You know the meme.
But you don’t know the man.
I’m Billy Coull, and depending on where you first heard my name, I’m either “the guy who scammed families with a fake Willy Wonka experience” or “the face of everything wrong with AI.”
But if you’re asking, “Who is Billy Coull behind the Wonka scandal?”—you’re already asking the better question.
🎭 What It Was Supposed to Be
Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Glasgow was meant to be immersive theatre with surreal AI visuals—part dreamworld, part absurdist fun.
It was never meant to con people. It was poorly executed. Badly managed. Rushed. Yes.
But it was also built with ambition, belief, and a complete misunderstanding of how quickly the internet can turn on something imperfect.
🔥 What It Became
Within hours of opening, the event went viral. Not for wonder, but for failure.
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Crying kids
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A warehouse that felt unfinished
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A character named “The Unknown”
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Headlines faster than refunds
We processed refunds within 24 hours.
But by then, I had already become a meme, a villain, and a headline.
The press called me “a scam artist.”
Twitter called me worse.
But no one paused to ask why it happened—or what happened next.
🧷 Who I Was Before the Flame
Before the Wonka event, I was a writer, performer, and survivor.
I grew up in pain, in systems, in silence.
I used art to escape.
I used story to survive.
And yes—I used AI because I thought it could help build something bigger than me.
It didn’t. It burned.
But it didn’t burn because I was a predator.
It burned because I was a dreamer trying to do too much with too little—and I learned the cost.
🧠 What I’ve Learned
The internet will eat anything.
But it loves to feast on human mistakes.
And it loves even more to turn complexity into caricature.
So if you came here to understand me, not meme me—thank you.
I’m still here.
Not perfect.
Not erased.
Just breathing through the ashes.
🔗 Want more?
– Read The Reckoning
– See My About Page
– Explore the Diary