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Garry Tan tech CEO and campaign donor wishes death upon SF politicians
- rideontime 3y agoNormally I’d say we don’t need an article about a tweet, but considering he blocked me years ago, I assume for liking the wrong reply to one of his tweets, this actually serves a purpose.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 7e 3y ago[flagged]
- bdcravens 3y agoFollow the list of YC alums, and you'll see many companies that directly fly in the face of many of the values that are common to many HN users, like analytics, etc.
- throw__away7391 3y agoYes, you are the first person I've seen put it so bluntly, but this is often in the back of my mind as I read comments on various posts here.
- CPLX 3y agoYou'd think Mike Judge would have permanently taught our culture the lesson that nerdy tech types should just never deadpan rap lyrics like they are "hard." And yet, it keeps happening.
- dralley 3y agoOr if Mike Judge isn't their speed, then at least Matt Levine
- RankingMember 3y agoThe types of people that do this have psyches that would never accept or even consider that they were the target of a show like that.
- almost_usual 3y agoI think the reference is to Office Space the movie not a television show?
- RankingMember 3y agoI was thinking Mike Judge's TV show Silicon Valley as well as Office Space
- npace12 3y agoI got my pistol point cocked, ready to lay shots non stop until I see your monkey ass drop
- almost_usual 3y agoI guess not many folks are getting the Office Space reference.
- voidfunc 3y agoWouldn't be surprised if the average age of HN means most have not seen Office Space.
- lostlogin 3y ago> nerdy tech types should just never deadpan rap lyrics Big Musk energy - and on checking, of course he has quoted Eminem in one of his stupid fights. https://www.billboard.com/business/legal/elon-musk-eminem-lyrics-sec-consent-decree-1235051035/ https://www.billboard.com/business/legal/elon-musk-eminem-ly...
- djbusby 3y agoBut, I mean, "without me" is a straight banger! Why wouldn't a wannabe genius (Misk) quote an actual genius (Eminem)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- the_only_law 3y agoWe need more bullying.
- RankingMember 3y agoJust in case anyone doesn't click through and isn't familiar with this name, this isn't just a tech CEO of some random org, but the CEO of Y Combinator itself.
- startupsfail 3y agoWas not familiar actually. It also seems that Y Combinator, the legendary Silicon Valley startup accelerator is no longer there! It had moved to San Francisco :-o !?!
- startupsfail 3y agoLooking a bit more at it, I wish Gary Tan would succeed in his beginnings to make SF more livable. Hope that this work and his other personal life wouldn’t interfere or distract him from up-keeping our Silicon Valley engine of innovation. YC is playing a critical decision making role. As once the company is accepted to YC it gets to allocate significant amount of shared resources.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rKarpinski 3y agoThe original lyrics > Fuck Bad Boy as a staff, record label and as a motherfucking crew And if you want to be down with Bad Boy, then fuck you too Chino XL, fuck you too All you motherfuckers, fuck you too (take money, take money) All of y'all mother fuckers, fuck you, die slow, motherfucker Tweet > Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew ... And if you are down with Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a crew fuck you too ... Die slow motherfuckers.
- aurareturn 3y agoI think this was posted many hours ago. Was it first deleted? Either way, I understand why he’s frustrated. SF local politicians are extremely corrupt. They’ll do anything to get poor people to vote for them so they can continue to stay in power to siphon money from the wealthy and tech population. Big problems never get solved in this city. That said, the tweets were poor taste from Tan. Could be a fireable offense. Sad.
- bruceb 3y agoGarry Tan is an accomplished individual without a doubt. But he is also thin skinned and can’t seem to stand even a slight differing of opinion on political matters. Not someone I would put in a position of power in a political role.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago> But he is also thin skinned and can’t seem to stand even a slight differing of opinion on political matters Most bay area politicians are like that though.
- latency-guy2 3y agoSeems like he's a shoe in for all political positions as of late actually. When's the last time you've talked to someone on the opposite political aisle on the internet and did you leave it with a higher opinion of them?
- throwup238 3y agoHe actually paid to have a plaque engraved with "Garry Tan 'SF Social Media Troll' Twitter Menace" and put it on a liquor cabinet? Stay classy.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoIt’s getting harder and harder to want to contribute to this community further. Goddamn.
- bdcravens 3y agoIt seems that there's enough of a divide between HN and YC. As I posted elsewhere, look at the common values expressed on HN, and you'll find plenty of YC startups that are diametric opposites of those values. In the many years I've participated in online forums, I still find HN to be the most well-moderated I've ever experienced.
