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An anonymous Portland man who gained notoriety for his video footage shot from a drone returned to Reddit last week to announce his retirement.
Last year, Drone Man (his pseudonym on YouTube and Reddit) aggressively filmed the people who live on the boats on the Willamette, posted those videos on YouTube and was even shot at by one homeless man.
Related: Portland Redditors Rally Around "Drone Man," Who Plans to Monitor More Homeless People From the Sky
At the time, Drone Man told WW that he was seeking to highlight the environmental devastation the homeless boaters were causing.
In his update, he admits he was basically bored and needed a hobby.
"I fully agree that what I did was monstrous, and I don't want to come across as trying to excuse my behavior," he wrote on Reddit earlier this week.
"At the time I had a newborn baby. The little one went from being up all the time to napping for hours at a time."
Drone Man says he never called police about the shooting because he wanted to protect his anonymity.
Related: Hobo Pirates Fire Gunshot at Drone Filming Their Willamette River Boat Camp
"I'm really trying not to present myself as a person with a motive beyond voyeurism driven by a seed of incredulity that these camps were littered with hundreds of bike parts," he writes.
He became famous enough after the WW story on him that he was approached by a homeless man asking if he was the drone man.
"I realized that I was a lightning rod in the hobo community inflaming an already tense relationship between the housed citizens of Portland and those that do not have permanent housing," he writes.
"This was also at the height of the Springwater Corridor sweeps, and I knew I wasn't helping. It helped that the baby went right back to being a fussy sleeper, so Drone Man was retired. I also sold my drone on Ebay and bought a VR rig"—as in, virtual reality—"Some random person in the midwest has my drone now."
He also riffs in response to questions that he "should make" a virtual reality game called "DroneMan vs Hobos" inspired by his experience.
"You can play as either," he posts. "When you are drone man you have to get drone footage and post it on reddit. When you are a hobo, you have to find and kill drone man."
His answer to the question of where he's been the last year:
Read more of WW's coverage of the Portland floating homeless community:
Hobo Pirates of the North Willamette
We Kayaked Down 5 Miles of Northern Portland's Secret Everglades
Transient Boater Who Pulled Gun on Drone Says His Privacy Was Invaded