Dan Price: Best Boss or Sex-Crazed Psychopath?

Wake up and smell the red flags.

“Hey, I’m a narcissist, like all millennials. Did I raise the salaries for purely benevolent reasons? Yes, but I also wanted to be a hero. Doesn’t everyone want to be the hero?”

— Dan Price to Stephen Rodrick, Esquire, 2016

If you’ve been blissfully following Dan Price on social media and sharing his often viral posts, I have got some deeply disturbing news for you. First of all, the former CEO’s written words are often not his own, and as it turns out, he doesn’t even practice what he’s preached.

That’s right — buzzy Dan Price of Seattle employs a ghostwriter, who just so happens to be known for sexual harassment, Mike Rosenberg. But wait, isn’t Price known for his support of women... including the whole #MeToo movement?

Well, yes.

As with any effective cult leader, Dan Price has built up his origin story to make himself look appealing. His social media posts and that literal mountain of good press have made him seem to be the most benevolent and equitable CEO who's ever existed in America. Yet, as The New York Times reported on Thursday, more than two dozen former partners, friends, or employees say it’s all a big lie.

Whoops.

Dan stepped down from his post as CEO of Gravity Payments on Wednesday, shortly after he gave the NYT his statements, but before they published that exposé about how he’s used social media to hide an alarming pattern of abuse. Dan claims the resignation will keep him from being a distraction at his company, and also give him the time to fight these "false allegations" against him full-time.

He claims he isn’t going anywhere, and his Twitter bio says he's "Just trying to stand up for the underdog." That's interesting. News outlets have long painted him as an underdog despite the reality of his extraordinary privilege.

Already, diehard fans have rushed to the man's defense by telling him how they're so sorry he's going through this while lamenting a society that simply can't leave positive people alone. Lol. Already, there's this narrative that Dan is facing persecution, libel, and bias all because he's trying to make the world a better place. Because people are mean and negative. Because women lie about abuse.

It's been illuminating to watch immediate pushback in real time. To see another parasocial connection prevent otherwise reasonable people from grasping how deftly power and influence protects abusive men.

It's equally illuminating (and sad) to see how much we'd prefer to believe it's the regular people who are liars. We can handle thinking that less successful folks do bad things, and act out of jealousy, and that conniving, gold-digging women are constantly trying to ruin a young man's life. But to think a man we love to quote could be the liar?

Oh, perish the thought.

The more you learn about Dan Price’s true character, however, the more his sheer audacity will haunt you. Or it should. What’s worse, this is not the first time that Dan's been unmasked as a liar or abuser. Far from it.

A plethora of red flags have been raised about this man online for years. What happened? The enormous amount of positive press and viral social media posts effectively buried the truth about this supposedly moral CEO.

Dan Price announced a decision to pay all of his workers at Gravity Payments at least $70,000 a year in a graduated three-year plan back in April 2015. What made his announcement even more startling was his claim that he would also cap his own salary at $70K (for the time being). By reducing his pay down to $70K, he took an enormous pay cut. Before the announcement, he'd been paying himself between 1.3 and 3 million dollars per year, a highly unusual sum for his company size, profits, or industry. Very few people questioned why he'd been making so much more than other credit card processing CEOs. Instead, the story of Dan's magnanimous virtue went viral, and he became both an internet celebrity and a hero for wage equity.

Since then, Dan Price has become a verifiable public figure constantly praised for selflessness and ingenuity. On Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, he often posts his own quotes, quick inspirational videos, selfies, photos of his travels, or his dogs. He's made appearances on multiple news outlets and entertainment television—not just to talk about his own company's success, but to also weigh in on business, ethics, and society at large.

Somehow, regardless of the topic, such appearances invariably lead back to how astounded he is with the attention he's received.

A perusal through Dan's social media channels reflects a man who's still living life as a millionaire CEO who pops into the office only one day a week. Trips around the world, yachting, surfing, skiing, fancy dinners—it's maybe not the stuff you'd expect for an income equity activist who brings in $70K a year. Internet infamy can be financially rewarding for certain folks, though, and it's also been reported that Dan charges between $20K and $40K speaking fees. In the earlier days of his fame, reports said he charged $10K, though he also mentioned getting $100K for another brief appearance.

Living in a million dollar home in the highly regarded Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Dan made further waves by repeatedly stating that he had remortgaged both of his homes, sold off his stocks, cashed in his retirement savings, and was even couch-surfing with friends in order to fund that pay increase for his employees.

