Why Zheani Hates People on the Internet

Listening to Zheani’s music is like being caught in the middle of an earthquake. It’s brash, it’s heavy and she screams every lyric like she’s shaking some demented demon from her skin. But her sound isn’t without meaning. If anything, Zheani’s music is a critique of the world from her unique perspective, reliant on a wealth of knowledge and real-life experience.

When we sit down and chat before her next album release, the topic quickly moves to why she fucking hates people on the internet.

In this era of the world wide web, it’s not hard to understand why.

“In Ancient Rome, with the gladiators, it was a spectator sport,” she tells VICE. “People enjoyed watching the blood hit the fans. They enjoyed watching the knife go in”. 

“It’s almost like a gladiator arena on the internet now. Everyone’s sitting in the crowd, just for fun. They’re thirsty for blood. They’re waiting to see who gets ripped apart next. It’s an outlet for hatred.”

Zheani started her internet journey like most 2000’s kids: believing it to be a utopian paradise where she could escape, find connection or at least some kind of relief.

These days - and since her journey into releasing music - it’s become a very different place. 

The forums where she once found solace have turned into battlegrounds for contrasting opinions: fighters are hidden behind a screen, comforted by their anonymity. 

It’s what her latest project, aptly titled I Hate People On The Internet revolves around. “I hope I provoke some people,” she says. “Great. Be mad about it.”

It’s obvious that Zheani no longer cares about who she pisses off: An attitude that's likely stemmed from her existing somewhere outside the norm of society. From her music to her aesthetic, to the contents of her lyricism, it's hard to find another like her. Not just in Australia – but all over the world.

For Zheani, this point of difference has made her a target for online trolls.

“There were attacks on my sexuality, on my empowerment, the wildest lies imaginable, problematic nit picks held up like horrible moral failures,” she said, “And when I say I hate people on the internet it’s from the perspective of an artist. I don’t know when we got to a point where children, under the age of 18, police artists to the point where we’re so self conscious and self censoring.”

“There’s a lot of feeling and pain there. It’s really intense. And my presence is intense,” she said.

But Zheani the person differs from the blood-splattered portraits, the demonic-styled make-up and the leather knee-high boots that make up her online presence. A difference she notes herself. She’s quite warm, open and incredibly smart. In interviews, she shares candidly about her experiences growing up in Wallaville, Queensland, and the moments that shaped her. 

On her closing track, hyper-pop single “We’re All Going To Die”, she takes it back to her own encounters surrounding death. 

“Having a person die in front of me, it has profound effects. But for some reason, it's a sickness within our culture. We feel like it's a taboo,” she says. 

To her, death has become somewhat of a money making industry rather than something important to the human experience. 

“It’s a party song because it should be a celebration,” she says. “We are going to die. It's one of the most natural things.”

Then, in the melodic “Designer Sadness,” Zheani speaks of the most vulnerable – those growing up with holes in their shoes or second-hand school uniforms – being the most susceptible to consumerism. 

“I'm constantly susceptible to it as well,” she says.”We can’t undo the culture we grew up in.”

In her songs, Zheani covers her own experiences with generalisations. Her music doesn’t just stand as an ode to her personal life, but as something her fans can connect to in their own way. And despite her hate of the internet, Zheani has a loyal following tailing her every move. 

It’s possibly an element of her work she finds hard to see - her hate of the internet lives on. It’s toxic, aggressive and inescapable. Something she found when recording the project in the mountains of northern New South Wales. 

“There’s nowhere to escape anymore. That’s why I wrote the title. I don’t get to go sit on my fucking rock and be left alone,” she says.

“I wasn’t planning on making music like that - but when it’s at the forefront of your mind, and it’s making you internally shriek, you’ve got to let that out.

“It was very contrasting to that beautiful environment to what was happening inside, which wasn’t peaceful. Because I wasn’t able to remove myself from the society that we’re all plugged into.”

In the end, Zheani sees online spaces as experiences that are no longer “good”. She doesn’t shy away from her own place in them. She has been a person on the internet, jus like everyone else. 

But with I Hate People On The Internet, she’s questioning what all of that means.

​​”I don't want to go on the internet anymore except to let people know that I've made something new. And it's taking the fun out of it,” she says decisively.

“I've had a really rocky experience on the internet in the last four years. And me, of all people… I’m well within my rights to make that sweeping statement: ‘I hate people on the internet’.

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