social media personalities like Valkyrae, Mia Khalifa, Bretman Rock, and ZHC, as “an audacious, darkly comic slice of new-school pop”. The song was created with producer-songwriter Sub Urban.
In the same podcast “The CouRage and Nadeshot Show,” Poarch revealed how she felt after she signed with Warner Records, after realizing her childhood dream of becoming a professional singer who seemed impossible at the time given how unsupportive and abusive her adoptive parents were.
She was recently appointed as the brand ambassador for HyperX, the gaming division of Hewlett-Packard, as the face of their Quadcast S microphone and as a figure in the brand's mission for gaming inclusivity. She has also been sponsored by brands like Moncler, Google, Tinder, and NYX Cosmetics as reported by Seventeen. She recently joined the likes of Marshmello and Ninja, by teaming up with Epic Games to have her emotes added to the popular video game Fortnite.
Bella Poarch has a net worth anywhere between $4 million. Poarch makes up her impressive valuation mostly from her presence as a social media personality and influencer.
Exact Net Worth reports Poarch earns a hefty $30,000 per sponsored TikTok and anywhere between $13,000- 23,000 per sponsored Instagram post. Aside from her social media career, Poarch’s other sources of income include her YouTube and Twitch channels, brand endorsements, her merchandise line, TikTok NFT collaboration and finally, her music career.
Shortly after going viral thanks to the “M to the B” TikTok video, Poarch appeared in rapper Tyga’s TikTok video, which quickly prompted rumors about the two being in a relationship. However, neither party has confirmed or denied these rumors.
Not a lot of information exists about the Poarch’s personal life to an extent where multiple sources have questioned whether Poarch’s real name is Bella Poarch. A picture posted on her Instagram prior to her days as a TikTok celebrity shows Poarch in her Navy uniform with her last name tag reading “Taylor”.
This tattooed beauty is no stranger to controversies. In another pre-TikTok fame era controversy, Poarch was accused of being racist when she called one of her African American friends in the navy as “Harambe”. Harambe was the name of a gorilla that was killed in 2016 following the fall of a child into the gorilla’s enclosure in the Cincinnati Zoo. Poarch later responded to these accusations and defended her usage of the phrase, stating that was his nickname back when they were stationed together in Japan.
It is no secret that this TikTok sensation has many tattoos which she flaunts proudly. However, recently, one of her tattoos got her into trouble. The Korea Herald reported that Poarch was criticized for her Rising Sun Flag tattoo, which is considered to be a symbol of Japanese Imperialism and is considered widely offensive to countries in the East as well as South-East Asia, notably countries that were colonized by Japan. Poarch was forced to apologize and later got a cover-up tattoo in September 2020.
Following the pandemic and spread of hate crimes against people of Asian descent and ethnicity, Poarch took to TikTok to voice her support and fight against anti-Asian racism and uploaded a video where she spoke about how Asians were being targeted unfairly.
In an interview with Vogue, Poarch has claimed she was treated differently and even attacked on random occasions as a teen after she moved to the States from the Philippines prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Here’s a list of awards and nominations Poarch has received.
Nominated in 2021 for an MTV Millennial Award in the Global Creator category.
Nominated in 2021 for an MTV Video Music Award for her music video, “Build a Bitch” in the Best Visual Effects category.
Nominated in 2021 for a People's Choice Award in the New Artist catergory.
Nominated in 2-21 for UK Music Video Award for her music video, "Build a Bitch" in the Best Pop Video – International category.
Won the Breakout Creator of the Year at the Streamy Awards 2022
Nominated for the Creator of the Year award at the Streamy Awards 2022.
Nominated for the Short Form awards of the year at the Streamy Awards 2022.
Won the Social Star Award at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in 2022.
Nominated for Best Music Video at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in 2022 for her music video, “Build a Bitch”.
Bella Poarch’s most popular/viral TikTok to this date remains to be the M to the B lip sync video which was liked over 57 million times and was viewed over 510.1 million times.
With over 197.7 million views, Poarch’s head bobbing video to Ricky Desktop’s Banjo Beat gave Poarch over 17 million likes and her second most viral video.
Though technically, it was not a new TikTok video, following the success of her original "M to the B" video, Poarch made a duet using the original video which got over 169.9 million views and was like over 6 million times.
Poarch’s facial interpretation of the popular kids song, Knock at the Door got over 167.7 million views and was liked by over 19 million accounts.
Poarch’s All TikTok Mashup got over 167.3 million views and was liked by over 16 million accounts, making it her fifth most popular TikTok video.
No, Bella Poarch is currently single and not in any known relationships. It was rumored she was in a relationship with rapper Tyga following a TikTok video she released with him. However, neither party has confirmed or denied these rumors.
On a slightly darker note, Poarch suffered from abuse while growing up, which left her with many body scars. In an attempt to reclaim her life and identity, she started covering up her scars with tattoos.
It is suspected that Bella Poarch’s actual name is Isabella Taylor/Taylor Nariee as her FaceBook account’s URL ends with TaylorNariee. A 2018 Instagram post by Poarch shows her in a uniform with the name Taylor emblazoned on it. However, Poarch has been tightlipped about confirming or denying these rumors.
Bella Poarch is related to popular YouTuber and social media influencer Bretman Rock. In a collaboration YouTube video, Bret stated he first met Bella when they were kids as they are cousins who lived in Pangasinan.
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