Despite lawsuits, online influencer Eric Damaseau keeps profiting from homophobia
His latest target is popular online gay influencer Ronel Coco
For years, anti-gay online influencer and content creator Eric Damaseau of Guadeloupe and Bordeaux, France, has continued a stream of anti-LGBTQ online commentaries, despite law suits in France and in the Caribbean, temporary cancellation of his YouTube channel and repeated protests and rebuttals from LGBTQ rights advocates.
His latest target is Ronel Coco, a popular gay online influencer and content creator, whom Damaseau accuses of making freely accessible videos available on the internet that could corrupt the morals of Caribbean youth.
In fact, Ronel Coco publishes content on the Me You More (MYM) platform, which is limited to adult subscribers. His humorous pieces often refer to his sex life.
A resident of Martinique, he is known professionally as Ronel Coco [“coco” is a creole term for cock] but also as Roman Winlansky.
He was recently honored by the radio station NRJ Antilles as Influencer of the Year 2025, which sparked Damaseau’s ire on social media, where he generated a new outpouring of homophobic slurs, to the dismay of LGBT+ activists in Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Damaseau’s history of anti-LGBT polemics and outbursts on social networks that have led to legal action against him for hate speech, which is illegal in France, including its overseas regions. But none has succeeded in shutting him down.
In the process, he has gained political influence in addition to the 22,200 subscribers of his YouTube channel.
He has played a leading role in encouraging Guadeloupeans to vote for the populist right-wing National Rally. (Citizens in Guadeloupe voted 69.6% in favor of Marine Le Pen in the second round of the 2022 presidential election.)
LGBT+ activists who were interviewed by Erasing 76 Crimes say that bad faith and hatred lie behind Damaseau’s claims that his goal is to protect children.
Among those interviewed, two are leaders of LGBT associations in the French West Indies. And given that Damaseau likes to name names on YouTube, people are reluctant to speak out and have their names publicized. They also don’t want their associations to be used as unintended publicity for Eric Damaseau.
“The business model of MYM, a French video platform based in Lyon, is to charge visitors, invite them to purchase monetized content, and then pay the creators,” says Caribbean LGBT+ activist Sabrina (pseudonym). “This is a far cry from online pornographic content accessible to everyone, including minors. What’s more, you have to be 18 to access MYM, and facial recognition tools are in place to verify the age of anyone who wants to create an account to view the videos.”
A feeling of inertia
Gabriella (pseudonym), another Caribbean activist, says that legal proceedings against Eric Damaseau have been ongoing for three years now.
“A complaint has been under investigation since 2022 and we are awaiting a conclusion, but nothing is currently stopping the recurrence of his LGBTphobic verbal outbursts,” she says.
Karina, an activist from Guadeloupe, questions the effectiveness of YouTube’s moderation.
“Despite the repeated closure of his YouTube channels, which serve as his showcase, he always manages to find an audience on this network by creating new accounts, but it’s time for this to stop”, she said.
