TikTok Influencer Chris Olsen Speaks Out Against Circulation of 'Non-Consensual' Nude Images

A tearful Chris Olsen took to TikTok, where he is a well-known influencer, to speak out against the "non-consensual" nude images he says a photographer took of him that later started circulating online.

Olsen (who has been profiled here at EDGE) first addressed the issue of having nude images of himself that had leaked on the internet in a July 22 post in which he recounted how, four years earlier, he'd been alerted to the images being a Twitter account. With tears streaming down his face, Olsen recounted that he had contacted the owner of that account and asked that the images be removed; subsequently, he said, the owner of the account posted a notice telling his followers that the images would be taken down in half an hour and encouraging them to avail themselves of the images while they were still posted.

"And I knew after that I was basically done for," Olsen recounted. "And thirty minutes later he DMed me back and said, 'Hey, just took your photos down,'" Olsen said, before reiterating that his initial awareness of the photos online "was four years ago, and I'm still dealing with this today. It never stops."

@chris maybe think twice !
♬ original sound - Chris Olsen

"It's non-consensual," Olsen went on to say. "It's fully abuse. And it's illegal."

Olsen returned to the subject several times afterwards. In an August 9 post, he slammed the "revenge porn" that he said was circulating online and pushed back against the hateful comments that were directed at him as a result.

"Fuck all of you people who have decided to drive me this crazy!" Olsen declared in the post.

@chris Replying to @amandasouliere660 ♬ original sound - Chris Olsen

In a followup, the influencer said he felt as though he were "back in middle school being bullied by all the kids around me and there's no escape and this time I'm supposed to somehow be grateful for the bullies cause they're the ones giving me my life."

In response to a viewer's comment that he had been a porn star and questioned his complaints about nude images of him circulating online, Olsen explained the origins of the images in question, saying they had been obtained and shared without consent.

Olsen recounted that after getting sober at the age of 19, he "lost a lot of weight and started working out and started feeling good about how I looked physically for the first time in my life."

"I would post fitness photos often, and had gained a small following," Olsen continued. "From there, photographers would reach out and ask to collaborate with me," he added, explaining that "no money was involved" and that while the images "would potentially just be thirst traps, I was never uncomfortable" making them.

But then one photographer, he said, "crossed the line of what I was comfortable with." Relating that the photographer in question insisted he sign a release, Olsen said that he was, at the time, "unfamiliar with the entertainment world," so he "complied without realizing what I was actually doing."

The photographer coaxed him into taking off all his clothes, Olsen said, adding, "What happened with this photographer was unconsensual, yet I didn't know how to say no.... here I was, letting myself be violated and not even standing up for myself."

"Multiple shoots happened," Olsen recounted, "and I let them."

@chris Replying to @ara🧿 ♬ original sound - Chris Olsen

The photographer subsequently posted the images to a paid platform, Olsen recounted, where users "screenshotted them, and from there it was over."

Olsen disclosed that he had had "an experience" with sexual assault "when I was in high school and drunk, but I was sober for this one."

Olsen said that there were also "videos circulating" in which, as a younger man, he was seeking "validation" - videos that he now regrets, but which he did not object to at the time.

"But today," Olsen said through his tears, "I am trying to say no. I am saying I don't want these things to circulate anymore, and I hope that that's enough."

Added the influencer: "I know not everyone is going to like me, but if you are going to hate, please let it be in a way that isn't continuously traumatizing me."

A USA Today article touched on Olsen's TikTok videos, noting that some of the vitriol Olsen faces "is coming from fellow gay men, a fact that may seem shocking at first blush to a general audience."

But, the article noted, it's not at all unusual to see members of a marginalized community turn on each other. A growing acceptance of queer people in America may also have contributed, the USA Today piece suggested.

"As common enemies and threats fall away gay men may turn against each other to cope with their traumas, from lighthearted memes to cyberbullying to even the aforementioned revenge porn," the article theorized, before citing relationship coach Ted Smith, who told the newspaper that the phenomenon of minorities attacking one another "comes from a lack of wholeness within themselves, and it mirrors how they view and treat themselves."

"Chase Cassine, licensed clinical social worker, adds that 'the longstanding history of skillful and strategic insulting - or shade - as it most commonly known, has played a significant role in LGBTQIA+ society,' specifically among Black and brown gay men," the article said, calling such conduct a "coping mechanism to deal with stress and trauma."

The article also cited "traditional norms and beauty standards that afflict every community" and "also apply to gay men."

"The white, hot, muscular gay men get a lot of the attention - and are therefore primed for takedown from people who are likely jealous and bitter," USA Today posited.

The article cited the case of Erick Adame, "a New York weatherman [who] also saw his nudes appear online."

"He lost his job after his employer discovered he appeared on an adult webcam website," the writeup related. "Members of the LGBTQ community face further scrutiny for any expression of sexuality and are at higher risk for revenge porn according to at least one study."

USA Today then addressed another possible reason for such abuse among the queer community.

"Part of being in the gay community means you don't need to abide by heteronormativity," the article said. "You can feel freer in how you have sex and form relationships. But some mistake others' sexual expression as an invitation."

The article quoted Rob Anderson, an influencer who had also experienced images of himself sans clothing circulating online and the trolling that came with it.

"The gay community doesn't understand consent," Anderson said, going on to unpack that statement by explaining that "when all gay men are around each other, online or offline, they feel like they own that man. They own their body. They own their image. They own anything about them.... They're like, 'Oh, well, they exist, so I deserve to be able to see them and share them,' like, no. It's called consent."