In 2016 court documents, Dan admitted he hadn't actually remortgaged either property, but he was willing to do so. Strange then, that he'd often tell reporters and news anchors that it was a done deal.

Inconsistencies come standard with Dan Price. When his brother and co-founder of Gravity Payments, Luke Price sued him, Dan claimed he'd been stunned by the lawsuit that arrived just two weeks after his announcement of the $70K pay. Although the lawsuit was filed after the big announcement, Dan was still served papers two weeks before making that announcement.

Why would Dan lie about the timing? His claim led writers to believe the lawsuit was Luke's reaction to the pay increase and Dan's overnight fame. The actual timing suggests an opposing theory—that the pay raise was Dan's response to being sued. Luke sued Dan for minority shareholder oppression. He said Dan intentionally kept him out of the loop, that he had greedily paid himself far too much money, and even used company funds for lavish private vacations. Throughout the case, Luke's attorney highlighted instances of blatant lying. Dan frequently admitted to "overstating" the facts.

In December 2015, about six months after Dan's sudden notoriety, the Hustle published a story called "The dubious claims of Dan Price, the Gravity Payments CEO paying everyone $70,000." It recounted some of the questions from critical Bloomberg story, and mentioned a few of Dan's lies, like when he said he'd been contacted by a reality television show but the producers flatly denied any conversation.

Karen Weise wrote that Bloomberg story, along with the recent New York Times exposé. Back in 2015, she said Dan Price had something to hide:

As I read through the court record and media reports, I began to see how Price was writing his own origin myth one interview at a time. With what he says is a $500,000 book deal, he’s solidifying his place as the next do-gooder businessman, joining the CEOs of bigger companies, such as Zappos’s Tony Hsieh and Whole Foods Market’s John Mackey. In the process, he’s surely become the only credit card processing executive to be feted by Esquire, courted by literary agents, and swooned at by women on social media who declared him “yum.” But how it all happened is a little more complicated.

It's concerning how so much information about Dan Price’s questionable ethics has been available since 2015. I must have read at least 100 different articles about the guy, and even some of the so-called “good” pieces should have raised more eyebrows.

That Bloomberg piece was damning, but it was also panned by those enamored with, and basically bought off by Dan. A few negative pieces about the CEO couldn't compete with the velocity of viral possitivity from publications like Inc or Entrepreneur.

I was unnerved, however, by this Esquire story from Stephen Rodrick in August 2016.

You might recognize Stephen from his more recent work for Rolling Stone. He's the one who wrote that unflinching story, "The Trouble with Johnny Depp" in 2018. He's good about seeing below the surface of a situation and reporting with more nuance than most.

But even he appears to have missed the patterns of abuse and, uh, gravity of the situation. Ultimately, reporters and news outlets gave Dan an air of credibility by covering his claims while asking few questions, and either missing or ignoring a serious pattern of abuse.

In "The Prophet Motive," Stephen Rodrick spends a few weeks with Dan Price as the CEO fights his brother in court. The story begins in the basement of his Magnolia home, the one he had supposedly downsized the previous year. At one point in the story, Dan hosts a company barbecue, and there's simply no hint of the boss downsizing.

Dan didn't seem to care too much about any potential fallout from the story. He set it as his cover image on Facebook and made a post almost spinning the whole thing into a personal favor and public display of... humility.

For me, that Esquire piece was littered with red flags and embarrassingly tone-deaf Dan Price quotes.

For instance...

Dan Price on Money

“I think I always had too much respect for money until I started playing poker. Money comes and goes so quick in poker, you realize it’s just money.”

Uh, more than a year after he makes this incredible choice to raise his employees' pay and begin advocating for the poor, he's playing poker with other wealthy businessmen, and declaring that money is just money. Weird. I thought he understood how for poor people, money is far more than that—it's healthcare, stability, freedom.

Dan Price on Women

Dan: “He said rich, selfish people get laid.” [Insert pause and grin.] “But he said socialist leaders get laid, too.”

Male Gravity client: “You’re going for the high and low: You’re going for the capitalist and socialist — you must be getting laid a lot! That puts it all together for me. That’s fucking incredible. My theory was right. You are the junior Trump!”

Dan: [Gives the client a high-five.]

Sheesh. When a 30-something "ethical CEO" and so-called thought leader even jokingly suggets that his position as a leader can mean more sex for him? No, I'm not surprised to later hear allegations of sexual misconduct or rape against him. Remarks like that are ticking time bombs.

