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Allison Harvard Of The ‘Creepy Chan’ Meme Explains How She Went From ‘Queen Of 4chan’ To ‘America’s Next Top Model’
he mid-2000s were an exciting time to be surfing the net. During the dawn of internet culture as we know it, tons of people were testing the waters of the “wild west” as they experimented with obscure interests and niche subcultures that never had a home in the real world. At just 14 years old, Allison Harvard was one such netizen that began exploring her fascination with eerie, morbid photoshoots back in 2005. After sharing some of the images online, they went viral in the mid-to-late 2000s and eventually wound up on 4chan, where a loyal fanbase soon dubbed her “Creepy Chan” and the “Queen of /x/” (4chan’s paranormal board). Not only did this internet fame turn her into the unwitting queen of 4chan at the time, but it would also go on to help her land a spot on America’s Next Top Model and even shape her artistic endeavors over a decade later.
Now that it’s been 16 years since those iconic photos turned her into an early internet star, Harvard is finally revisiting the days of Creepy Chan and opening up about the experience for the first time. We got the chance to speak with her recently to learn more about her past as Creepy Chan, how it affected her career as an artist and model, and what she’s been up to lately.
Q: Hey, Allison. Welcome and thanks for joining us. It’s been a long decade-plus since the days of Creepy Chan, so can you tell us a bit about yourself, what you’re known for in the online world, and what you’ve been up to lately?
A: Hi! It feels like it was just yesterday that I was kind of pretending to be dead on my parents’ staircase in Texas. But my name is Allison Harvard, and I'm an artist, model and former unwitting queen of 4chan. When I was around 14 years old, I was taking all kinds of spooky pictures of myself and 4chan picked them up, and I guess that's where we're at today with Creepy Chan.
Q: Since you were among some of the earliest “internet stars” to become well-known online during the infancy of social media and meme culture, could you tell us more about your history with the web? Give us some context on how you got started on the internet, where you frequented, etc.
A: I was always fascinated with the internet. Every terrible GeoCities website was kind of an invention back then. I remember how there would be websites on the back of cereal boxes, and I would go and visit all of those when I was super young. I was a big fan of Spice Girls fan pages that were on GeoCities too. In the early days, I dabbled in Neopets and then I kinda soon moved on to LiveJournal and things like Rotten.com, unfortunately. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Then eBaum's World, and eventually I moved over to MySpace. For me, MySpace and LiveJournal kind of really shaped who I was creatively when I was younger. It felt like kind of a brave new world when I was doing stuff like that because I don't think I was ready to be who I wanted to be necessarily to my real-life friends, but I could be whoever I wanted to be on those spaces. It was just a really exciting time, and I didn't feel so alone [online].
As far as memes go, I remember that Dancing Baby one. I can't find any references online to these, but there were these other memes that had sharks in them going through a roof like, "I'm in your house biting your kids." It wasn't funny at all now that I look back on it, but I loved that. I think I actually printed out some memes to show my friends a long time ago [laughs].
Q: When you were just 14, you began posting images of yourself online with haunting and morbid themes, experimenting with your photography and modeling. Can you give us some more insight into some of those early iconic images that you created and what they were all about?
A: When I was around 14 or so, I started experimenting with photography and I've always loved spooky and weird things, but I just wanted to play around with an aesthetic that was kind of softer too. I wanted to blend really harsh and creepy with something kind of soft. That probably stems back from me really loving Hole and Bikini Kill too. But I really liked the idea of being a ghost when was a kid, and I had found all of these photos online that were kind of like “last images” style photography of people and people's loved ones, and so I became obsessed with recreating crime scene photos. I found this weird wedding dress that was in my parents’ attic, and that's what kind of really kicked this into high gear for me because then it became my “cartoon outfit” that I would wear at night and just wander around my house.
Q: What did your parents make of all this?
A: My mom was like, "Do you need to talk to someone? Is everything okay?" [laughs]. I would get into the bathtub wearing this dress and stage all of these weird photos where I appeared to be a dead body. But yeah, my poor parents. I was also listening to a lot of Hole, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, and I was just really leaning into being angsty and angry. Anne Rice and D'arcy Wretzky from the Smashing Pumpkins were huge female influences for me. Also Francesca Woodman, the photographer. I discovered her later, but she was amazing. I wanted to be those women combined, and they were just massive influences on me. I mean, it really all just does go back to the old-school internet. That was kind of my introduction to art I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
Q: As early as 2005, some of your photos from Myspace and DeviantArt were reposted to 4chan and other sites. Can you explain why you were named “Creepy Chan” among others like the “Queen of /x/” (4chan’s paranormal board) and why you were so popular in these online communities?
