{"id":287225,"date":"2026-01-16T08:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/287225\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T08:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:21:07","slug":"i-hate-the-dublin-bushman-and-his-scaring-of-young-women-for-money-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/287225\/","title":{"rendered":"I hate the Dublin Bushman and his scaring of young women for money \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

My list of enemies is long and most of them don\u2019t know they\u2019re on it. Because 99 per cent of them probably don\u2019t know I exist. I like to keep my feuds one-sided, long distance and inconsequential. <\/p>\n

There are all the writers of the poems<\/a> 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\u2019s not a very long list of adversaries. <\/p>\n

But right at the top is my sworn lifelong nemesis \u2013 yer man who dresses up as a bush and jumps out at people to scare them in Dublin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People say hate is a strong word. That\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cit\u2019s just a laugh\u201d brigade firing up their laptops while texting the \u201chave a sense of humour\u201d WhatsApp group. I understand that people find it funny to watch others being scared. The screams. The nervous little \u201chaha you got me\u201d laugh. That\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not too proud to admit he\u2019s got me more than once, and I did not find it funny. It turns out my fight-or-flight response is all \u201cfight\u201d. My lizard brain saw a strange, big man lunging at me and hit a switch. Thankfully, I didn\u2019t smack him in the face, but I did engage in some light to medium verbal abuse. <\/p>\n

Because I don\u2019t like women being scared on city streets for entertainment. It\u2019s already scary enough for women when we go out in public. We don\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n

It is mostly women being scared on the bushman\u2019s YouTube channel. Often it\u2019s images of young and attractive ones mid-scare that are chosen as the video\u2019s 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\u2019t begrudge his success, I just wish it wasn\u2019t built on scaring women for clicks. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brianna Parkins: I\u2019m using my house deposit to freeze my eggsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Mr Bushman has admitted that some people, shockingly, \u201cdon\u2019t like\u201d being scared. \u201cNot everybody has the same humour,\u201d 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\u2019re ducking out to pick a few bits from the St Stephen\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

I also have the same level of pettiness possessed by 50 Cent. I cannot take the high road if I\u2019ve 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: \u201cThis man is pretending to be a bush to scare you!\u201d to passersby. <\/p>\n

No content for you today, buddy. Not on my watch. But someone else might have uploaded a video titled \u201cCrazy Australian Woman Yelling About Bushes #FUNNY!!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My list of enemies is long and most of them don\u2019t know they\u2019re on it. Because 99 per…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,49873,18,13,14,2215,6,19,17,11,12,361,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-287225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-brianna-parkins","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-for-you","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-magazine","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115903810643440374","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}