Remember when you were young and you did really dumb stuff all the time? You may actually be young now and in the process of doing dumb stuff, but if you’re, say, over the age of 30, you’re probably very happy that all those dumb things are not living online for eternity. Billy, a young Australian fisherman, is in the middle of an internet shit storm after doing one of those super dumb things, then posting it on social media. He used a dead shark as a bong, filmed it, and decided to let the world see him doing it. Can you even believe that?
Ol’ Billy is part of a group of guys involved with a Facebook group called “Fried Fishing” which, as you may well have picked up on, is a few guys who do dumb shit involving weed and fish. But there is no anger like mob anger, and Billy is like a man buried to his neck getting stoned (pun intended) by the mob.
“All living creatures have a right to exist, what you did was f—— disgraceful! I feel sorry for your family and friends being associated with you!” one woman yelled with her thumbs through her phone screen.
“More animal abuse by anglers,” wrote Blue Planet Society on Twitter. “Recreational fishing needs far stricter regulation.”
“Disrespectful young man shows no respect at all for the baby shark,” wrote another Twitter user, @Jeriruben161. “Using the babys body as a bong, how disrespectful can any one be? [sic]”
Billy, however, is standing up for himself. According to him, the shark was, “caught by my mate when we were fishing for mangrove jacks on Friday.”
He claims the shark had been dead for days, which, as far as I can see, isn’t what people are mad about. “After two nights left in the icebox, I came up with the idea,” he wrote. “There is no possible way it was alive.”
He also (hilariously) claims that he wasn’t smoking weed out of the baby shark, but just casual bowl of tobacco. “It was tobacco,” he wrote. “I’d happily take a drug test to prove [it].”
After the backlash, Billy has decided that maybe social media ain’t the greatest place for him to be for the time being.
“I never thought I’d have to do this,” he wrote, “but today has become too much. Four admins run this page and all of us have spent our whole day filtering removing and coping with abusive messages as far as death threats, due to the fact of false media that I never got to put a comment in. I started FriedFishing sitting around a fire drinking beers doing dumb stuff and we thought we would start filming it and it grew into a place where like-minded people had a laugh and enjoyed it. I personally talk to a lot of guys from my page and have made great friends, but due to today’s recent events, I have to walk away from social media my mental health is way more important.”
Update: It appears that Ol’ Billy has come to his senses and removed the video from social media.
