There was Monkey Sex in the Chat Room

And then things got really weird…

I never expected a simple podcast would lead me to have a live show with a listenership of over nine million people at once.

It was a bit overwhelming, really. Who was I to deserve that kind of attention? I wasn’t sure how to handle it and, even today, looking back on my experiences, I still have this sensation I never did.

One thing our radio station provided to encourage listeners to tune in was a chat room. It wasn’t much, built on a platform that was a little outdated even at the time, but it worked, and we usually had anywhere between ten and forty people in the room gabbing away at any given time, even late into the night.

Sometimes the shows I did touch on light-hearted topics, such as funny news of the day or how much I adore Star Trek. Other times, the topics would have to be heavy and hard to discuss.

The topic had to get heavy.

I didn’t always enjoy that sort of thing. I try to be a positive person but life experiences and PTSD have taught me that’s not always possible. We also live in a world that has a lot of negativity and sometimes it’s just not in the cards to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

During one particular show, we had to discuss suicide, a sensitive subject for me, as I’ve had to face it many times in my own life and the lives of people I have known.

I would do my best to pay attention to the chat room during the shows since it was usually an excellent source of questions coming in that could be answered, or fun comments I could delve into while talking. I welcomed that sort of thing because, as a creator of content, interaction from listeners or readers is always a great way to help add filler.

It can also lead to much deeper discussions that benefit everyone.

On that show, however, things were far different and even to this day, I look back on it with hesitation and unease.

At first, the people in the chat were happily discussing the benefits of tomato soup, with users passing recipes back and forth.

I didn’t pay that much mind. A lot of talk about food took place in the chat for some reason, and it kept people glued to their keyboards and tuned into the station. Who were we hosts to argue?

Bear in mind, the show generally ran for about two hours’ worth of time. The nature of it allowed me to shift from one discussion to another between commercial breaks if I needed it to. I also was the station manager, so I wasn’t beholden to producers to determine what I could or couldn’t talk about.

It was my dime and my time. Heck, I even paid for the hosting service of the chat room the people were using from my own pocket, knowing it’d only help the station out in the end.

I wasn’t too bothered by the discussion of food during the heavy topic. It’s something not many people want to hear about, I know, and at least it was better overall than some things that would come up.

So I said nothing, saving my concentration for the heavy discourse I knew needed to be said.

And then it happened…

It was about halfway through, as I was talking about my own attempts at suicide when I was a teen, that I saw the chat devolve into something else. It bothered me greatly and still does to this day almost ten years later.

You see, while I was talking about what I had gone through, I saw the conversation go from talking about tomato soup to sex with monkeys. I think I lost my mind a little.

I’m not sure who started it. I didn’t have the chance, being live, to go back very far in the chat to catch who brought it up. It doesn’t matter, I suppose, in the scheme of things.

What did and does matter to me, though, is that everyone else caught on to it and joined in.

Picture after gif started passing by on my screen, one monkey after another getting down and dirty with each other as my voice quavered.

The distraction was overwhelming, my brain unable to concentrate on the subject at hand — heavy as it was.

I wasn’t sure what to do. It broke my concentration entirely, and after a few minutes, I realized I had stopped talking.

That’s when the anger began.

I cut to a commercial, thwacking the keys that would start the break, and muted my microphone.

I turned to my wife sitting nearby (she was always near when doing my shows) and mouthed “what the f*$&”.

I couldn’t even go on with the show after that. I was completely done with it all for the rest of the evening. When the commercial break was over, I threw on some music and stepped away from the system.

I think I put a few snappy comments in the chat room to let them know how upset I was after a few took notice my show was over, but I couldn’t tell you the words.

Public figures get used to being slighted.

As a radio host, I am used to the attentiveness of listeners. Sometimes they’re just “not there” even when they’re tuned in. It’s that way with writing online, too.

That sensation of being slighted, though, is one hard cookie to swallow, especially when it’s involving a topic as important as the one I was talking about that night. I knew I would not change the world with my words, but the disappointment that people I trusted would so blatantly go off the rails in such a way was bitter.

If nothing else, the experience has taught me that if someone’s having a conversation, I’ll pay attention to them.

If it’s something I’m not really wanting to discuss, it might be best to be silent.

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