Intellectual Property Law

?Anonymous? Pin-Up Girl Is Runner-Up For America?s Next Top Model

By Kevin Poulsen

As if we needed further proof that everything is connected to Anonymous, a woman who was a long-ago object of fascination to the notorious griefer collective nearly took the gold this week in the reality TV competition America’s Next Top Model.

New Orleans college student and artist Allison Harvard, 21, survived 11 elimination rounds to reach the show’s season finale, which aired Wednesday. The hands-down favorite with Top Model fans, she nonetheless lost in the competition’s final minutes when host Tyra Banks and a panel of judges anointed rival Teyona Anderson — a contestant with a more conventional look.

Well before Harvard became famous to a national TV audience, she was both appreciated and feared on the “/b/” board on 4chan — the birthplace of the internet’s greatest memes and most felonious pranks. The waifish,wide-eyed blonde’s self-portraits — which she’d posted on the web — circulated in that community in 2005, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica, the canonical record of all things channish. 

The ghostly digital photos of Harvard in heavy eyeliner and broken-babydoll outfits and poses, along with her fascination with nosebleeds, simultaneously aroused and frightened Anonymous members, who dubbed her “Creepy Chan.”

When cheerier images of the woman later surfaced, her moniker was updated to “Cute Chan.” In 2006, her photos stopped appearing in 4chan . But she remained true to her gothic side when auditioning for the 12th season of Top Model last year, candidly describing her interest in blood. (Video at bottom of post).

Harvard underwent the usual series of Top Model makeovers while on the show, which host Banks reflectS on while sending Harvard home. “You have had a transformation,” said Banks. “Like, when you look in the mirror it is not the weird girl, it’s the weird cool girl. Like, ‘Yeah, I look different, and it’s special, and it made me a finalist on Top Model!’”

“She has had her hair cut, dyed, and lengthened and she has been told to stop gawking so much, which she has happily complied with in an effort to shed her past reputation,” reads Encyclopedia Dramatica. “These things, while going against her original trend of being creepy, have gained her more wide acceptance within the American viewing public, much in the same way that putting a Starbucks on every corner somehow makes shitty, burnt coffee taste better.”

Updated to correct errors in the history of Creepy Chan. 

See Also:

• Teenage Bomb Threat Suspect Was Internet Prank-Call Star
• How Anonymous Hackers Triumphed Over Time
• Group Posts E-Mail Hacked From Palin Account
• Palin Hacker Group’s All-Time Greatest Hits
• Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer

Full post as published by Threat Level on May 15, 2009 (boomark / email).