Modest Mouse guitarist Simon O’Connor has responded to allegations that he sent inappropriate messages to a minor on Instagram.
The claims emerged over the weekend on Reddit, where screenshots suggest a fan who has liked his posts received a DM from the musician with a meme saying “SIMON calls your bluff BUZZ”, alongside a picture of people playing the game Simon Says. The second screenshot shows him seemingly sending a suggestive meme, before apologising, to which the fan replied that she assumed he had been hacked.
O’Connor is shown replying: “Wish I was hacked just had a party night and looking at everything with one eye ya know.” She then wrote: “ohh boy get a good night of sleep.” He replied, “But you did blindside me with a gaggle of likes and then very little intro besides bikini pics so we are both to blame.” That message was unsent, followed by another that read, “I did it again.”
The fan also showed a screenshot that showed he had viewed a post of a countdown to her 17th birthday. In the Reddit post that preceded the screenshots, the person wrote: “For context I am currently 17 years old but this happened right before my birthday, so I was still 16. I have a public Instagram but its very niche, I’ve been following bands I like for a while so I have been following Simon for a few years.”
The post continued: “Late at night I checked stories and I spam liked whatever it was Simon had put on his story. He came into my DMs and sent me an erotic image (to say the least) while giving me the excuse he had been partying or whatever, continuing to message me. My age is the first thing in my bio. I reached out to several people within the indie music fandom and nobody with a platform cared. I think more people should know about this. I’m hesitant to put screenshots here but I do have them!”
Simon O’Connor responded to the allegations on the same platform, writing: “Throughout my adult life, there has been a person who has popped up from time to time with the intention of, for lack of a better term, messing with me. This person creates multiple social media accounts and deletes them… but always posts similar photos that I often recognize from previous accounts. After a long night, I picked my phone up to discover that a similar profile had been interacting (“likes” to be specific) with some of my Instagram posts and stories. I assumed that this was the same person I had dealt with before and, with poor judgement, I decided to reach out with a tasteless meme, a sticker that read ‘Simon calls your bluff,’ and an attempt to indicate that I recognized the ‘barrage of likes’ and similar photo content from the previous profiles…. Almost a ‘gotcha.’”
He continued: “After a few minutes, I realised that I had made a mistake and this was not the person who I had dealt with before. I unsent the messages and immediately ceased communication. I’m genuinely sorry to the person who received those messages. They didn’t deserve to be put in that position, and I’m sorry for the stress and attention this has brought them. I know some people will choose not to believe me, and I understand that. I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is tell the truth, take responsibility for my mistake, and apologise.”
Simon O’Connor has been a member of Modest Mouse since 2021, contributing to the album ‘An Eraser And A Maze’ which was released in June.
