Joanne the Scammer: How Branden Miller Went From Porn to Creating Instagram’s Wildest Star

If first impressions are everything, then Joanne the Scammer‘s Instagram debut in 2015 is one for the books. “I’m a messy bitch who lives for drama,” she declares in the short video, while flipping her blonde bob with a smirk and stare that says she means business.

With her petty musings and self-indulgent soliloquies, the hilarious vixen gone viral gained a legion of followers almost instantly. But for the man behind all the mischief, Branden Miller, 25, Joanne’s success meant a chance to start over.

“I started young,” Miller tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I remember being a kid and filming stuff. I was like 15, watching YouTube’s Chris Crocker. I would upload videos but no one would know.”

But after a few rough years at home, during which Miller lost his father to cancer and subsequently learned he was adopted and not biologically related to his white parents and siblings, he decided to take another route. “I was so unhappy after I found out I was adopted that I wanted to run away and I said whatever it took I would do it.”

At age 18, Miller left home to enter the adult film industry in Texas. “I never really wanted to do it. I just knew that I could get a lot of money,” he says. “But I just got tired of doing porn. One day I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”

For Miller who had continued working on his characters and videos on social media, even amidst his x-rated work, Joanne was his last ditch effort at fame. “I thought, let me try and just give this Joanne character my last bit,” he says. “Let me give it my all.”

Source: Joanne The Scammer Instagram

A typical post for Joanne shows her clad in fur while dabbling in credit card fraud, railing against her ex and professing her love for all things she deems “Caucasian.”

“Those who get it, get it,” says Miller of the 1.8 million and counting who follow Joanne on Instagram. “One of my strategies was to try and make her an icon, even down to the look. Joanne is a hit.”

So much so that Joanne made her red carpet debut at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards and has a host of celebrity fans. The character just starred in her first short film and will be release a music project in 2017. But for Miller, who resides in Daytona Beach, Florida with his partner of eight years, Xavier, he’s happy all the drama in his life is fictional.

“I’m really a homebody,” says Miller. As for his personal life, “It’s pretty chill, but I like it like that. I’ve just created my own little thing.”