Melissa Ong

Melissa Ong (born May 25, 1993), known by her TikTok username chunkysdead and nickname Mother Hen, is an American Internet influencer, TikToker, YouTuber, and former user experience designer. She worked at several technology companies before leaving her job to focus on making videos for the social network TikTok. Ong is best known for the "Step Chickens," a self-described online cult formed after Ong released a TikTok video in a chicken costume satirizing tropes in pornography. The Step Chickens are more akin to a cult of personality or fandom than a harmful or violent cult; their main activities include spamming the comments sections of other creators, changing their profile pictures to match a selfie taken by Ong, and conversing on an app rebranded for them by Ong's friend and former co-worker.

Early life and career Ong grew up wanting to become a YouTuber; she has said that her ultimate goal is to have a comedy show on HBO or Netflix in the style of Nathan for You.

Internet career Ong began inconsistently posting videos sometime before 2020, eventually noticing that she was gaining between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. She began producing videos in earnest after quitting her job in early 2020, In another, she reacted to a video of a U.S. TikTok executive while wearing clown makeup. By May 2020, Ong's videos had drawn over 54.6 million likes, On May 8, 2020, Ong released an installment in the series which featured her wearing the chicken suit and enacting a parody of stepbrother–stepsister pornography. The video went viral, garnering 1.1 million views. but Taylor Lorenz with The New York Times writes that users on TikTok had been forming cults of personality, "armies", and "gangs" for months prior, citing the Dum Dum gang as one prior example. Ong is generally credited, however, with popularizing the notion of TikTok "cults" in general, inspiring several other creators to start similar groups – her group is also credited as the largest and "most powerful".