—But this is the sort of thing that upset me. It still does…
He holds out more printouts, filled with tweets and Facebook and Instagram posts. I am amazed at the hundreds, if not thousands of horrible messages that I see, all directed at Skexxixx himself or else mentioning him:
‘Would love to attack that fag Skexxixx with a claw-hammer’; ‘Watch it you cunt, you’re FUCKIN DEAD’.
I ask what it was, if anything, he thinks sparked these comments. Skexxixx looks irritated and I fear he might be about to walk out. I need to be a little more careful.
—This. Something like this was what ‘sparked’ all that hate.
His hands are shaking as he shows me his own tweet asking people to donate money to a bereavement charity.
—See, you’re making out like I provoked these people, like, I said something to upset them. It’s not the fucking case. And these messages come whether I tweet something or not now. They’re relentless. And you know what, there’s only a small number of them out there – one or two who make it their fucking life’s work to try and get to me. And it’s working. Because every time they tell me I’m shit, a little bit of me believes it. You’re probably thinking, ‘Oh, poor baby’, but it’s true man, it’s fucking true. Every time they tell me I should die, that little black place inside me tells me that yes, it was my fault Olli died; it tells me I should die. Sometimes I don’t have the will to rise above it.
OK, you really want to know why I think it happens? My theory is because it doesn’t fit the story, does it? It doesn’t slot into the narrative – Mr ‘Embrace Your Nothing’ wanting to help. That’s why I tried to disappear again. I thought fuck the music, man, fuck it all. People don’t deserve it. People are just going to see me as this animal.
—Have you ever tried reporting them? Finding out who they are? Getting the law involved?
—But then they win. That’s how they win – they get you to react. That’s a victory for them.
—And you? What do you do with it all?
—I’m the fucking king Satan, aren’t I? I deserve it, right?
The man is visibly rattled. It seems like all this has aged him, even in the last few minutes of our interview. He’s breathing hard, and I hate to say it, but I feel a little nervous in front of him. I’m sat here seeing some of that old persona straining to come out – the media’s devil-man. I am not sure what to say. I think changing the subject might be the best plan. But I’m flustered and blurt out something that I’ve been planning to build to.
—Can I ask you something about Through the Mocking Glass?
—Sure, go ahead.
—Who are the black-eyed boys and girls in ‘Dead-Eyed March’?
There is a long and terrible silence. It goes on for one whole minute plus eight seconds; I know because I’ve checked the audio. It feels like a lot longer. In that time, Skexxixx glares at me, unblinking. I remember dropping my eyes and flushing with guilt, with shame. What did I expect him to say? To expand on the rumours that circulated about his own experiences with the black-eyed kids? These stories are the subject of online debate and theory the world over. As if he’s just going to tell all to me, here and now … And in that minute, a crushing voice inside me tells me that what I’m asking is simply stupid; that we all have our demons, our ghosts who follow us throughout our lives. Sometimes we can shake them, scatter them behind us like leaves, and sometimes we just have to endure them, allow them to stay attached to us like shadows on a dying day.
I wish I could eat my words. I wish I could take them back.
At last he looks up and speaks.
—I think you’re asking the wrong kind of questions…
After this exchange, Skexxixx’s UK publicist informs us our time is up. The man himself gets up and shuffles away, a single hand raised in farewell. He doesn’t even look back.
I am left to return home and mull over what Skexxixx has told me. I have sympathy for the man. I can’t imagine what it’s like to suffer the death of a child and then to have that used as ammunition to bait you; to be blamed and punished simply because you are in the public eye. I can, however, empathise with his experience of online abuse. After episode five went out, the abuse I received on social media became impossible to control, and that’s why the Six Stories Twitter account has been shut down and I no longer administrate the Facebook page. Like Skexxixx says, when they tell you that you deserve to die, a little part of you believes it.
As a result, a rather large part of me now understands why someone like Arla might have felt such an affinity with an artist like Skexxixx. We often forget that a singer, a writer, a celebrity, is a person too. Buried beneath the image is a person who feels the same rejection as the rest of us. I wonder if Skexxixx knows how much solace, how much comfort, his music must have provided to Arla, how it must have made her feel. I hope he hears this and I hope I can assure him that, while listening to his music, Arla Macleod and many others felt that perhaps they were not so alone in the world. I wonder how knowing this would make him feel.
So far this series, we have been looking at the case of Arla Macleod – the Macleod Massacre of 2014. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I am fully aware of the reports concerning Arla’s suicide in Elmtree Manor. It is not my place to discuss the perceived failings of the system, or of Arla’s doctors, therapists and the other staff who were responsible for her. The inquest about her death is ongoing, as far as I’m aware. But I’m also aware of the new pressure that this has placed on me in my reporting of the case. Because her death begs a number of questions; why did Arla agree to talk to me in the first place? Was Arla allowed access to this podcast? And if so, why? From what I can gather, Elmtree Manor is careful about what kinds of media it allows its patients to have. For example, any news reports are used only to stimulate discussion, not just piped in to fill the silence. And patients’ therapists work with their families and use their discretion to decide what media they can be exposed to.
