We see dozens of them everyday, but we take no notice. On our Facebook newsfeeds, in our Google Image searches, on the products we buy. We laugh at them, belittle them, taking no notice of the hurt we are inflicting. Behind every laughing salad lady and wacky business man is a real person. A real story. It is time we took notice.

Even I was skeptical. I had spoken to Paul Johnston over the phone many times before I met him in person. I had seen the pictures, heard the stories, been told “no seriously, it’s true.” I was told to believe. But still, I was skeptical.

That skepticism, however, escaped my body the moment the door opened. “Come in,” Johnston says warmly, seemingly floating in the doorway.

The first thing you notice about Paul Johnston is his undeniable strength. He moves around his one-bedroom apartment gracefully swinging from rope to rope. Gravity does not exist here, it would seem. I tell him this and he laughs. Like a car backfiring, his sudden, booming laugh catches me off guard. Puts me on edge. But soon, I get used to it. I have to. Johnston laughs easily and often.

I guess you would have to have a sense of humour in Johnston’s position. For the last 5 years, Johnston has been hanging. Day in, day out.

“I’m the first to admit this is ridiculous,” he laughs. Boom! “I mean seriously, I’m literally hanging from a rope.” Johnston eyes betray his smile now. “I’m hanging in there… just.”

The Birth

Johnston runs a small but busy not-for-profit. Throughout my 3 hour interview with him, he is always completing something. His phone is always buzzing. A notepad rests on his left thigh, in which he is perpetually writing; of ideas that have just come to him, of the questions I have asked him, of the words he has just spoken.

“It pays the bills. I’m helping people. I love it!” he tells me enthusiastically. Once upon a time, however, Johnston had wanted to be something completely different.

“I wanted to be an actor. Ever since I was a kid.” Johnston writes ‘actor’ in his notebook and circles it. I’m hardly surprised. His inner thespian is hidden just below the surface. Occasionally his business demeanour breaks, and through the cracks comes a flamboyant hand-gesture or a trill of the tongue. But for the most part, he keeps that side of him hidden away. “It’s safer that way, you know?” He looks out the window for a moment, then laughs. “Anyway…”

Johnston’s acting career never really got off the ground. Countless auditions yielded countless rejections. He had a few roles as an extra, but often they did not go as expected. “I got kicked off set a few times.” I ask why. “I was distracting, apparently… But I think it was just that the main actors were intimidated,” Johnston says. “I’m a great actor.”

After the birth of his first daughter, Johnston decided he needed to try something else. “I had a family to feed, and acting wasn’t putting food on the table.” he laughs. Boom! So for years, Johnston made do. He found a job at the local supermarket, and eventually was promoted to store manager. “It wasn’t glamourous. I liked the staff, the customers and all that. But it just wasn’t what I wanted to be doing.” Still, it paid the bills.

After 4 years working at the supermarket, Johnston’s luck seemingly changed.

“One day I got this call from my agent. ‘You’ve got a fucking part, Paul! A main fucking part!’ he was screaming. I was over the moon.” Johnston tells me, holding his fist to his ear. Acting it out.

“I thought, ‘This is it, Paul. You’ve made it. All that hard work has paid off.’ This was gonna change my life.” Johnston laughs. Boom!

The ‘part’ was a one time photo shoot for the stock photo company ‘iStock’. Still, this was huge for Johnston. “Look, I know it wasn’t exactly an acting gig, but I was going to make it one.” Like any actor, Johnston started work-shopping his character. “Everyday I would ask myself, ‘Who is this guy? What are his motives?’ Eventually, it came to me”

“I was going to play this scheming business type, who is actually a monkey. Like his coworkers all think he’s got Tourette’s or something, and that he’s just super enthusiastic. But in reality, he’s a bloody monkey!” Johnston is still proud of the idea. “It’s fucking genius!”

Johnston was on a high for weeks after the shoot. “I thought it went really well. I gave it all to the camera.” Johnston tells me. “The weeks I waited for the pictures to be released felt like years!”

This photos would change Johnston’s life forever. Just not in the way he expected.

The Crucifixion

Finally, iStock uploaded Johnston’s pictures. Johnston was not happy, he was furious. “The photographer should be shot. I mean seriously, I have no idea how they managed to turn my performance into something so terrible.”

The picture spread like wildfire. Buzzfeed posted it, then Mashable. Eventually the picture found its way to the front page of the New York Times with the title, “Why, God. Why?” Johnston had become an internet meme.

“The picture lacked any of the context I had created. People didn’t understand it, where it came from, why I was doing it.” Johnston is angry now. “All they saw was some dickhead hanging from a rope!”

To make matters worse, Johnston’s full name and address were leaked soon after the release of the photos. Overnight, Johnston was thrust into the limelight. For months, his front yard was occupied by news crews. This took a toll on Johnston’s mental health.

“I couldn’t go outside without being recognised. I couldn’t escape the picture. I went online or read the newspaper, and there I was. I was everywhere.”

Johnston’s life began to crumple around him. He was fired from his job at the supermarket. His wife left him, taking the kids with her. “She couldn’t look at me the same way…” Johnston says, barely a whisper. He was alone.