TikTok Star Chris Olsen on Calling Out 'Revenge Porn' Images and Being 'More in My Power' (Exclusive)

Luke Chinman
·3-min read

In a video posted on July 23, Olsen said “nonconsensual” content of him had been posted to X four years prior and he is “still dealing with this today”

<p>Gilbert Flores/Billboard via Getty</p> Chris Olsen

Gilbert Flores/Billboard via Getty

Chris Olsen

Late last month, TikTok star Chris Olsen opened up online about his experiences with the nonconsensual sharing of his explicit photos, also known as "revenge porn" — and now he's sharing how he feels in the aftermath.

In an interview with PEOPLE, he says he’s no longer “actively in pain about it most of the time.”

“I’m almost kind of numb to it because it seems to be happening to so many people,” the 26-year-old influencer and performer says. “It’s sad to me that I don’t even have that many feelings about it anymore because I’ve had to desensitize myself.”

In a video posted to TikTok on July 23, Olsen tearfully said that he first learned the images were posted to X (formerly Twitter) about four years ago as he started to build a following on TikTok.

Related: TikTok Star Chris Olsen Was Prescribed Beta Blockers for Nerves About Opening for Meghan Trainor (Exclusive)

After becoming aware that the content was spreading, he made an account to ask the user who posted them to take them down — but the user told others to download the images before deleting them from the site, he said.

“I’m still dealing with this today,” Olsen said in the video. “It never stopped. It’s nonconsensual. It’s violating. It’s fully abuse and illegal.”

After publicly addressing the images in July, Olsen tells PEOPLE, “I’ve received the support that I need” — from friends, family and even through private messages.

But he says he hasn’t looked at the comments section of the original TikTok video.

<p>Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty</p> Chris Olsen

Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty

Chris Olsen

“I don’t know if I really need to know what other people are saying,” he says. “I also know a lot of the time it can get negative in a comments section in a way that I don’t deserve or need to see anyway.”

Olsen, who also posted a series of TikToks titled “How My Boyfriend Tried to Murder Me” last month describing an abusive former partner, says his recent public comments about his experiences are part of “an era of feeling like I’m more in my power.”

“And I know a lot of people might see this and think ‘he’s having a public breakdown,’ ” says Olsen. “For a long time, I tried to avoid the negativity because I thought if I respond to it, if I play into the negativity, it makes them win … And so I didn't do that for the longest time, and I still felt like they were winning.”

As Olsen prepares to open on tour for close friend Meghan Trainor starting in early September, he says, “A big part of my adulthood journey has been releasing what is no longer in my control. I have never felt better. I have never been happier.”

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