Later in the story, we hear about Dan's court testimony regarding his correspondence with Tyra Banks, which all began because he wanted her business advice. He admits to lying—well, "overstating"—Gravity's profits in an email to her. He also admits that he told her about his plan to raise his employees' pay before making the announcement, and before telling his brother.

After their first meeting, he sent Tyra an email with his takeaways, including this weirdo gem:

"Dating and hanging out with celebrities may be something to consider as long as it is genuine and no one is being used or lied to in any way. At least make an effort to hang in those circles when I can."

Ew, Dan. Just, ew. You write to a famous woman asking for business advice and a takeaway from your meeting is that dating celebrities would be nice for you?

That's weird.

He also talks about meeting her for dinner and how she brought along a Sports Illustrated model friend, but they had to eat in the room because Tyra Banks being seen with a handsome young man after recently having a baby would invite paparazzi.

What? Tyra Banks can't be seen with a man and a woman in a restaurant? Not even as business associates or friends? He also considers himself attractive enough to make the paps think they're having some steamy rendezvous. OMG, make it make sense, Dan.

And then?

“She wanted us to meet because she thought we were two of the most beautiful people in the world. I’m sitting on this bed eating wings between these models.” At that point, Rodrick writes that Dan "shook his head in wonderment."

Red flag, red flag, red flag!

Ugh. I'm so sorry we live in a culture that doesn't grasp why this is not appropriate or healthy reasoning from a business leader turned activist.

Does Dan Price even want to help people? Or just get into a bunch of women's pants? At best, these are huge signs of immaturity in his attitude toward women. At worst... stay far, far away.

After discussing Dan's personal trip to the Philippines on the company dime, Dan shows Stephen photos from the excursion, including snaps of an unexpected meeting with former Miss Pakistan, Shanzay Hayat.

“That was a great trip. Shanzay is a great girl, but we’re just friends. Very cool.”

It's weird, right? Healthy, respectful men don't feel the need to bring up dating or not dating whenever a woman's name or picture comes up. If you say, I just happened to meet this person and we took some photos together on a beach, there's no reason to clarify whether or not you've had sex.

Unless, of course, you're the type of dude who is fixated on getting some.

These may seem like small, even innocent comments, but they’re red flags. Warnings that suggest a man is focused on the wrong stuff and not really seeing women as human beings. Such flags are especially indicative of a man who's motivated to use women and a shallow sense of prestige to fill his endless need for external validation.

Dan Price on Dan Price

“Maybe I’m not the good guy I think I am. Well, I also think they sold their Dan Price stock too low and they’re frustrated with themselves.”

He makes this remark about his brother Luke and his ex-wife, whose TEDx talk about writing through trauma got scrapped when Gravity Payments' legal team caught wind of it before it had a chance to air. In it, she'd read a journal excerpt that recounted abuse at the hands of an ex-husband she did not name. Dan's people contacted the University of KY to request a copy and suggest it might contain false accusations.

“I got married at twenty-one and I got married at nineteen. I married my brother at nineteen and married my wife at twenty-one. I’m quick to commit.”

Stephen writes that Dan isn't viewing these as personal mistakes—but personnel. We've all known someone who thinks they've never played a part in any of their problems. We see it with lots of leaders and self-help gurus. Their problems are not like our problems, apparently. Their problems are haters who just hate them and loved ones who don't understand their vision.

Dan's asked a valid question given his circumstances in 2016—why invite more press when he's got these bad allegations against him? His answer is bewildering.

“Hey, I’m a narcissist, like all millennials. Did I raise the salaries for purely benevolent reasons? Yes, but I also wanted to be a hero. Doesn’t everyone want to be the hero?”

First off, I'm two years older than this dude. No, millennials aren't all narcissists, and holy cow, that's some audacious shit to nonchalantly label yourself a both a narc and wanna-be hero when you became famous overnight for being the best boss in America—one who really gives a damn about the working poor.

Besides, nothing is pure benevolence when you care about getting the credit too. I get the sense that Dan Price wants all of the accolades that come with hero worship, but he's far less enthused about the whole great power, great responsibility part of the deal.

I'm also pretty certain that not everyone wants to be a hero, and there are plenty of heroes out there who don't desire their position. Instead, they do what they believe is the right thing to do regardless of their feelings. That's pretty much Heroes 101, isn't it? They make films about this stuff.