- choppaface 3y agoMany YC-founded companies simply cannot afford a negative press cycle or let alone the press face-time outside of e.g. Techcrunch so it’s unfair to compare their “values” with Garry Tan’s established desire to be TK-style divisive and disruptive. So don’t assume YC Founders speak for the HN readership despite their outsized HN moderation influence (as evidenced by this post getting flagged).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jacobjjacob 3y agoEnough of a divide? This isn’t the first post about him that I’ve seen flagged
- dang 3y agoWe didn't flag the post; users did. When it comes to submissions, that's nearly always the case - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Now that I've seen it I suppose I need to figure out what we should do in this case. The general principle is that we moderate less, not more, when YC is part of a story (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). In this case, I suppose we can satisfy that rule by taking [flagged] off the post and leaving the sensational title instead of editing it the way we normally would.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- choppaface 3y agoJust check out Garry Tan’s site techbrosf.org and that’s all you need to know about the TK-pugnacious wannabe. Divisive personalities are pretty common in VC but YC was originally intended to be a bit less divisive.
- horns4lyfe 3y agoI can’t tell if this is a joke or not, as that site is clearly not his. One of us is really bad at spotting satire, not sure which.
- subtra3t 3y agoI think both the website and the comment which you replied to are satire.
- choppaface 3y agoMusk also thinks his “go F yourself advertisers” is satire hence he should not be held accountable for the billion dollar loss of his f-you-money comment https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-x-fidelity-valuation-worth-less-bought-for-1851133302 https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-x-fidelity-valuation-worth-les... Happy to see YC take the current site down and say they don’t actually think TK brought positive change to SF.
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- oatmeal1 3y agoDid this get unflagged? Saw this topic flagged a couple hours ago. I would hope HN has a policy not to censor negative information about YC.
- bdcravens 3y agoI don't think so. Valid criticisms of high-profile tech figures are often flagged by cultish followers.
- dang 3y agoYes, I unflagged it when I saw it - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169622 for more information. > I would hope HN has a policy not to censor negative information about YC I don't use the word "censor" because it means different things to people, but yes: literally the first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... I call it the first rule because it was the first thing that pg firehosed me with on the morning that I walked into moderation "training" with him. He was yelling about it (not in a mean way - in a "you absolutely need to know this" way) before I'd had a chance to grab a chair. And we've stuck to it ever since. That isn't enough to stop some people from saying we do nefarious things, but it does allow us to answer such claims in good conscience. That alone makes it worth sticking to. More importantly, it seems to be sufficient to earn the provisional trust of the community, as long as we keep answering questions when they come up. The one nuance I sometimes point out is that "moderating less" doesn't mean "suspending all moderation and doing nothing at all" - that would leave too large a loophole. It means that we take whatever standard practice we would normally apply in a situation, and then do something less than that. In the present case, I would normally have left the post [flagged] and/or edited the sensational title, but because it was YC related, I turned off the flags and left the title intact—even though that title is about as silly as describing someone who quotes "to be or not to be, that is the question" as "contemplating suicide". Normally we'd never let that stand on HN, but first rule is first rule.
- jballer 3y agoTan didn't just pull these words out of thin air, they are lyrics from 2Pac's "Hit 'Em Up" > F** Mobb Deep! F** Biggie! F** Bad Boy as a staff, record label, and as a motherf**' crew! > And if you wanna be down with Bad Boy, then f** you too! Chino XL, f** you too! All you motherf**s, f** you too! > All of y'all motherf**s, f** you, die slow! https://genius.com/89450 https://genius.com/89450
- kvathupo 3y agoAs a Tupac fan and lover of print news, I think this article encapsulates what's wrong with modern media: the selective use of context to engender a political stance, from which outage is engendered The problem isn't social media or long-form print news, but the 24-hour news cycle in my humble opinion. As we saw in the case of that shocking bombing of a Palestinian hospital, I've increasingly felt that once reputable media companies have prioritized returns (eyeballs) over news. Indeed, many of these paragraph long 24-hour updates reuse the same sentence structure I noticed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iosnoob 3y agoIt's mentioned in the article (reference to Tupac song)
- jballer 3y agoIt’s buried and incidental when it should be the lede. Invoking an artistic expression of “I can’t find words strong enough to convey how much I loathe what you stand for” is very different from making a literal death wish.
