Modest Mouse guitarist Simon O’Connor has been accused of sending inappropriate messages to a minor on Instagram.
The allegations were made over this past weekend on Reddit and included screenshots that allege he sent a sexually explicit meme to the 16-year-old fan and a suggestive message about her “bikini pics.”
O’Connor has responded to the allegations by saying he mistook the fan’s account for that of someone else who has been following him.
The claims emerged on Reddit when the fan shared screenshots of her conversation with O’Connor. After liking the guitarist’s posts, the fan had received a DM from the guitarist that said “SIMON calls your bluff BUZZ”, alongside a picture of people playing the game Simon Says. A second screenshot included a suggestive meme. O’Connor then sent an apology, to which the fan said she assumed his account had been hacked.
“Wish I was hacked just had a party night and looking at everything with one eye ya know,” O’Connor replied. The fan responded, “ohh boy get a good night of sleep.”
Connor then wrote, “But you did blindside me with a gaggle of likes and then very little intro besides bikini pics so we are both to blame.“ He then unsent the message and sent another that read, ”I did it again.“
The fan wrote that although she is now 17, this had happened while she was 16. She also shared a screenshot showing O’Connor had viewed a post of a countdown to her 17th birthday.
“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, ive been following bands i like for a while so i have been following simon for a few years. 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. im hesitant to put screenshots here but i do have them!”
O’Connor responded to the allegations in a Reddit post of his own, saying he thought the fan was another person who has repeatedly reached out to him through social media accounts.
“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.” After a few minutes, I realized 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 apologize.”
O’Connor joined Modest Mouse in 2021 and contributed to their latest album, An Eraser and a Maze, released this past June.