Doctor-patient confidentiality means it has proved impossible to find out whether it was deemed appropriate for her to listen to Six Stories. If she was, maybe it was part of her therapy? We’ll never know.
There’s a lot of speculation around this issue. I have made myself available to the police, should they want to discuss anything they deem relevant to the case.
But we must move on. We must conclude this sorry tale. For this, the final episode of the series, will attempt to tie up at least some of the loose ends and give us a degree of closure in the case of Arla Macleod.
If that’s possible.
I talked to Skexxixx at the start of the episode about what’s known as ‘trolling’.
Trolls often like to stress that the reasons behind their taunting and harassment of people online is simply about humour. However, in recent times, the rise of the troll’s darker purposes – such as those described by Skexxixx and countless other people in the public eye – has become more prominent.
An academic study in Canada surveyed a group of people who fit the troll archetype – male with an average age of twenty-nine – about their online behaviour. The study showed that, of the fifty-nine percent of these men who actively comment on websites, a tenth said that ‘trolling’ other users was their preferred behaviour. The study also found that enjoyment of trolling is associated with sadism – the pleasure taken in causing pain to others, which is often seen in sex offenders and serial killers. For me, this finding makes a degree of sense.
Common advice online is ‘Don’t feed the trolls’. Like with playground bullies such a tactic denies trolls the reaction they’re looking for. And so far, that has been working for me – online at least. However, the vicious text messages and threats I have been receiving go way beyond simple trolling, making me wonder what exactly it is that my personal troll wants.
I have asked several times on this show for an open dialogue with the troll who was threatening me, but my efforts have been to no avail. I thought that th
e interview with Skexxixx might offer me some sort of motive for their continued harassment, but it didn’t. However, I have recently begun to empathise with Skexxixx – meaning I understand his desire to disappear. With Arla Macleod’s suicide, publicity around this series has been kicked up a big notch. However, like Skexxixx I have turned down all media interviews, trying to keep myself as far as possible from the public eye.
In fact, out of respect for her dead family, for everyone affected by the actions of Arla Macleod, and because the harassment I was receiving was getting ever more vicious, I nearly decided to cut this season short – to apologise and vanish for a while. Leave the end of this series splintered like the edge of a broken stick. Or a bone.
But then I got a phone call.
And everything changed.
The following interview took a little while to edit.
The following interview did not take place on my terms.
I’ll be honest and tell you I was in two minds whether to put it out at all. But, as Six Stories’ focus must always remain on the case at hand, I have decided that I will air it.
As I’ve said many times before, Six Stories is not about me. My interviewee, however, has made it that way – making this particular series more about me than I am, or ever would be, comfortable with.
By contrast, I am not allowed to identify my interviewee. Apparently he’s a big deal in the dark recesses of the internet, but I haven’t heard of him. I guess that shows how much I know. Maybe it also shows my age.
If I were to reveal the name of this person, I will apparently be ‘doxxed’. This means that my personal details, address, phone number – everything about me – will be shared online. It is not for egotistical reasons that I don’t want this to happen. It is simply that, if just anyone can find me, I will be exposed to significant personal risk. I have been shown that this person somehow really does know everything about me. So it is on his terms that our interview progresses.
Yet I cannot and will not hide my disgust. The ‘free speech’ that my interviewee waxes lyrical about gives me that right. So I will refer to him henceforth as only what he is: a troll. Nothing more.
—Our first … sorry, my first trophy was the king of self-pitying narcissism himself. The man who names himself, aptly, after a puppet in a film – Skexxixx.
—What do you mean by ‘trophy’?
—It made the news. So…
—So?
—So I won a prize.
—Which was?
—Which was none of your business.
—I spoke to Skexxixx personally, in the flesh. I know the effect that it had on him, what you and your followers did. How heroic and courageous of you.
—My heart bleeds for the little snowflake. I hope he took a long, relaxing soak in a bath of fifty-pound notes. I’m sure he’s devastated. The guy’s made ridiculous money – from suing newspapers and churches, I may add, rather than his vapid attempt at music.
—You were making jokes about his stillborn baby. You – and whoever your harem was – were relentlessly attacking him for no reason. I’ve seen the things you all wrote.
—Oh Christ, open your eyes, sheeple, the grief-hungry media are desperate to promote people like him to propel awful examples of humanity to some sort of god-like status. It’s pathetic.
—I’m sorry, what? This was about his child.
—It wasn’t though. It was about the media portraying him as a victim. He was an advocate of being ‘broken’ wasn’t he? – ‘Embrace your nothing’, being ‘empty’, that was his whole aesthetic, right? But only when it suited him. Only to get more publicity. I’m glad he wasn’t able to have a child to be honest. What would that kid have grown up like?
—Why Skexxixx though?