A: Dude, I honestly have no idea. As I said before, I could guess why I was called “Creepy Chan.” I was definitely leaning into being super creepy, and just being a super creepy kid in general. Those photos were not sexy or alluring. I wasn't trying to get any kind of attention other than putting my weird self-portraits out there. I just think they might have been a little jarring to some people to see at first, and then maybe some just started getting into looking at my updated pictures on MySpace and continuing the threads with them.
I was introduced to 4chan because I had people who followed me on MySpace and they would tell me “people are starting threads about you on 4chan,” and I had no idea what 4chan was. I was like 15 saying, "What's that?" And I did not know that there was a place out there quite like 4chan. I feel like I definitely got pretty lucky, all things considered, with the way I was received on 4chan. None of my real-life friends that I had really knew about it yet. It wasn't something I advertised or had my name on. I just had very light internet relationships online. It was like a group of people who were DMing me, "Hey, did you know this is happening?"
Q: What was running through your head at the time and do you remember how you reacted to seeing your images spreading online?
A: I do have a really embarrassing story where I attempted to email Moot demanding that the images get taken down [laughs]. In my defense, I was 16 and very confused about what 4chan was [laughs]. It was very overwhelming for me when I was really young, and this continued well into me being 18 and 19 also. But when I was 16, I really didn't know how to handle it at first, and I have this super embarrassing story where I actually had the audacity to be like, “Who runs this website?” Just a dumb young idiot.
Now I'm just looking back like, “Oh my God, I had no idea what 4chan was.” But honestly, everyone was just really funny and fun, and I really kind of enjoyed eavesdropping on what was happening there. The kind of weirdly positive reinforcement that I got on 4chan kind of gave me the confidence to wanna keep on doing what I was doing, but there were definitely some very scary comments that I saw where I was like, "I should not be seeing this."
Q: Within just a few years of your photos going viral, there were already several thousand pieces of fan art on DeviantArt and other platforms featuring Creepy Chan. Why do you think people were so drawn to these images and your style? Was it concerning to you or did you enjoy the online attention back then?
A: Well, it's weird because I didn't really understand the scope of the reach back then. We didn't have all the social platforms that we have today, so you didn't really get to see who exactly was talking about it or when like how we're informed now. We have so many things at our fingertips to kind of be like, “you're this popular, people are talking about you here,” all of this stuff, so I really didn't realize that all of this was going on until much later. I mean, I did see people talking about it on 4chan, but I didn't realize I was this big meme thing. I just thought this forum of people liked my photos and would talk about me sometimes, but I was definitely taken aback by the attention I got. As I said, it made me want to keep kind of going in the direction I was with photography and painting. I was just trying to figure myself out as a kid, and I guess I felt seen. It was fun that I had this whole other side of me that I kinda kept secret from my real life.
Q: Given how rapidly you rose to prominence online, can you tell us what sort of impacts it had on your personal life and career? How did the phenomenon of becoming Creepy Chan affect you during those first few years?
A: Well, I definitely knew that I wanted to be an artist. I knew that I wanted to just find a way to be able to make art, and I was really having fun exploring all of this, but Creepy Chan was always kind of the elephant in the room with anything in my life until recently when I really started having fun with it: my NFTs and with the build-up to my NFTs. Aside from the AMA I did on Reddit, I really don't talk about Creepy Chan out loud or on social media that much. It's just sort of this funny thing that's like my little secret I have. It's funny because once I started posting about it on my Instagram and Twitter, I had so many people message and be like, “I didn't know that was you. That's crazy.” I really think it's fun when people will be like, “Are you Allison from America's Next Top Model?” But I always think it's really extra fun when someone's like, "Are you Creepy Chan?"
Q: With so many people using your images or creating artwork from your likeness, did such uses of your work ever bother you, or did you encourage people to use Creepy Chan and your photos for their own creative endeavors?
A: No. I don't think I ever went as far as to do copyright battles. If we’re talking about fan art, I always encourage anyone to create artwork, and it's especially fun if I'm inspiring them to do that. I think that's sick. But the only time I think those sorts of things are weird is when people would use them for ads that edited my original picture to look like a flesh-eating zombie or made assumptions that I was on heroin or crystal meth. I could do without that. But the other stuff is pretty chill. I think I was in an ad last year with one of my photos edited to make me look insane, something about "victim of child abuse, " and I was like, "What even is this?" That's when I say, “Now you're using my image for this story that sounds horrible and didn't happen to me.”
