Simon O’Connor blamed a 16-year-old’s bikini photos as the reason why he sent her sexually explicit memes

Trigger warning: This article discusses inappropriate messages sent to a minor and sexually explicit material.

Modest Mouse guitarist Simon O’Connor has been dumped from the band’s upcoming tour after screenshots showed him sending a sexually explicit meme to a 16-year-old fan, commenting on her bikini photos and then suggesting that they were somehow “both to blame”.

Now O’Connor is attempting to explain the whole thing away as an unfortunate case of mistaken identity involving an alleged internet troll who has apparently been “messing with” him for years.

It is an impressively complicated explanation for something that should have been extremely simple: a man in his 40s should not send sexually explicit material to a teenage fan.

And he certainly should not look at her beach photos, drag them into the conversation and imply that she helped cause his behaviour.

How Simon O’Connor was exposed

The story did not begin with a newspaper investigation, a record-label announcement or somebody inside the music industry deciding to protect a teenage girl.

It began on Reddit.

The fan, who is now 17, posted in the Modest Mouse subreddit that the interaction happened shortly before her birthday while she was still 16. She said she had followed O’Connor for several years and had liked several of his Instagram Stories late one evening. Her age, she said, was displayed prominently in her public Instagram biography.

According to the screenshots she later uploaded, O’Connor entered her direct messages with a sticker reading, “SIMON calls your bluff BUZZ”, followed by a sexually explicit meme featuring a naked man.

The teenager initially assumed that his account had been hacked. O’Connor reportedly corrected her, writing that he wished he had been hacked but had simply experienced a “party night” and was looking at everything with one eye.

Already, not ideal.

But it was his next message that made the entire interaction far more disturbing.

O’Connor reportedly 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 deleted that message and followed it with:

“I did it again”

The fan said one of the Instagram Stories O’Connor had viewed contained an obvious countdown to her 17th birthday. In other words, this was not an account presenting itself as a mysterious adult woman. The material identifying her as a teenager was reportedly sitting directly in front of him.

The exact date of the original exchange has not been publicly established. What the fan has consistently said is that it happened shortly before she turned 17.

Nobody cared until she produced screenshots

The teenager also revealed that she had already attempted to tell people in the indie music community about the messages.

According to her Reddit post, she contacted several people with platforms but received little meaningful interest. It was only when she posted publicly, offered screenshots and allowed strangers to start circulating the story that anyone with influence began paying attention.

That detail deserves more attention than it has received.

Women and girls are constantly told to speak up. Then, when they do, they discover that “speaking up” only counts if they arrive with screenshots, timestamps, witnesses, a perfectly ordered timeline and enough public attention to make continued silence embarrassing.

The music industry did not suddenly care because the interaction had become morally unacceptable. It became professionally inconvenient.

Once the screenshots started spreading, O’Connor could no longer quietly delete his messages and move along.

O’Connor’s explanation has a mysterious troll, a long night and plenty of missing pieces

O’Connor eventually appeared in the Modest Mouse subreddit to explain himself. A moderator confirmed that the account posting the response belonged to him. (Reddit)

He began by saying he “unequivocally” opposed sexual behaviour towards minors and found it disgusting as both a person and a parent.

O’Connor then introduced the central character in his defence: a mysterious person who has allegedly appeared throughout his adult life using multiple social-media accounts for the purpose of “messing with” him.

He claimed that these accounts repeatedly used similar photographs, allowing him to recognise the alleged troll when they returned. After noticing a profile liking several of his posts and Stories following a long night, he supposedly decided that the teenager’s account belonged to this same person.

The explicit meme and the “Simon calls your bluff” sticker, according to O’Connor, were intended as a tasteless “gotcha”.

He said he realised his mistake after several minutes, deleted the messages, stopped communicating and apologised to the recipient for placing her in that position.

That explanation may account for the bizarre opening sticker.

It does not adequately account for the bikini message.

It does not explain why O’Connor’s immediate explanation to the teenager involved having a “party night” rather than mistaking her for a long-term harasser.

It does not explain why he suggested that her ordinary photographs from a day at the beach made her partly responsible for receiving explicit material from a famous adult musician.

It also does not fit particularly comfortably with his claim that he immediately ceased communication. The screenshots show further messages, an attempt to spread the blame and an acknowledgement that he had once again said something he apparently knew should be removed.

His defence asks everyone to concentrate on the alleged troll and ignore the sentence that people actually find most alarming.

The bikini comment is the part his apology cannot tidy away

Reddit users repeatedly returned to the same problem.

Even commenters willing to believe that O’Connor initially mistook the fan for somebody else struggled to reconcile that explanation with his reference to her bikini photographs and his “both to blame” comment.

One response beneath his apology described that as the “real concerning part”. Another said the supposed mistaken meme was one issue but commenting on a child in a bathing suit was another. A third called the shared-blame line the “grossest” part of the exchange.

They are right.

The teenager liking several Instagram Stories was not an invitation. Posting beach photos was not an introduction. Wearing a bikini did not make an adult man lose control of his direct messages.

O’Connor apparently understood that the message looked bad because he deleted it before the teenager could respond.

Unfortunately for him, she had already captured it.

Deleting a message does not delete the thinking behind it.

Modest Mouse removed him from the tour, but kept the announcement extremely tidy

On July 31, Modest Mouse announced that O’Connor would not accompany the band on its forthcoming North American tour.

