Don't feed the trolls.

Charlotte Dawson died this week. She took her own life after a very public and prolonged battle with depression, and with cyber bullies that took great pleasure in tormenting her in large numbers.

I never met Charlotte, so I'm not qualified to speak of her struggle in more specific terms. I can't speak about her personality or talents. But in the last fortnight I have been bullied myself, both on here and on Instagram.

Firstly let me talk about what Instagram means to me.

I live for art. I'm hopeless at making it (despite the headlines that bring at least a quarter of visitors to this blog), but I'm nothing short of incredible when it comes to enjoying it.

For me art is music, images, words. Of course philosophy has been battling for centuries to define an all-encompassing descriptor for art, but for the purpose of this post, let's just keep it simple.

I'm a child of the 90's- that's when the teenager in me started to make choices regarding what I liked (hair metal) and what I don't (Peking Opera). Back then cameras required film, and I was poor; so taking photos was not only an extremely hit-and-miss affair (I am in no way a photographer), but also very expensive and ultimately disappointing.

When I went on tour with Metallica, I managed to take about a roll of disposable camera shots, of which maybe 5 actually survived the developing process. They are of some road cases backstage with the cool old logo on them, mostly dark, very bad.

And unlike now when every tech and security guy is blasting off pictures 24/7 to social media on their handheld devices; when I started out that would have been seen as very rude, and a great way to get fired. So, long story short- no visual record of all those great times. I wish I had albums full of all the things I saw, people I met, places I went.

Enter Instagram.

For me, Instagram is a photo album that I post pictures (and MEMEs, sorry, I'm one of them!) to, and where like-minded nice people from all over the world who are friends with me do the same. We appreciate each others posts, comment, and enjoy a sense of community (I collect Ibanez guitars, and through IG have connected with not only some lovely fans of that brand, but also touring and recording artists who either favour or are sponsored by Ibanez).

It's basically my version of Facebook (which I don't belong to).

The best thing about it though, is that I can go back and look at what I was thinking about/looking at/doing/where I was going/who I was doing it with after the fact. I can see where I was a year ago. It's my visual diary. I post to it for me, and when people want to come along for the ride, well I think that's just great.

Last week i started getting trolled by an account with zero followers, set up with the sole intention of leaving offensive comments on my posts.
I wasn't upset at the things they said about me, but I was upset that someone would go to that much trouble and take time out of their lives just to write really stupid and socially unacceptable things on my Insta.

Apart from being utterly illegal in Australia (there are several State and Federal laws that prohibit internet bullying, especially comments that instruct a person to kill themselves), it's just a waste of time for everyone involved.

I have attached pics of some of their comments so you can get a feel for the mental level we're dealing with here.


It started when I was chatting to my friend Ritchie in the USA about how my rent is ridiculously high considering the landlords never fix anything that wears out or breaks. I told him I want to buy a farm. Now this is something I've been working toward for only a year now, so it's not happening anytime soon. But it is my dream.

The first thing I notice is this troll seems very angry, and they also appear to be quite focused on my age for some reason.

I can honestly say I have never "pry"ed on a girl in my life, although we all know they meant 'prey'. The disappointing truth is I haven't dated anyone in a long time, and actually turn any girls that ask me to come home with them down. I just don't care about relationships, and I have no interest in sex for sex's sake lately. I have dated girls in their 20's in the past, and they're the reason I don't want to any more. Because I don't need drama. Like this.

Calling me fat and old is fine. I am old to a lot of people. And I'm glad I am, because being young was a massive waste of time really. I like this stage of my life a lot more. A lot more. I'm not fat though. And even if I was, who cares?

I definitely have bad breath in the morning. So they got me there.

Broke? Nope. And again, how is that an insult? People in this country live better than 90% of the rest of the world, and I don't think that's a statistic we should be proud of. We have far too much wealth, mismanaged or otherwise. I did grow up broke, which is why I worked so hard to rise up out of it to where I am now. But calling someone that is so so stupid.

So now we have a sense of some of the insults that were tossed my way. I had a laugh, scratched my head for a minute thinking who could be so obsessed with me and why; realised who it was (someone I rejected repeatedly because they had one face to my face, and another behind my back; as well as a shopping list of character defects I simply wanted nothing to do with), and got on with being broke, fat, ugly, and preying on young girls.