Q: So then in 2009 you became a contestant on the 12th cycle of America’s Next Top Model. What was it like participating in that show, and did Creepy Chan and your online renown play any role in that coming about?
A: It was really crazy. I remember when I got this MySpace DM and it was from a casting producer named “Natalie.” She was like, "Hey, do you wanna come to a closed casting call for America's Next Top Model? We've seen this creepy photo of you, we think you're really cool." I said, "no" [laughter]. Because no one was verified back then, you just didn't know who you were talking to. I was working a summer job and was getting ready to go to Baton Rouge and get my dorm filled out and all that. She found my home number, talked to my mom, and then I ended up going to a closed casting call.
I showed up in flip-flops and boot-cut jeans. It was horrible. I had no business being there but they loved it. They loved that I was interested in all these weird collections, they loved my art, so they definitely knew the story-ish from those photos, but not fully. It was definitely the way I got my foot in the door with that opportunity, which was really cool. But the downside of being the creepy one on America's Next Top Model is that they played wacky circus music whenever I walked in. When we were introducing ourselves to the judges, it was like, "We hear you have a really big fascination with blood …” or maybe I said that … I probably said that [laughs]. Then they really, really ran with that.
Q: You also did an AMA on Reddit back in early 2011 where you discussed some of the backstory behind the iconic images and interacted with fans. Can you tell us what your online following was like back then and how it’s evolved over time? Are those interactions typically positive or more mixed?
A: I had flashbacks a little bit when I posted a photo recently as I was building up to my NFT drop. I was like "how it started vs. how it's going," and I had one of my old photos that I recreated as a callback and put them side by side. It was so crazy just how many people were like, "Are you okay? You need to eat. Are you sick?" And I said, "Oh God, not this again." It's just crazy the way people will speak to other people online, just like you said, as if you're not a person. I'm so used to it, but I think as a much older person, I've grown up a little bit. I still have a ton of the same interests, my style's just developed. The people who follow me now, a lot of them aren't the same people that followed me then, so I just think the audiences are different even though there's a little bit of both. It was really funny to start posting the older photos again and seeing how people started all that stuff back up again with the negative comments.
Q: Building off that, what’s something that people don’t understand about becoming an “internet/meme star?” Is it an experience that you enjoyed overall?
A: I would say that I definitely did overall enjoy the experience, and it definitely prepared me for a lot of other obstacles that I was gonna face in life later on with the career paths that I chose. So it definitely made my backbone a lot stronger in that sense. Luckily for me, I was able to have this one thing that's kind of like a little secret and then have a career where it didn't so much affect it negatively, only positively. Some people who are more recent memes or maybe even memes from before, it's tough when it does follow you throughout your life and you can't ever escape that, I'm sure that's gotta be really, really tough for some people.
Q: After that initial wave died down, you sort of moved on from the Creepy Chan days for a number of years until just recently when you returned to it and sold an NFT of the most well-known image. How’d you first learn about the world of crypto art and what caused you to get into the scene?
A: Well, I've been into crypto for a few years, and I had just been hearing more and more about NFTs. It just felt like the perfect intersection of everything I've been doing in my life leading up to this point with art and modeling, and just my history with this funny thing where I'm an internet meme as well. It was all the perfect storm with the things that I wanted to do, so I kind of just went for it and I have a lot of really cool stuff that's coming out: new artwork and collaborations that I'm excited about.
Once I realized that there could be something with listing my two Creepy Chan NFTs, aside from the financial aspect of it, which ended up being awesome, I kinda just felt like it was the perfect way to wrap this story up in my life because you get so used to your images floating around on the internet without your consent and getting passed around. So this was definitely a cool way of reclaiming that and getting to put it back online like, "Hey, this is mine. This is something funny and fun that happened to me, and you guys have seen these all over the internet, and now it gets to be mine again," in a sense.
Q: So how did your first auction go? Were you surprised by the initial Creepy Chan NFT sale, and are you planning to release more crypto-collectibles in the near future?