Seth Jabour of Les Savy Fav was named as his replacement on guitar. The announcement was captioned simply: “Upcoming tour update.”

That was it.

No mention of the teenage fan. No acknowledgement of the screenshots. No statement condemning adults who send explicit material to minors. No explanation of whether O’Connor has been permanently removed from the band or merely placed out of sight until the headlines disappear.

Modest Mouse deserves some credit for acting within days rather than waiting for months of pressure. The tour was due to begin on August 4, meaning replacing a guitarist at that stage would have created significant logistical problems.

Still, the band’s response was so sanitised that it could have been announcing a drummer with food poisoning.

“Upcoming tour update” turns a teenage fan’s experience into a scheduling adjustment.

O’Connor has been removed from the tour. It has not been publicly confirmed that he has been permanently fired from Modest Mouse.

That distinction will become important once the attention dies down.

O’Connor was not some clueless newcomer

O’Connor has played guitar with Modest Mouse since 2021 and contributed to the band’s 2026 album, An Eraser and a Maze. He previously toured as a bassist with MGMT and was involved with the bands Amazing Baby and Kuroma, as well as his solo project Simon Doom.

He has spent years inside a music scene built around fan attention, online promotion and personal access to musicians.

A teenage fan liking his Instagram content was not an unusual or inexplicable event. Musicians cultivate audiences precisely because they want fans to watch, follow, comment, stream and engage.

The moment a young woman engages too enthusiastically, however, some men suddenly behave as though she has entered into a private contract whose terms she should have understood.

She had not.

She was a fan pressing a button on Instagram.

He was the adult.

Has Simon O’Connor done this before?

At present, there are no verified earlier reports establishing that O’Connor previously sent sexually explicit content to another minor.

There is, however, additional online chatter that should not simply be ignored.

One Reddit commenter claimed O’Connor had sent their roommate explicit videos and voice messages for more than a year, told her that he and his wife had an open relationship and eventually met her when Modest Mouse toured through her city. The commenter also claimed O’Connor told the woman he wished he had met her before his wife. No screenshots substantiating that account have been publicly produced and the comment did not clearly establish the roommate’s age or whether the exchange was consensual.

Another commenter said O’Connor had been messaging his girlfriend but added that nothing inappropriate had occurred as far as he knew. A separate Reddit discussion referenced an unsupported Facebook claim that O’Connor had sent somebody nude material, but again, no screenshots were provided.

Those claims are not established facts. Anonymous comments do not become true merely because they sound possible.

What they do show is that the original teenager’s post encouraged other people to reconsider previous interactions and discuss O’Connor’s use of direct messages.

The responsible conclusion is not that O’Connor has definitely done this many times.

It is that the only documented case is already serious enough and any additional claims require evidence before being presented as part of a pattern.

His defenders are already making him the victim

Some Modest Mouse fans have defended O’Connor’s explanation, arguing that the explicit picture was a common internet meme rather than a sexual advance.

Others have described the incident as a drunken misunderstanding, suggested his reputation has already been destroyed or claimed that losing the tour is punishment enough. One Reddit post argued that people were behaving like a mob and that O’Connor’s explanation created reasonable doubt about his intentions.

And there it is: the redemption story has already begun before the consequences have even properly started.

Within days, the discussion shifted from what a teenage girl received to how much an adult man might lose.

His career. His income. His reputation. His place in the band. His mental health. His family.

All important, apparently.

The teenager’s distress is treated as something unfortunate that happened along the way.

This is how entertainment culture repeatedly recentres men. Their behaviour begins the story, but their suffering becomes the emotional climax.

Hollywood loves a comeback more than it cares about women and girls

Hollywood and the music business adore redemption because redemption is profitable.

A man disappears for a few months, issues a longer apology, mentions therapy, substance use or personal growth and returns with a sympathetic interview about “doing the work”.

The women or girls involved are expected to accept that everybody has moved on.

When men are accused of harming women, the industry rarely asks whether the women have recovered. It asks whether the man has waited long enough to become commercially useful again.

O’Connor’s ready-made comeback narrative is already visible: there was a troll, he had been drinking, he made a mistake, he is a father, he apologised and he has now suffered consequences.

Soon, removing him from one tour could be presented as an enormous act of punishment rather than the bare minimum response to an adult musician sending explicit content to a 16-year-old fan.

The public should watch what Modest Mouse does next.

Does the band clarify whether O’Connor is gone permanently? Does it investigate whether other fans received similar messages? Does it introduce boundaries governing how its members interact privately with teenage followers?

Or does he quietly return once everybody has become distracted by another celebrity scandal?

This was not the teenager’s fault

The simplest part of this story is the part O’Connor complicated.

She liked his Instagram Stories.

She posted photographs with her friends.

She wore a bikini at the beach.

None of those actions made her partly responsible for what appeared in her inbox.

O’Connor may genuinely have mistaken her for somebody else when he sent the first meme. Only he knows what he believed at that moment.

But mistaken identity does not explain blaming a teenage girl’s photographs. Alcohol does not explain it. A barrage of likes does not explain it. An alleged troll does not explain it.

That sentence came from him.

Modest Mouse was right to remove Simon O’Connor from the tour. Now the band must decide whether it has dealt with the problem or merely removed it from the stage until people stop looking.

Because the entertainment industry’s favourite trick is turning accountability into a temporary intermission.

And women and girls are always expected to sit quietly until the comeback begins.