But this post isn't about Charlotte Dawson, or my Insta troll. It's about everyone else.

Reading comments about Ms Dawson's death just blew my mind. The prevailing attitude wasn't something like "Wow- we should have mental health services that can cope with this, and a society that has enough intelligence to realise when you troll someone else, you're only embarrassing yourself".

Instead it was "If you don't like what people are saying about you on social media, delete your social media and get on with life."

Wow. Such idiocy. Much dumbass.

That is exactly like saying if you don't like people keying your car in the supermarket parking lot, to sell your car and stay in the house forever.

If you don't like graffiti on your wall, demolish your house and go somewhere else.

If you don't like being stabbed on the street, delete yourself and die.

Australia is the birthplace of "swallow a cup of concrete and harden the fuck up". It's the poster child for tough, irreverent men and women as window dressing/arm candy. It's a hard country, which was built on adversity, and the people (both first nation and colonists) adapted and got on with life.

At least, that's the Crocodile Dundee-meets-AFL view of it. But that doesn't address the issue that mental illness affects 1 in 3 Australians at some point in their lives. Suicide rates are unacceptably high, and the mental health system is long broken- releasing people with genuine health issues into the public to commit crimes, suffer needlessly, or die alone.

It also completely misses the point that if you have a social media platform that you enjoy innocuously using, you shouldn't have to delete it just because someone with a mental illness of their own decided it's fun to call you names and try to embarrass you publicly.

It's not a matter of 'hardening up', it's a matter of learning some respect for other people, and if you don't like a person; then don't go visiting their social media and showing everyone you can't spell and have shit for brains. And it's a matter for society as a whole to see the situation for what it is, and to stop raising trolls in the first place.

Studies show that trolls are people who feel powerless, and who feel the need to anonymously snipe at people from behind the safety of the internet. They hide behind computers and say mean or aggressive things because they can't say those things in real life. They're weak, they're sad, in short, they are mentally ill.

So imagine instead of just deleting our social media profiles, we addressed the problem and got the trolls the education and support they need, for the mental issues they have? And instead of telling each other to get over it, we admitted we have a massive problem with not only mental illness in Australia, but people's attitudes to it as well.

You can say "harden up" as much as you like, meanwhile teenagers are literally throwing themselves off high bridges, overdosing, and bleeding themselves to death. Not everyone knows not to take trolls seriously, or to see what their words actually mean, how they point back at the troll.

This is a real issue. Not because it happened to me- I've been through (much much) worse. But because people are dying for no reason, other than this country thinks there's something to be gained by suffering in silence.

Stop trying to act tough and try being human.

There's your synopsis.


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges!

There's nothing I like more than perspective.

I think it's a true gift of consciousness that we can not only experience this Universe (limited as our respective capacities may be), but that we can do so from multiple experiential viewpoints.

I can look a situation as it unfolds, a dog and a bird can see it too, and we all take different information from it. We even literally see it differently. And different people do the same- an older person with more experience, versus a younger person for example. 

Or a single Mother strung out after a year or more of hard core ice addiction, who turns to stripping/sex work to make money for her habit; while lying to herself that she's still a good Mother to the poor neglected child she had with a guy who is in prison for a few years. Pretty much everyone who isn't her can see how messed up that is, but she can't, because she can't afford to be real about herself.

Perspective.

I enjoy hearing about different perspectives when it comes to subjects that interest me. I'm addicted to comments sections in articles more than the articles. It never ceases to blow my mind how many different opinions there can be about even simple subjects. Granted, the majority of those opinions are baseless/short on facts and utterly subjective; but they do help to illustrate how many different ways a human mind can bend.

When I am having a personal crisis, or I'm not sure how I should think about a thing that is happening to me, I think "What would my Mother have said about this?", to marinate on a way of thinking I'm not advanced enough to create naturally, to get at that wisdom I'm not yet balanced enough to manufacture locally.

And it helps, it really straightens out the tangled headphones that life can be.

