#1 -LOVE LETTER TO MY HATERS
“Pushforgorilla” started as a joke.
The premise was simple.
Let’s say you are in New York City. Chillin.
You want to spice things up with a unique experience that you can only find in NYC.
So you open up an app and push a button.
And then boom.
A gorilla comes.
Cracks a few jokes.
Cheers you up a bit, then disappears back into the concrete jungle to his next stop.
Why you ask?
Well, because [REDACTED] you.
Pushforgorilla.
The best jokes get funnier over time though.
So to make it even funnier, every time it would be the same gorilla.
But not just any bum gorilla like the one that hangs out in Times Square.
I’m talking about your favorite gorilla artist’s favorite gorilla artist.
The Ernest Hemingway of Gorillas.
The Michael Jackson of Gorillas.
A true triple threat who writes real stories, makes real art & produces real music.
The Supreme Leader of RILLANATION.
The Gorilla Shakespeare,
Southside Rilla.
So every time a user pushes THAT button, Southside Rilla, who is kind of a big deal, would come and bring with him a treasure trove of stories and lore that fans can follow in real time.
And if you don’t like it, well then, that’s cool.
[REDACTED] you.
Pushforgorilla.
It would start as a rumor.
An urban legend.
Kind of like that secret bar in the financial district that only lets fat chicks in.
Free food for the big girls.
Only the coolest of the cool kids would know about it at first.
They would be the founding members of RILLANATION.
All together (R.I.P Harambe) we would grow RILLANATION to be bigger than cities, then states, then entire countries.
But of course, there would be haters.
Any time you try to get outside the box, haters pop up like cockroaches.
And they are mad about things like Adele losing weight they are fat.
They are too lazy to stop eating like a whale so in their mind, everybody else should be fat too.
That is hater psychology 101.
The people who support you as you pursue your dreams though identify with you.
And they want to identify with you.
They see themselves in your shoes, so they root for you.
But the people who hate you and hate on you, can’t identify with you.
It’s not their fault.
They are emotionally stunted.
Emotional midgets.
Long before they even started hating on you, they were defeated both mentally and spiritually.
They have no faith in themselves or others.
So, the more you pursue your dreams, the more they will express hate for you.
But really, they hate themselves.
They are some of the dumbest people you will ever meet.
As a disciple of the greatest storyteller in history, Jesus Christ, I believe in loving my haters though even if I don’t like them personally.
So the question becomes “How to love your
stanky booty, dookie mouth, [REDACTED] haters?
I actually came up with the idea for “Pushforgorilla” in the car with a girl I was seeing.
Like me she was an artist too.
She had a song I would listen to over and over, because it was pretty good actually.
I would tell her all the time, “Haz más música, mi nenita”.
Porque un RILLA habla muchos idiomas.
But she didn’t believe in herself.
She loved partying more than making music.
She was a natural born hater 💔.
One time, I remember I was doing something and I smiled.
And she was like “What you smiling so hard for?”
And I was like “Cuz I brush my teeth, ole’ stanky [REDACTED] ho, maybe you should try it.”
Eventually it got to a point, where RILLA just had to tell this ho.
Stay in your lane [REDACTED]!
One day, we were playing around and coming up with ideas for things people could receive on the push of a button.
She said what if it’s raining and you push a button and somebody came with an umbrella.
I said “Sure, but what if it was a gorilla?”
She said, “That’s dumb”.
I said “[REDACTED] you [REDACTED]! Pushforgorilla!”
Then she was like this:
The best jokes get funnier over time in spite of any roody poo haters.
And I think a large part about what makes it funny is that the longer the joke goes, haters start to turn into believers.
Wise man say this:
“First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they beg you for promo codes
to buy your t-shirts.”
I had many friends, family, and haters in my life, laugh at me for trying to build this brand.
The closer they were to me the more they hated it to be honest.
Hater [REDACTED] girlfriends,
hater [REDACTED] friends,
and even my own hating [REDACTED] father.
When I asked for help they called me crazy.
When they saw me struggling they turned their back to me.
I’m sure they got some ok laughs at my expense.
But alone in my room, on late nights as I built the website, blasting Young Jeezy and downing copious amounts of red bull,
RILLA would laugh and laugh.
They left me for dead, but I knew I wouldn’t die.
They wished for me to fail, but I knew I wouldn’t fall.
They chose to be haters, but a Rilla too real.
It was all just a game, until this [REDACTED] got real.
They tore it down. But I rebuilt it again and again.
So many bet against me.
Even all my best frans.
So many companies overlooked me.
So many corporate drones.
Frankly, a bunch of ugly, stanky booty [REDACTED] haters.
Tried to look down on a RILLA like me.
Tried to disrespect a RILLA like me.
But I didn’t take it too personally at all.
In fact, you could say building this whole project is a love letter to all my best haters.
So I mean this from the bottom of my heart
[REDACTED] you.
But also thank you. Without haters this wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.
Because even in the beginning, I had haters.
On the day I was coming out the womb, I heard the doctor, a natural born hater, say “this baby gorilla not gonna make it!”
So inside the womb, I put on my thousand dollar baby gorilla sunglasses.
I threw on my royal blue armani baby gorilla jacket.
I reached out with my tiny baby gorilla hands.
Flipped him the bird,
Then I said this:
“[REDACTED] you! “
This is the first in a series of articles chronicling the development of the storytelling brand PUSHFORGORILLA, built by the artist Southside Rilla in collaboration with web agency Rumble X Studios based in Brooklyn, NY.