Trolling for Hire: The abusive art of Mr Bingo

 Trolling for hire: The abusive art Mr Bingo

As we shake hands following our interview, Mr Bingo asks us to be kind about each other. It was a surprise request. You would have thought he'd prefer me to be horrible. Bingo is an artist who turns hatred into art, and a skilled musician of unpleasantness.

Yes, my phone is already trolling Mr Bingo after I cycle home. "I see you don’t have a profile photo," one tweet stated. "All that's required is to rotate the egg 180 degrees. It's your head." It's hilarious because it's true. It's also very hurtful. One person says to another, "You're a fucking fool, mate." It doesn't matter what, I've experienced worse from Guardian-reading nutjobs. (Sorry! "I'm referring to valued members of our you have thrived here since October 2013. Mr Bingo, on the other hand, has 29,600 fans and has tweeted 22,600 times. He is tweeting his path to fame and wealth.

To be honest, I had requested all this. I wanted to feel the thrill of being trolled by Mr Bingo. Because people pay to be abused and trolled by Mr Bingo. "It all started in my studio in 2011, after I had a few drinks," he says. "I used Twitter to send an offensive tweet to the first person to reply to my message.

Within a matter of minutes, he received 50 replies. Jonathan Hopkins, Forest Hill resident in London, was declared the winner. He sent a postcard saying: "Fucky Jonathan. Fuck you and your shit legs." Along with it, Mr Bingo also included a drawing. Mr Bingo had never even seen Jonathan's legs. He depicted them as a pair of ugly sawn-off cylinders. It's possible that Jonathan has legs as shapely as a young Shirley MacLaine. Mr Bingo says, "Or no legs at ALL." That's the way hatred works. It thrives on ignorance or injustice.

Three days later Mr Bingo started a hate mail service. He sent anyone who paid PS50 plus postal charges a personalized abusive postcard. "Essentially, I was enabling strangers [to tell them to fuckoff]" Don't tell him that you don't envy him for the idea of turning hate into money. He's tapping into a culture that is dominated by hate, and making money out people's sadomasochistic needs in the fashion of a social-media savvy dominatrix. When I mention this to him, he giggles and says "I'm living my dream." "Or at most a dream. online bingo spreading its wings