A former self-confessed nerd and tomboy who used to spend hours by herself playing video games is now an award winning adult cam girl who reportedly makes up to $180,000 a year.

Harriet Sugarcookie, 21, lacked self-esteem during her early years and suffered from social anxiety which prevented her from making friends and dating. She was born in Vietnam and moved to England with her family when she was five years old. Up until she was 18, she was the only Asian girl in her school and was constantly bullied.

“I was bullied so much because kids bully people that are different and you couldn’t get much different than being the only non-white kid in your school,” Sugarcookie told NextShark.

Sugarcookie’s classmates would throw stuff at her in class and write racial slurs in her notebooks. This, along with suffering from self-esteem issues, made her a loner throughout high school. She’d spend hours playing games like Pokémon, Final Fantasy and Skyrim and often not leave the house for days. She met her first boyfriend at a comic book store he worked at.

“I spent all my free time in the comic book shop,” Sugarcookie told NextShark. “That’s what you do when you’re a loner and you have no friends, you just go to the comic book shop. I was there so often that they just left me a spot on the windows where I sat all the time.”

However, after just only a year of dating, he dumped her in the worst way possible:

“He went, ‘Harriet, I found a cuter Asian girl than you.’ Those were his exact words. I guess to him he was dating me because I was the only Asian girl around,” Sugarcookie recounted.

Ever since she was young, Sugarcookie was always in accelerated learning programs and did well in school. However, when it came time to apply for colleges, the financial investment just didn’t make sense to her.

“I looked into different financing options on how to pay back student loans, I was just like, ‘this is ridiculous,’” she said. “I was looking at a minimum of £50,000 debt afterwards. By the time I’ve paid that off, I’d be looking at getting a mortgage or something. The idea of having that much debt for a degree just made no sense to me.”

At the disapproval of her parents, Sugarcookie moved out of the house after high school and immediately started working to survive. She wanted to prove she could take care of herself.

“I took on three jobs. From 8:30 until 5:30 I worked in a store. Then from 6:30 to midnight I worked in a restaurant. Then weekends I worked in an art gallery,” she said.

Sugarcookie’s big break came when a male roommate of hers posted the following photo of her on the subreddit “Next Door Asians”.

“It wasn’t a good picture. It wasn’t cute. It was a bit blurry and I don’t look great in it.”

However, the redditors loved her and she became an instant star. They demanded her to post more photos and she complied. Each photo got more sexier than the last, and Sugarcookie started building a loyal fan base.

It wasn’t until she was vacationing in Vietnam when fans suggested she start camming.

“I logged onto cam and I was talking to people and it was fun. I was just dancing on my bed. I’d already posted a topless picture at that point, so I was like it’s not like I’m showing anything new if I flash my boobs.”

Three years later, Sugarcookie is now a full-blown adult star who’s constantly camming and releasing pornographic videos online. She mostly does lesbian scenes with another girl, but occasionally does boy/girl scenes with her business partner and best friend. However, she stresses that their relationship is stricly business.

“He’s my stunt cock. We’re like best friends. We’re more like brother and sister,” she said.

Sugarcookie also has six virtual boyfriends, whom she talked to everyday. A majority of her income comes from “tips”, which are given to her by viewers in the form of virtual tokens. Every 2,000 tokens equals roughly $100 and she’ll get topless after she hits that threshold.

“The talking bit takes up the majority of the time, the bit before you get topless. That can be anything between like an hour or two hours, depending on how fast or slow the night’s going. Then it’ll be another half hour to an hour to get the show target, and then the shows themselves last maybe 10 minutes.”

But before you assume Sugarcookie is using her money to live a life of luxury, she actually uses most of her money to send it back to Vietnam to help take care of her relatives and put her cousins through school.

With the amount of pornography that flows around on the internet nowadays, competition is tough for Sugarcookie. However, her biggest differentiator is how real and authentic her scenes are.

“When girls come around, I actually invite them for a sleepover. Zoe Doll, she came over for the weekend and we went out, played badminton, played games, and just had sex in between, like as if it was just a really sexy sleepover. It was really natural.”

“The way I do it is a lot more casual, but really fun-focused, and I think because of that there’s more chemistry and it feels more real. That’s what I want from it. I started by making sex tapes and one of the reasons they were so good was because they were real.”

As possibly the only female Asian pornstar in the U.K., it’s no question that Sugarcookie is making a name for herself. She won the UK Adult Producers (UKAP) Award for Best Niche/Fetish Website for 2016 and has been nominated twice for an AVN Award, also known as the Oscars of porn.

While her step-father was more supportive of her career choice, it was her conservative Vietnamese mother who Sugarcookie was worried about telling. However, when the time came, her mother took the news very well.

“She was totally okay. I didn’t think she would be. I was like, ‘Hey Mom, I do porn.’ She was like, ‘What?’ I was like, ‘Well, not really. I made some sex tapes and I sold them.’ She’s like, ‘Oh, like Kim Kardashian.’ For a long time because I didn’t talk to boys, she thought I was going to be a lesbian. I think part of her was just so happy that I actually do have an interest in men and that I’ll one day give birth and have a child.”

Sugarcookie’s job has turned into a full blown operation. She formed a company, hired six employees, and launched harrietsugarcookie.com, a lifestyle blog that features naughty cam sessions and movies for sale.