But that disconnect, man. It keeps popping up.

It's an aspect of his story where Dan reads so narcissistic and so barely self-aware that it seems far closer to the origin story of a villain who couldn't master his ego. Not the early missteps of a well-meaning hero.

Later, Stephen asks Dan how to explain the negative stories he's heard about his leadership style:

By now, I’d spent more than two weeks with Price and I knew from ex-employees and court documents that he had a male monster of the id hiding behind the fashionable hair and beard. Ex-staffers had told me stories of Price calling meetings just so he could ridicule an underperforming employee. They also told me that Price had been talking about making magazine covers for years. One ex-staffer, who asked to remain anonymous, remarked, “He won’t care what you write — just that you wrote about him is the victory.”

Dan's response? He says, “I can really get too intense sometimes. I had a saleswoman who I worked with for three years. We had a meeting, and she didn’t like how I bared my teeth. She never came back to work. I text her and email about having coffee or lunch and she won’t do it.”

Oof, I mean, it's an answer, but... yikes. I doubt it's the genius answer Dan thinks it is. Still, it says a helluva lot about his character for him to downplay and shrug off his propensity to cause real discomfort through cruelty.

For a supposedly nice-guy boss concerned with ethical leadership, he comes across as...preoccupied.

When a flattering piece in USA Today gets released just prior to seeing Lucas in court, Stephen says Dan is angry about it:

“I’ve gotten to the point where it’s like, Oh, USA Today puts us on the cover, but I don’t really appreciate it because it didn’t pop virally. They didn’t do a good job promoting it online.”

Dan often says "us," but doesn't he mean, "me?" And does he really expect every article about him or his company to go viral?

For a boss surrounded by so much hype, there's an awful lot of yuck.

Dan Price on Transparency

When his brother's lawyer asks Dan if transparency was integral to the company, he says yes. But then it's revealed that he'd lied to his literary agent about the timing of Lucas's lawsuit. He simply admits, “It was not a true statement."

Stephen writes that Dan seeks eye contact with the judge. He later tells the journalist, “I felt if I could get her to look at me, I could get her on my side.”

I wonder how much of Dan's behavior is calculated to get people to do what he wants.

When Stephen asks about the many admissions of "overstating," Dan spins it into other people cherry-picking his words.

"Add to that that I’m an optimistic person: That doesn’t help me out on that, either. Clearly, less optimistic people in general are more accurate with their statements; they’re more measured.”

Optimists... lie?

Again and again, I read Dan's words and I ask myself who feels zero shame about lying? Who chalks up their constant lies to merely “overstating” or to “being an optimist?”

Dan Price, of course.

It's all so strange.

I could have highlighted and marked up most of the Esquire story.

This is not a man with morals, I think. This is a guy who’s utterly fixated on all of the wrong things.

He cares about appearances.

He cares about dropping names and telling stories to make himself look good.

I haven't read any words from Dan Price to convince me that he genuinely cares about truth or transparency. It's really quite chilling how he seems just so fine with lying.

You get the sense that he feels entitled to getting whatever he wants, and that he's unapologetic about saying anything no matter how much it conflicts with something he's previously said. As long as it sounds good in the moment, who cares? Perhaps, if the ends can always justify the means, the hypocrisy is no big thing.

Now, where have I seen that attitude before?

Here’s something that didn’t surprise me as I began to look into Dan Price’s background. Weirdly, it sort of made things make sense. He was raised in a strict evangelical Christian home. His father, Ron Price is basically a self-help author who tackles business leadership from a faith-based perspective.

In Dan's teenage years, Ron was the President and CEO of AIM International, a multi-level-marketing (MLM) operation that made unfounded claims about their nutritional products.

After the FDA warned AIM to stop marketing certain products and quit misleading consumers, Ron expands the company by rebranding their products and distributing them overseas. So, he didn't stop. He just found a loophole to keep peddling miracle cures.

Why does any of that matter?

Dan is a 38 year old white man raised in the Midwest under a very popular yet damaging umbrella of beliefs from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Evangelical Christianity is now notorious for the damage its done to Americans, particularly in terms of prosperity teaching and purity culture.

On the one hand, we might argue that Dan's decision to pay all of his workers that $70K per year comes directly from that Christian upbringing—if we look at Jesus's parable in Matthew 20 about the workers in the vineyard. At least the immediate outcome shares some similarity, like the Gravity employees who left the company because they believed it was unfair for new hires to make as much as them.