This is unrelated, but in the last month I have kicked a vicious soda addiction I've had for quite a few years. Those that know me know I was never shy when it came to hard drugs in the past, and I was shocked and amazed to see how hard the withdrawals from caffeine and sugar were! I was taking out my recycling and saw a huge number of 1.25 litre Pepsi bottles, and it kinda struck me how I'd turned into that guy who drank a bottle of soda every day. And I realised in that moment that I didn't want to be that guy. So I gave it up and have never looked back. I actually enjoy drinking water now, which is something I never thought would happen to me. And of course I've lost a huge amount of weight, which sucks because now I need new jeans.

I know I had a holiday in Hawaii and California less than six months ago, but I decided last week to have another one. As some of you know I make custom bikes for people, and I've been lucky enough to create a couple of passive revenue streams from it; enough that I don't have to work any more if I don't want to.

I'm not going anywhere this time, I'm going to stay at home, and just explore as many perspectives as I can regarding my life and what comes next in it. The only bikes I plan on building are going to be show bikes for my own edification- To try out some challenging designs and push the boundaries of the medium... to create some art that isn't made for sale, just for its own sake.

When I first came to Australia it was for work. Now I'm not working for bands any more, there's nothing keeping me here. I like it well enough, but maybe you'll know what I mean when I say it just doesn't feel like me. 

Here I have to push really hard to create the kind of culture I like to exist in, but in the USA that culture has existed independently for a long time. When I'm there, the people 'get me' a lot more, there's a conspicuous absence of tall poppy syndrome and the knee-jerk small town defensiveness that prevails here and in New Zealand. They don't ask stupid questions, they just know. And best of all, when I share the bikes I make with people in The States, they flip out and act like they've never seen anything so good (even though the style of bikes I make were originally created in California). 

I can go bush, ride motorcycles in the desert, and even make my own motorcycles out of junk and legally ride them on the road there. Australia is so overly regulated you have to fill out 3 forms just to take a crap in your own toilet.

When I go to a bar alone, I walk out with friends. Not people who are competitive/jealous/two-faced/shallow/dishonest. That obviously feels great. It's like people have their own lives to concentrate on, so they don't feel the need to tell me how to live mine. They recognize what I'm about, and want to get with it rather than fight against it. It's no wonder almost all of the best people in my life have all moved over there at some stage. They all know what I'm saying... they just had the good sense to make it happen sooner.

Of course, you're right. I'm generalizing. The thing is, the percentages are more favourable there than here. That's what it boils down to. So I have to ask myself, do I want to pack up my comfortable life here, and risk everything to start again?

If I was 25, I'd do it without blinking. But when I was 25, I wasn't anywhere near as settled and comfortable as I am now. It took a long time to get out of debt and build a home around myself, the easy path would be to just relax and enjoy what I have.

But I was never about the easy path.

I've had a bit of a personal revolution also- Any birthday after 30 used to feel like watching someone carve my headstone right there in front of me, but in the last couple of months I've suddenly grown into it. My body has changed, my face has changed. And I've realized I really like that. I've been a lot of places and seen a lot of things; but it's more than that- I've survived a lot. I've fought my way through a lot of situations most people luckily don't have to face. I've overcome more than a few unfavourable odds, and even come back from dying. So every line on my face has been earned, and I'm proud of that. 

I see the widening gulf between what I guess you'd call 'young people'- people in their 20's and 30's, and myself. The difference in priorities, the need for attention and validation. I used to absolutely live for those things, but I've come into this sense of being content around myself, and not needing applause or adoration so much any more. Actively not wanting it. I like the silence, I grow in the isolation. Some call that "old and boring", the thing is, if you get to that point, you realise there's nothing boring about it, and you wish you'd had the benefit of that perspective sooner :)

I could go off on a tangent here about how love/lust is just electro-chemistry designed by evolution to force you to procreate for the sake of the species. I could expand on the concept that social interaction is programmed behaviour to benefit our chances of finding a mate, and that noting about young people is actually original or inspired. (But I won't).

I've stopped caring about relationships. Granted, I went through quite a crazy and diaphanous journey to get to this point, but I've kinda just stopped caring about it. There isn't a relationship in my life that would have mattered had I not had it. They were fun at the time, or not, as the case may be. But none of them were necessary. And the only thing they taught me was that trying to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be just distracts you from growing into the person you're meant to become. ("Meant to be" in the sense of possibility and positivity as opposed to fate or the determination of a deity).

