TikToker Chris Olsen is calling out the people who post—and consume—revenge porn in no uncertain terms.
In a video shared earlier this week, the influencer opened up about his own experiences with these types of images that have been posted to the internet without his consent. The first incident, he says, occurred four years ago when he was just starting out on TikTok. Images were shared to Twitter, and when he asked the user to take them down, he was blocked.
According to Olsen, after that, the person who posted them told their followers to download them quickly because they would be gone in half an hour. Thirty minutes later, the TikToker received a response back that the pictures had been removed. And when he replied that he had reported the account for posting them in the first place, he says, the user had the audacity to accuse him of trying to take away the "only thing" he had.
"That was four years ago and I'm still dealing with this today," Olsen said. "It never stopped. It's nonconsensual, it's violating, it's fully abuse—and illegal."
@chris maybe think twice !
Having explicit images and videos shared to the internet without consent has been a major ongoing issue, despite 49 states having laws against it. As we all know, once something is out there on the internet, the battle to ensure it's fully out of distribution can sometimes prove impossible.
And that's assuming the places where it's distributed even attempt to cooperate. X, for example, technically bans revenge porn, but requires people to prove they are the ones in the image being reported, providing an obstacle for heavily circulated leaks belong to celebrities or other public figures.
But Olsen wants people to understand that it's not just initially posting these images that's an issue, but also sharing them or even consuming once they've been posted the first time.
"If you're contributing to this, you're contributing to a culture of abuse," he said. "And to say that someone with a platform deserves this or should expect this because this is the job that we've chosen is absolutely insane. I hope you hear how crazy that is. And this happens all the time."