I'm more interested in the real-life outcomes of prosperity preachers and purity culture peddlers. How often entitled and privileged men have written self-help books about how good Christians should think, only to find a way to turn their personal demons and vanities into profitable careers. Sex addicts write books about how to have a healthy Christian marriage. Greedy men peddle the notion that it's a Christian's responsibility, or birthright, to make gobs of money. All of it gets dressed up in scripture, of course, to make it look and sound good. To make it seem believable.

I believe Dan Price is cut from precisely this cloth.

I’ve written pretty extensively about purity culture over the past few years. As such, there’s nothing about Dan’s alleged bad behavior toward women that truly surprises me. At least two women have said he raped them, two others have said he assaulted them, and his ex-wife has described living through horrific abuse. Seattle prosecutors say he assaulted an artist in his Tesla. That when she rebuffed his advances and contacted her boyfriend to come get her, the intoxicated CEO raced to the top of a parking garage amid her pleas for him to stop.

Dragged by the ankles. Dropped onto hardwood floors. Near-drowned in tubs. Smashed into walls. Bashed with objects. Strangled. Slapped. Kicked. Days and nights hiding under beds, in closets, in cars. Strapped over a lap, repeatedly slapped like a battered child for being unworthy, unthinking, unbalanced. Forced to make unsustainable concessions. Extramarital sex for him. Isolation for her. Ongoing PTSD that affects career decisions, personal relationships. The list of alleged abuses goes on ad nauseam.

– Journalist Doug Forbes on Kristie Colón's marriage to Dan Price

At least three women say Dan secretly filmed them. Another says he pressured her into having sex, and filmed it without her consent.

The common thread in so many of these stories is this: Dan Price contacts a woman through social media, she's not quite sure what to make of him, but decides to give him the benefit of a doubt when she sees all of the good work he seems to be doing. Swift and understandable regret soon follows.

One of the problems I've talked about with purity culture is the way it's bred an alarming amount of sexual predators. The lessons within mainstream evangelicalism on lust, sex, and marriage have been so unhealthy that too many Christian men enter adulthood with tortured, twisted sex drives and zero awareness that mentally healthy guys are not plagued by obsessive sexual thoughts and constant sexual "temptations" 24 hours a day. They're taught that by God's perfect design, they require sexual satisfaction in a way no woman can ever understand. Therefore, women are never truly seen as full people or even "sisters in Christ." Female bodies are policed and hypersexualized. Girls and women get faulted for somehow inspiring unwanted male attention; they're viewed as temptations or stumbling blocks while the men are never truly counseled to control themselves. Instead, husbands are encouraged to take all of their sexual hang-ups or addictions out on their wives like their own personal supply of methadone.

It doesn't end well. Shocking, huh?

You get Christian men closeting sexual addictions but blaming women for such issues. You get unhappy, even abusive marriages where evangelical women experience twice the rate of painful vaginismus compared to women in the general public. Hello, Christian sex scandals and clergy sexual abuse. Husbands lead double lives. Men use their positions of power or influence to manipulate and abuse women all in an effort to soothe some broken bits within themselves.

You also get men who even after they've left evangelicalism behind, still harbor an absurd fixation on sex, plus a sense of entitlement with the women they fancy. Men who talk about how much they love and respect women, while their private actions reveal hatred and misogyny. In my experience, such exvangelicals are the worst because they get you to trust them with all of this talk of equality and social justice. When you don't know a lot of men who are truly committed to being champions of human rights for marginalized voices, it's very tempting to overlook red flags in self-proclaimed allies.

Obviously, there are sexual offenders out there who weren't raised in evangelicalism. But for those of us who've survived abuse at the hands of evangelical (or formerly evangelical) men, theirs is a distinct and destructive brand of hypocrisy. Such men are absolutely intent on fulfilling their sexual "Needs" with a capital N. As an result, many Christian women wind up feeling safest dating non-Christian, never-been-Christian men instead.

As much as they might talk a good selfless and altruistic game, these male sex addicts and offenders are entirely motivated by getting laid. It goes hand-in-hand with their deep-rooted misogyny.

So, when I read from several women that Dan very was pushy about sex, and simply wouldn't let it go, sometimes from the very first conversation or date, that absolutely tracks. Such allegations against him are disturbing but eerily familiar.

