The Story Of Grant MacDonald's Relationship With His Nephew, Shawn Driscoll, As Told By The Creator Of The 'Ram Ranch' Discord

For a certain subsection of the internet, the words "18 naked cowboys in the showers at Ram Ranch!" is something of an activation phrase that can cause a person to recite the entirety of the infamous meme song "Ram Ranch," a graphic piece of outsider art that details a homosexual cowboy orgy.

Released in 2012, the song snowballed into a notorious piece of internet history, going viral in 2016 and eventually becoming an anti-truck convoy anthem in 2022 amid the Canadian Truck protests.

Suffice it to say, it received far more attention than a bizarre, ridiculously low-budget song about graphic cowboy sex likely deserved. This was in large part due to the mystique surrounding its creator — an elderly Canadian man named Grant MacDonald.

Who Is Grant MacDonald?

Grant MacDonald is a nearly 80-year-old man living in Canada, and he's spent the better part of the last decade making music in line with "Ram Ranch." He attracted something of a "fanbase," though it's fair to say his "fans" weren't exactly vibing with his music. Instead, MacDonald drew fascination from internet users drawn to premier internet oddities, aka lolcows.

According to Cubic Cowboy Kurwa, the creator of the unofficial Ram Ranch Discord server that once had 10,000 members, MacDonald's bizarre behavior, from his music to the way he conducted himself in the server, kept the community engaged for years.

"I was super interested in all of the lore around it at that time, to the point where I was listening to dozens of terrible Grant MacDonald deep tracks in order to find out as much as I could," Cubic said.

"Grant MacDonald is one of the funniest lolcows in internet history when you're in as deep as I am. The lyrics themselves are extreme but Grant himself is also so extreme and interesting, which is why his content is so incredible."

"Ram Ranch" wasn't just a one-off song for Grant MacDonald. To date, he has released 764 versions of Ram Ranch, the latest of which is an 11-minute loop of what sounds like a premade beat underscoring endless sex noises.

The scope of MacDonald's inspiration seems fairly limited, as most of the songs are about homosexual sex and, in particular, about homosexual sex with a man named "Shawn Driscoll." Some of his singles include "Psycho Shawn," "Lovin Shawn," "Prick Shawn" and many other unprintable titles referencing "Shawn."

Who Is Shawn Driscoll?

For those who had a surface knowledge of MacDonald's catalog, it seemed safe to assume this "Shawn" was a character, perhaps a fantasy concocted by MacDonald as imaginary as the "18 naked cowboys in the shower" of Ram Ranch. Then, on January 22nd, 2024, a legal notice addressed to MacDonald from a man named Shawn Driscoll hit the internet.

It demanded MacDonald cease contact with Driscoll, cease posting about him on social media and cease disseminating intimate, sexual images of him. Shawn Driscoll was real and Grant MacDonald had been posting his nudes online. Driscoll was also MacDonald's nephew.

Not only is Shawn Driscoll MacDonald's nephew, he was a conservative Canadian politician and is currently a campaign manager. The news about Driscoll's identity shocked internet users who were learning about it for the first time last month. However, to those who communicated with MacDonald in the Ram Ranch Discord, it was apparently old news.

"Until October 2020 we all thought Shawn was a fictional character," Cubic recalled. "Grant would mention him fairly often but only by his first name, and not much more often than Prince Harry or any of the other guys he was obsessed with. For some inexplicable reason, Grant then started posting Shawn’s full name, along with pictures of his face and nether regions."

"Somebody in the community was able to put two and two together pretty quickly, I believe from an obituary of one of Grant’s parents. We found out that Grant has a sister named Nancy Driscoll with a son named Shawn, along with two more sons named Christopher and Scott. Grant had previously made at least one song mentioning 'Chris, Scott, and Shawn' altogether. It was thus obvious to us all that Shawn was Grant’s nephew, and he pretty quickly verified it."

Initially, MacDonald denied having a sexual relationship with Driscoll but was insistent that it would be fine if he did. MacDonald obsessively posted about the concept of Avunculate Marriage, which is the marriage between an aunt or uncle with their niece or nephew. Such a marriage is legal in Canada and some other countries and MacDonald vehemently supported the idea in his posts both in the Discord and in the Ram Ranch subreddit.

In an infamous voice call with the server, colloquially referred to as "Grant's Confession," he delivered a wild defense of himself and the concept of uncle-nephew relationships while praising his own music as "cutting edge."

At this time, it's unclear if MacDonald had actually had sex with Driscoll. However, the denials eventually faded, and MacDonald began bragging about having committed the deed.

"Throughout 2021 he kept giving us abstract defenses of avunculate marriage, but at the year’s end, Grant posted several (SFW) images of Shawn at his apartment and boastfully admitted to having '(f'd) his sweet (butt),'" Cubic recalled.

How Did The Discord Respond To MacDonald's Relationship With His Nephew?

As one might imagine, the discovery of MacDonald's obsession with his nephew was a huge deal in the Ram Ranch Discord.

"It went off like a bomb," Cubic said. "Everybody thought Grant was bats--- crazy from day one but we had all previously held him in very high esteem. Most of the server went from loving him to hating him almost immediately once they got 'nephew pilled.'"

"The server was somewhat divided between a camp who found it all disgusting and horrible and another camp who found it hilarious, though opinions fell on a spectrum," they continued. "But it was certainly all that we could talk about."

Despite the salacious topic dominating the Ram Ranch Discord, no one went to the authorities about MacDonald.

"I don’t think we (the Discord administrators) ever had the thought that what Grant was doing was illegal. I guess we assumed that Grant would not have posted those pictures if Shawn wasn’t OK with it …," Cubic said.

It's also possible that the behavior of Discord users may have led to the current situation MacDonald and Driscoll find themselves in. According to Cubic, a member of the Discord may have attempted to get Driscoll fired from a job in Ottawa, which could have inspired Driscoll to take action against MacDonald's obsessive posting about him.

What Is The State Of The Discord Today?

The Ram Ranch Discord isn't what it once was, Cubic told us, as the revelations turned off participants from digging deeper into the lore of Grant MacDonald. According to Cubic, it became more of a hub for edgy memes than Ram Ranch discussion, though MacDonald was still there, posting nudes of Driscoll to the moderators' dismay.

Cubic left the Discord two years ago, but for them, the "nephew pill" was the cherry on top of the bizarreness that is Grant MacDonald and Ram Ranch.

"Sometimes you like an artist because they’re talented, and sometimes you like an artist because they’re a good person, but I liked Grant so much because he’s hilarious, insane, senile, and sometimes just plain stupid. In a way, he was less of a person with agency to me and more like a force of nature. So the revelations didn’t affect my view of Ram Ranch that much, at least not initially," Cubic said.

"My enthusiasm is certainly tempered now with the knowledge that Grant’s actions have genuinely harmed another person’s life. I don’t think he had any malicious intent in posting those images; he is really old (born in 1947) and probably never learned the basic rules of internet safety. And he’s always had such a one-track mind; if he’s thinking about something everybody needs to know about it. So once Shawn became his primary passion (rather than his music in general) that was all he could talk about. But you can’t ignore the damage he’s done."

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For the full history of Grant MacDonald's Incest Allegations, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.