What Do Jason Calacanis, Marc Andreessen and Vivek Wadhwa All Have in Common?
All Love a Guy Who Marshals an Online Hate Campaign Against Women in Tech 24/7 and They Can’t Get Enough!
Hey everyone! How’d your week go? Awesome. I’m glad to hear you’re crushing it. Way to go.
Me? I had a great week, too. I wrote this piece called “Paul Graham is Still Asking to Be Eaten.” As it turns out, there’s actually a huge audience for people who want to see bullshit plutocratic ideology get ripped apart.
Who knew?
In fact, besides me, a bunch of white male writers felt the same way and also took it upon themselves to pen critiques damning Paul Graham’s inequality apologia.
Except those guys didn’t end up having their twitter account linked on Breitbart Tech because they weren’t women.
Which then had the obvious ramification of my twitter mentions devolving into a mess of harassment and garbage.
Like this:
Getting added to lists like this:
And being sent images like this:
This happens to pretty much any woman whom Milo Yiannopoulos links to on Breitbart Tech. He learned recently that marshaling online hate against women is a thing a lot of young men enjoy doing and has decided to call this “journalism.” I’m not the first target of it and this isn’t the worst campaign I’ve seen, but it’s a circlejerk we have seen almost every day since the start of Gamergate.
So, yes, I knew before writing my piece that I was setting myself up for this. Every time a public feminist writes anything critical about a powerful white man on the internet, you better believe Breitbart is going to find her. It’s as sure as the sun comes up.
But what was great was watching famed Woman-Supporter Vivek Wadhwa retweet it!
Seeing as Vivek Wadhwa has made a lot of money purporting to be the voice of women and diversity in tech, I felt impelled to tell him of the obvious ramifications that would come from using his 50k reach to legitimize a Breitbart-fueled campaign:
I mean, he should know, right? You would think Breitbart is not the type of site someone who claims to be a champion of women and diversity would want to be seen endorsing publicly.
And, actually, a lot of people tried reminding him:
And so after dealing with Nero’s yamcampaign all week, I felt it only fair to dedicate it to him:
Right. Just another day being a woman on the internet.
But then a funny thing happened today!
Twitter took away Milo’s verified status and he got upset. Much tears. Very sadness.
Honestly, I wouldn’t care since he is clearly in the regular practice of violating Twitter’s terms of service pretty much every day he’s had an account.
But then my friend Danilo shared these gems:
Right? Weird how like rich, white men who claim to support women in tech are following this guy. Not only following him, but rubbing his head and laughing like old buddies as if his very public two-year long hate campaign against women were just delightful jollity.
But then you’ll never guess what happens next.
Hold on to your butt.
My buddy Jason Calacanis showed up in my mentions!
Wow, right? Jason let out all the feels tonight.
Jason, you just happen to follow an OVERT misogynist on twitter?
And just happen to have allowed terms like “SJW” to enter into your lexicon?
Stupid me. Of course, whatever a rich, white guy says is true must be!
Anyway, here’s the takeaway from all of this:
White, male VC privilege is soothing an inveterate monster for losing his verified status while plainly ignoring and dismissing the women’s lives he’s destroyed for the past two years.