I don't want to date, I don't want to have anyone come into my space or take up my time. And it's not defensiveness or fear of rejection- I've just found something better. I've had a few unqualified people stop by my comments section lately with amateur analyses of my psychological state of being (without having a clue what the words they were using actually mean), and it helped me to see just how stupid the idea of needing to fit in with other people's thoughts are. 

They don't know me, they don't know much of anything really. And even if I sat down and explained everything that I am to them, they still wouldn't get it, because they're not speaking from logic or experience- they're speaking from emotion and their own limited understanding of lives outside of their own. I know me, I analyze me quite regularly, and I know the biggest problem people have with me is the rejection they experience when I see what a waste of time they are and simply move on. 

I don't try and argue or fight, I simply close the book and never look back. And when that happens, suddenly I become all manner of names and insults. And in their attempts to try and make sense of how someone they see as below them could not adore them or care about their ever-so-important thoughts and opinions of me, they just cannot get their heads around the fact they're just not that interesting or important. Especially if they show me a side to them that is repulsive enough to make me not want to have anything to do with them again.

The only person in my entire life that I miss is my old best buddy Drew, who was a few years older than me, and had such great perceptions of the world, it was such a privilege to be present when he shared them. But lovers? I don't miss them. Sorry, but there it is.

Special mention has to go out to my ex Zoe, who died by suicide. I miss her very much, the person she was, her perspectives, and intelligence. I don't miss our relationship, but she was personally great.

I don't crave amazing looks and toned bodies and fame and popularity and acceptance. I crave great minds, original thoughts, off-grid personalities, isolation and privacy.  Beauty is boring, predictable, and interchangeable. Personality, honesty, character, integrity- those things are so rare and precious. And youth equals idiocy. I couldn't care less what kids in their 20's think about anything. Because until you pass those years by, you still don't know anything.

This world has it all ass-backwards.

I believe life just is.

There's no meaning to it, no deity to regulate it, and nothingness both before and after it. I don't fear my death, because in all the countless years this Universe has existed, up until my fertilisation, my zygote stage, my embryonic stage, my birth... in all those years I was dead. I didn't exist. 

Sure, my components were floating around, just as all future babies already exist in parts.

But I had no consciousness, no cohesive 'me'.

And so one day I will return to that state of (non) being, and once again feel nothing, have no opinions or abilities. And I like that.

When I was in my 20's I was obsessed with creating a legacy- music/art/whatever. Something that would go on living after I disappear. Now I feel opposed to that. I want to disappear! I don't care about being remembered, of being loved. It's all meaningless... as I mentioned before, just electrochemistry.

But rather than being a nihilist and getting depressed, I feel set free by that knowledge!

I have this accidental and entirely random life, this blip of consciousness before my component parts return to the Universe to become other things (some of which statistically speaking will not be very pleasant!) And that's great. But there's no pressure to achieve anything, no mandate to change anything.

The only thing that is important to me is to enjoy this life, whatever it is, and to not hurt anyone else while I'm at it.

So rather than fearing the day I turn 50 years old, and mourning the passing of the body I had when I was 25; I'm looking forward to seeing what perspective I've reached, what wisdom I've accumulated. the independence I've cultivated, the self-reliance I've come to enjoy so much, and the temporary nature of all that is me.

And I'm lucky enough to be in a position to just relax and marinate on my thoughts for a few months, and to make the decision of where in space/time I decide to move this bundle of consciousness, and all of the wires and machinery that it rides around in.

On a side note, people pop up on my Instagram, twitter, and even real life; and they tell me they've been reading this for years but never comment.

I just want to say hi to you guys, and that I appreciate that you would want to take time out of your life to read the rambling crap I post up on here... Sometimes I read back on my old stuff and I feel pretty embarrassed by it, but I don't take it down because this blog has been like a road map of my life. It's authentic, and the warts are a legitimate part of that.

So whatever you're doing, and whoever you are, I'd like to send you some energy and appreciation for sharing your time with my words. The words don't care, but I do.

Horns up!


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.