I too was once misled by a charming yet somewhat awkward exvangelical man who contacted me through social media. I trusted him because of the so-called clout of being popular and well-liked online. I was inspired by the good he seemed to be doing.

By the time I realized that all of his talk about social justice was one wide net of a pickup line, the damage had been done. I was hooked on this abusive relationship with a man building a non-profit mission I wholeheartedly believed in, and he was using that mission to reel in more women and attention for himself.

Over the years, I've watched this sort of scenario play out over and over again. Different men, different women... but it's all too often the same brand of manipulation, misogyny, and narcissism that's cleverly repackaged as "vulnerability."

By now, wouldn't you say that most adults understand how the persona someone displays on social media is never the full story? To a certain degree, we know that the images we see, the words we read, and the feelings people-slash-brands emote are highly curated. We know they're selling something.

Understanding and responding accordingly are two different things, though, and in the case of Dan Price, we have been bamboozled, my friends. It's not so different from the muck of other controversial online influencers like Rachel and Dave Hollis, but this time it's further reaching and even more egregious.

We have allowed ourselves to grow increasingly enamored and invested in a man we heard was a good one when in reality, he had so little to legitimately recommend him. On the contrary, there are piles of receipts against the guy. A whole trail of lawsuits, erratic behavior, inconsistencies, and unethical business practices—plus a mounting stack of flagrant abuses in his personal and professional life.

How did did this happen? Independent jornalist Doug Forbes has some thoughts. For years, he's documented the lies and abuses of Dan Price, and the volume of evidence covered on his blog is staggering. His website, Hundred Eighty Degrees features a partial list of news outlets who refused to pick up his reporting on Gravity's CEO. It's more than 30 outlets.

It's entirely possible that if somebody at one of those outlets gave a damn six years ago, Dan Price would have never acquired the power and influence to abuse so many more women.

In his opinion piece "Why Dan Price Has Avoided Fallout… So Far," Doug writes:

I have explained to newsrooms — from the New York Times to Bloomberg to Forbes to Inc. Magazine to Entrepreneur Magazine to Esquire to the Seattle Times to NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, et al. — precisely how Price executed ostensible business fraud for years. Apparently, it’s how he built his business in the first place.

I have provided a copious volume of documents — otherwise known as corroborating evidence — that illustrated what a gifted snake oil salesman he is.

I have spoken with and reviewed documents from people on the other side of Price’s alleged abuse, including ex-employees who detailed incidents of his workplace rampages, his ex-wife who alleges barbaric domestic violence and now two women who alleged rape.

I have spoken with a journalist who said, “I got PTSD from Price because I reported something that was true and he harassed me for a year about it.”

I have reported about how Price and his employees worked a scheme with other “journalists” at Inc. Magazine to demand favorable coverage.

I recently received a call from a member of a well-known Seattle organization who said, “Price is a psychopath… he harasses people and won’t stop.”

In fact, since 2015, I have received eerily similar sound bytes ad nauseam.

And yet here we are. It’s a familiar road with familiar detours that have led to yet more catastrophic consequences instead of the widespread delivery of the truth.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that these recent rape allegations haunt me. If only I had done this or that to further convince people to publicly come forward years ago. And although it is not a journalist’s job to stave off potential events, journalists have hearts and consciences… and obligations to forewarn.

My conscience got the better of me this time around. Perhaps I should not say I believe the alleged survivors. But I do believe in the power of obvious patterns shored up by proof.

This Dan Price story symbolizes why victims of abuse do not report their experiences. Systems are crippled with bias, largely perpetuated by men.

Too many of us seek cracks in a survivor’s story — she sent mixed signals; she should have left; look at her, she puts herself out there; he is a good person incapable of a monstrous act. And the list goes on.

What's frightening about this saga is that I have only scratched the surface of the allegations against Dan Price, and his years‐long history of red flags. I encourage you to read the work that Doug has done on Hundred Eighty Degrees. As he's been covering Dan's issues for year, he goes into far greater details and covers much more ground.

Our society still finds it more palatable to think this is some vindictive plot against a modern day Robin Hood, and that a writer like myself is speaking from a place of misandry.

Sadly, abuses like these cannot end until we quit giving celebrities free reign to pursue fame and influence without bothering to look closely at their character. Human beings are not owed a platform and adulation from adoring fans. There are those who can't handle a platform responsibly, who can't be trusted to use their power for good.

As a society, we have got to demand more from our leaders than the social media skills to go viral.