Minnesota’s One Minute Tours guy John O’Sullivan is in Australia, but he’s still grappling with the negative feedback he received online after announcing that he and his family had left the country.
In a two-minute video posted Feb. 25 to his Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and YouTube accounts, he said he realized his departure video made Minnesota look “uniquely bad” when actually he was trying to make a point about the nation.
“I’m not sorry about moving to Australia. I’m not sorry about the decisions I made for my family, but I am sorry that I upset people so much and it doesn’t matter what my intentions were,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday morning, Minneapolis time; early Thursday morning Australia time.
He and his wife began planning their international move after the shooting at Annunciation Church in late August. He said they knew people in the church and had young children ― ages 5 and 2 ― who would soon be starting school. In Australia, the school year starts in January, so they needed to move fast, he said.
He wasn’t expecting such a negative reaction or that people saw him as a sort of “hometown commentator.”
“In trying to share a serious thought that I had about school shootings, I think I missed the mark in timing and tone,” he said.
By 9:10 a.m. Feb. 25, the Instagram video already had 70-plus comments.
Some followers on Instagram sympathized.
