When I was fourteen I created a somewhat viral petition in the metal community to be 'against' Sharon Osbourne which got picked up by the media, culminating with me receiving an email from Jeanette Walls at MSNBC asking me if I'd like to be interviewed for her gossip story of the week column.
It was 2005 and Ozzfest's USA run with Iron Maiden sub-headlining was drawing to a close. Bruce had been disrespecting the Osbournes and talking shit about the tour throughout its entire run (because he's kind of a douchebag) and on the final night, in San Bernadino, Sharon and management decided to take revenge on the band. They planted dozens of people in the crowd to throw eggs, having members of other bands on the tour come out to flip the band off, and cutting their PA a couple of times too. It disrupted the entire show, cutting it short which was a massive shame for the fans who showed up for the band. But really, at my core I was just a colossal Maiden fanboy who wasn't handling the disrespect one bit. In spite of the fact I was not at the gig in question; truth be told, I''d never so much as set foot in either a Maiden show or the United States at that point. Just a pasty, sheltered mosher living up in a pokey corner of Scotland. So I dealt with my feelings in the only logical way - by creating a massive, mealy-mouted and aimless petition called 'metal fans against Sharon Osbourne'. It didn't really have any set goal like kicking her off the management for a touring festival that she actually owns, nah, it was just an attempt to give her the finger.
Anyway, I spread it far and wide and got everybody I knew to sign it, and before long it had picked up traction by itself. Places I used to frequent at that age; blabbermouth.net, the Download festival forums, the Iron Maiden bulletin board, I began seeing it get shared by random people, people I'd never met or had any contact with. By now the number of signatures attained was close to four thousand, within a couple of days, and it had become the second most popular petition on the site, beating out countless important humanitarian causes... anyway, at a certain point, perhaps around day five I check my email for something related to an essay I had to finish and I notice I've had some random email sent to me two days prior by a woman called Jeanette Walls, mentioning the petition in the subject line. I expected it to be someone sending me hate but she turned out to be the writer for MSNBC's Gossip of the Week column at that time, and she wanted to make it all about the weird uprising I'd created with my petition. She wanted to interview me, clearly oblivious to my age or location, but I agreed without bothering to mention either. It was fun and exciting; I didn't tell my parents but I told all my most metal friends. We were pumped, the metal community and its perspective*** were about to get some attention and it was all because of us and this dumb petition!
Next day I finally get a response, not from Jeanette this time by someone else - a guy, I think - which didn't say much, merely apologised and informed that the piece about my petition had already been submitted. It had gone ahead without my interview, and would appear on the website that weekend. So it's a minor bummer but we're all excited nevertheless, even though we half-expected it to be yet another piece about dumb and weird metalheads. Not that we weren't exactly that. But we were also fourteen and metal was basically a religion for us, there was a powerful emotional connection with the genre. You ever see those burly guys in the front rows at Manowar shows bawling their eyes out as The Crown and The Ring blasts over the PA? That made total and complete sense to us (still kind of does tbf). When the article dropped we were prepared for it to say absolutely anything, and of course, it did exactly what we expected. We were dumb, fickle metalheads with weird priorities, disrespecting the wise and mighty Sharon Osbourne and making no meaningful reference to what had happened at the San Bernadino show. Iron Maiden were barely mentioned; the angle was 100% 'why are all these metal fans suddenly uniting to rage against Sharon Osbourne?'. In any case the narrative arc had been completed and we all moved onto new banter within a few days. I actually forgot it even happened for a while.
Other stuff's happened to me in my life. I've had flying fish crash into my face, sang badly in front of thousands of people, been detained by fake Cambodian police, taught the Vietnamese defense minister's daughter English, met several of my heroes and had thoroughly positive experiences... but that Sharon Osbourne hate movement I started for a hot minute is definitely the weirdest.
Sorry for the length of this post, I know it's not super-crazy but it's the first time I've ever typed it up and I kind of just wanted to have it all down.
*** this perspective is handily summarised by the Dream Evil song 'The Book of Heavy Metal' found
here