A: My first auction was such a wild ride. I was crying and laughing in utter disbelief. The auction went berserk with under 10 minutes left and it was honestly one of the greatest days of me and my fiance’s life. Truly life-changing. I first listed the two Creepy Chan images and was speaking to Adele Morse [creator of Stoned Fox], because ours literally went up at the exact same time. We were like, "Here we go!" Hers got bid on pretty quickly, and mine just really didn't for about 24 hours. You're going through all these emotions where you're like, "Well, is this bad? Do people hate me?" You just get insecure. "Should I even be doing this? What am I doing?"
Then the next day I woke up and there were bids on both of them. It became really, really fun, and I was stoked on a bid. During the last 10 minutes of my auction, I think one of them was at 2 Ethereum and the other one was around 2 or 4 ETH. I was messaging my brother and I was like, "Look how much this is going for!" He said, "Are you crazy? That's so cool!" And then all of a sudden it just went off for some reason. It went from 10 to 15 to 30 — it was crazy.
But it was definitely one of the best days of our lives. It was just so fun. It's so life-changing and it just felt really cool that those images that I took when I was 16 years old kind of came back to hook up their future self, you know? It gets to go into the little archive of museum meme NFTs. It was awesome.
I’m crying 😭 I’m just so happy & grateful. My first NFT drop sold for 75 ETH, currently $159,000. 🤯 This is a life changing moment for me. Thank you so much to @3fmusic for the winning bids and to all the other bidders. This makes up for all the 2nd places. I’M FINALLY ON TOP! pic.twitter.com/lr39G4v4tu
— allison harvard (@alliharvard) April 3, 2021
Q: What else do you have going on with your career and artwork? Anything we should know about and keep on our radar?
A: Yeah. I've been collaborating with this amazing artist, Alexa Meade, and she is absolutely incredible. I recommend anyone to check her out. She quite literally turns people into living paintings and almost into 2D art. It's so crazy. We have a bunch of collaborations coming up. We just started our first one on her foundation last week, and we are working on a bunch more together that'll be coming out in the next week or two. I had another really exciting collaboration with this amazing artist, Jason Ebeyer. He's working with me on turning one of my old Creepy Chan images into this moving 3D doll. We're gonna make them like a little collectible thing with a 3D model of some of these little ghosts that I draw and put them into this landscape with music.
It was really cool to work on them. I've never done a collaboration like that with anyone that was quite in that sort of vein, and so I think it's gonna be really beautiful. That's something that's also been so cool about this whole experience — meeting artists and working with them that I wouldn't otherwise.
❣️#portfolioday pic.twitter.com/YHUVA2dK2s
— allison harvard (@alliharvard) April 13, 2021
Q: Given your own experience and history of becoming a meme, how well do you keep up with internet culture today? Any favorite memes at the moment? Ever make any yourself?
A: As far as memes go currently, it's kind of hard to keep up with them because there are just always so many coming out. I'm pretty sure I tried to make a meme a long time ago, and I immediately deleted it because it was terrible. So that's not for me. There are way funnier people out there who are doing that.
Q: If you had to choose, could you pick your all-time favorite meme?
A: This is probably going to be very anti-climactic, but I thought that O RLY? bird was hilarious — one of my favorite OG memes from back in the day. I thought that was the funniest thing at one point in my life and I love that guy. He's so cute.
Q: Looking back on becoming “Creepy Chan” and having your photos spread all around the internet now that it’s been over 15 years, do you reflect positively on the experience overall? If you could, would you do it all over again or prevent it from occurring?
A: I definitely view it as a positive experience. I love getting to be a part of ancient internet meme culture. I've always loved online culture, so it's cool to have a place and to be a part of it myself. Those images will always kinda belong to the internet, but I'm just grateful for the way that they shaped my life because it really was a game-changer for me in so many aspects of where my life ended up going. I actually wouldn't change anything. For better or worse, I don't think I would change anything. It's been kind of a ridiculous and hilarious roller coaster, and it's a very funny story. Creepy Chan finally got the ending she deserved.
Q: Thanks for speaking with us, Allison. Want to add a closing statement or anything before we go?
A: I just want to say thank you so much for sitting down with me and doing this interview! You’re awesome. Keep an eye out on my Foundation, Twitter and Instagram for my upcoming NFT collaborations and new artwork.
Watch our interview with Allison Harvard below for the video version of our discussion.
Allison Harvard is an artist and model whose viral images became the Creepy Chan meme back in 2006. You can follow Harvard by checking out her Twitter and Instagram for more, or visit her Foundation page to see what crypto art she's working on next.
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