—It was easy, to be fair. People like him are asking for it. A washed-up rock star who’s supposed to be controversial now doing good in a vain attempt to raise his shattered profile. I had to show his deluded ‘fans’ that he was actually ‘nothing’. His charity world, it was all a sham.
—But what did any of it have to do with you?
—I was tired of him, tired of arguing with his devotees. They all thought he was some sort of deity from another dimension. It was pathetic. Don’t get me wrong, he highlighted issues. But someone like him was not the right messenger. Someone else should have done it. The thing with people like him is that he liked to promote mental illness as somehow fashionable. Look at all the forums dedicated to discussing his puerile lyrics, his second-rate Alice Cooper image. His whole message was that a broken person is far more interesting than someone who’s getting help. People like him use their influence to perpetuate people’s problems. It’s sick. There are vulnerable people out there who believed the rubbish he wrote about things from other worlds.
Leave people’s brains to the professionals.
—You mean people like you?
—I didn’t say that. You said that.
—Would you agree though?
—It’s not for me to say. I’m not a rockstar, I’m just a voice for those who feel underrepresented.
—OK, if that’s what you proclaim, why not express it in a constructive way instead of trolling people? That just seems a little vulgar, a little immature.
—I’ll express myself in whichever way I see fit. Sometimes you have to lower yourself to someone else’s level in order to have a proper discussion with them.
—It sounds like you engaged a lot with Skexxixx’s own fans. Why even bother?
—My point exactly. Free speech allows me to say whatever I like on whatever platform I choose.
—So you felt that you needed to ‘shut down’ someone like Skexxixx?
—Not someone like him; him. Entirely. And I did. We did. The more of those type of agendas we can shut down the better. That’s the media; that’s celebrities, musicians. All of them are obsessed with their own image, with how they come across to everyone else. Skexxixx thought he was controversial. Honestly, I’ve seen more controversy in a dishrag. He invited me and my followers to listen to him. He invited his own ‘dead-eyed march’. And then he learned a lesson.
—Yes. I know. But you and your followers also got a man killed.
—Whoa, whoa there. Hold up. No. Show me the evidence for that. Show me the evidence that I got someone killed.
—You sent the details of a man to a paedophile hunting group who then wrongly accused him of chatting online to children. He subsequently commi—
—Stop right there. I didn’t do a thing … personally. And I asked you to show me the evidence.
—Why Albert Marsh though? Why him? What did he do that you know and I don’t?
—I have no idea.
—You sent me a text telling me that this is what you are capable of. You don’t possibly mean you did that solely to taunt me.
—If I did it at all … You see, you don’t have any evidence whatsoever to connect me to that.
—I have the text messages.
—That someone sent you from a number that isn’t this one. That wasn’t me. I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that’s that you’re starting to piss me off.
—My heart bleeds.
—Don’t get cocky with me. I promise you, if you keep going, you won’t enjoy the consequences. The problem is, I know everything about you, but you know only what I choose to tell you about me.
—It doesn’t take a genius to work out who you are. Your on-screen alias isn’t foolproof.
—True, but the thing is, I can make your life incredibly difficult. If someone was to doxx you, Scott, it’s like a plague – like fleas or bedbugs. If the internet turns on you, it’s impossible to escape. You don’t want that to happen. You don’t want to suffer what is called, I believe, a ‘consciousness mob’ like our friend Skexxixx, do you?
—What on earth is that supposed to mean?
—Allegedly it’s an organisation of like-minded people who like to subvert – to make people think.
; —Like a flash mob? Controversial.
—No, idiot. Like people who are sick of being served up the same old bullshit actually fighting back.
—For example?
—For example, you remember the ‘killer clown’ thing a couple years back – people dressing up as clowns and scaring the fuck out of the general public? It was worldwide, it was organised, it was orchestrated. That, my friend, was a ‘consciousness mob’.
—And what, pray tell, was the point of that exactly? A vulgar display of power?
—I wonder how you would cope if it was happening to you? If the world as you know it began to close in around you and there was nothing you could do? What do you think might be the next one Scott – the next ‘consciousness mob’?
—How about BEKs – black-eyed kids? Your followers would only need some novelty contact lenses. Some masks. Some clothes from the dress-up box.
—You said it Scott, not me.
—Why did you call me? Why did you want to appear on Six Stories?
—Think of it as a favour. What exactly were you going to put in this final episode? Whose story were you going to tell? You had nothing and I stepped in to save you. You should be thanking me.
—What do you have to do with Arla Macleod?
—I’m talking about you.
—Me?
—The thing is, with these sorts of stories, the sheep don’t make the news, the wolves do.
—Is that what you’re after? Fame? This seems like a pretty messed-up way to get it.
—The thing is, I know they’ll probably catch me – the authorities, whatever. Like you say, it doesn’t take a genius to track me down. But whatever happens, even if they do find evidence they can pin on me, at least I’ll be remembered. I am only one head of the monster.
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