My list of enemies is long and most of them don’t know they’re on it. Because 99 per cent of them probably don’t know I exist. I like to keep my feuds one-sided, long distance and inconsequential.

There are all the writers of the poems I had to analyse for school exams. The umpire who cost me a netball final in 2005. The person who put bra hooks on the back, not the front. It’s not a very long list of adversaries.

But right at the top is my sworn lifelong nemesis – yer man who dresses up as a bush and jumps out at people to scare them in Dublin.

People say hate is a strong word. That’s why I use it. I know I should save up my hate for something worthy like racism. But luckily for me, I have a deep well of displeasure in my heart, with more than enough to go around for everyone.

I hate the bushman. Or rather what he does, which is scaring people, filming it and monetising it on the internet. I can already hear the “it’s just a laugh” brigade firing up their laptops while texting the “have a sense of humour” WhatsApp group. I understand that people find it funny to watch others being scared. The screams. The nervous little “haha you got me” laugh. That’s how the bushman has amassed 1.12 million followers on YouTube, and one very half-assed and non-threatening enemy, in the form of me.

I’m not too proud to admit he’s got me more than once, and I did not find it funny. It turns out my fight-or-flight response is all “fight”. My lizard brain saw a strange, big man lunging at me and hit a switch. Thankfully, I didn’t smack him in the face, but I did engage in some light to medium verbal abuse.

Because I don’t like women being scared on city streets for entertainment. It’s already scary enough for women when we go out in public. We don’t need a man to go to the trouble of ordering costumes off the internet and jumping out at us to get our cortisol levels spiked.

We are always acutely aware that what has happened to too many women could happen to us. All it takes is just one opportunistic predator. We can’t guarantee our safety 100 per cent of the time. So all we can do is be vigilant. To scan for threats. To ask our friends to text us when they’re home. To get taxis over chancing a walk at night. Every headline about an attack on a woman puts us on high alert. We think about them when a man walks behind us too closely at night. He probably means no harm, but we cannot risk our life on that bet. We cannot afford to assume the best in strange men on a dark street.

It is mostly women being scared on the bushman’s YouTube channel. Often it’s images of young and attractive ones mid-scare that are chosen as the video’s thumbnail, the thing designed to entice people into watching. He told a journalist last year that this is now his full-time job and he employs a team of five. I don’t begrudge his success, I just wish it wasn’t built on scaring women for clicks.

[ Brianna Parkins: I’m using my house deposit to freeze my eggsOpens in new window ]

Mr Bushman has admitted that some people, shockingly, “don’t like” being scared. “Not everybody has the same humour,” he said. The problem is not people having the same humour, but the same life. People sign up to be terrified when they go on a ghost train, not when they’re ducking out to pick a few bits from the St Stephen’s Green Dunnes. The bushman does not ask people if they have been abused before he scares them. He has no way of knowing if they have PTSD, or a history of domestic or sexual violence. That his prank might rob them of feeling safe in their body and hours spent trying to calm their nervous system. Which is a lifelong work after trauma. I know.

I also have the same level of pettiness possessed by 50 Cent. I cannot take the high road if I’ve been wronged, I will meet you on the subterranean basement parking level -6. So when I was last in Dublin, I clocked the bushman and stood beside him. With the same urgency and passion as a ye olde town crier warning that the British were invading, I yelled: “This man is pretending to be a bush to scare you!” to passersby.

No content for you today, buddy. Not on my watch. But someone else might have uploaded a video titled “Crazy Australian Woman Yelling About Bushes #FUNNY!!”