- flir 3y agoYou'd strain yourself less if you went for "but he was drunk". I see it's flagged, too. tbh, flagging Twitter drama's probably a good thing in general. I mean, he deleted and apologised.
- inpdx 3y agoMakes me think less of YCombinator that a person of this temperament would be CEO.
- geor9e 3y agoMake me think more This world has too many politically correct corporate drones. And their work is boring. An actual relatable human in charge? Sounds like an edge.
- almost_usual 3y ago> In the past, Tan has not been receptive to jokes about him: When commenting on San Francisco community organizer Julian La Rosa, who had said that “millionaires and landlords should be guillotined,” Tan seemed to take the jest deadly seriously. > “This is not a joke,” he posted. “This guy wants to guillotine people.”
- ilikehurdles 3y agoThe fact they wrote this sentence would tell most people a lot about the agenda missionlocal has always had. They always knew it wasn't a death wish but knew they could frame it this way for clicks.
- catlover76 3y ago[dead]
- stemlord 3y ago[flagged]
- iosnoob 3y agoAgreed - quite a shock to realize the type of person who is now in charge (haven't kept up to date on leadership here)
- reece 3y agoYep. The reputational harm clause that is surely in his employment contact was just beached. The board should fire him within days. The culture of a company is the behavior you tolerate. If the board doesn't act, they're condoning toxic culture, which is ultimately a threat to their institution.
- ilikehurdles 3y agomissionlocal's never heard of 2pac. lmfao of course they haven't.
- almost_usual 3y ago> On Saturday morning, Tan apologized about the death wish in a subsequent post, saying he was simply referencing a lyric in Tupac’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” but that it “wasn’t a good call” regardless. The notorious diss track famously added fuel to the fire of East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry, leading to Tupac’s murder in a drive-by shooting just three months after its release.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- voidfunc 3y agoIn his defense, SF politicians are morons so I'm not sure I disagree with the general sentiment. Not sure I wish death on them tho.
- pstuart 3y agoNow the real test is how this is handled after sobering up.
- hipadev23 3y agoGarry was drunk and it was a riff on rap lyrics. Stupid? Yeah but whatever. Garry actually wants to see changes in SF. All I know is my biometric breathalyzer unlock for social media apps is getting funded this summer. Right Garry?
- hn_user82179 3y agoI didn’t get the reference but obviously don’t think Garry Tan wants the supervisors to die. That said, I don’t have a lot of empathy for him given his behavior when the roles were reversed: > In the past, Tan has not been receptive to jokes about him: When commenting on San Francisco community organizer Julian La Rosa, who had said that “millionaires and landlords should be guillotined,” Tan seemed to take the jest deadly seriously. > “This is not a joke,” he posted. “This guy wants to guillotine people.” > “This kind of stuff should have zero place in San Francisco politics,” he later said. He has repeatedly gone back to La Rosa’s joke as evidence of violence among San Francisco’s left. I personally can say I’ve never felt the urge to tell people to die (seriously or jokingly) on social media
- ilikehurdles 3y agoWhat lyric is “millionaires and landlords should be guillotined” from? Do you actually think a left-leaning, self avowed socialist who “wants communism” (quoted from his own tweet) was really just kidding when he said this?
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- StaceyLi123 3y agoI’m a YC alumna, and didn’t find this acceptable at all. Comments like these only hurt the cause. YC and its leadership should be a pillar of civic discourse in a respectful, impactful manner. YC - calling on you to take action and hold Garry Tan accountable.
- tptacek 3y agoAccountable for making a bad Tupac joke? It's a song lyric. It's obviously not a threat.
- foldr 3y agoNot sure what you're finding difficult about this. I don't think anyone thinks that Garry Tan was literally planning to murder people. If your defense is "but I wasn't literally planning to murder people", then something has gone significantly wrong with your communication. It looks bad for any organisation to be run by a loudmouth with poor judgment. Seems fair for others associated with the organisation to complain about how this reflects on them.
- tptacek 3y agoHe attempted a hip-hop dad joke and faceplanted. That's the entire story.
- foldr 3y agoThat's not really inconsistent with what I said or what the OP said. It's disgraceful and embarrassing behavior which would be more than enough to get many people in public-facing jobs fired. But if YC want to continue to be represented by this mook, that's their choice. Also, while I don't think that a serious threat was intended in this case, there is absolutely no logic to the idea that something cannot possibly be construed as a threat if it's a quotation from song lyrics.
- tptacek 3y ago
- xnorswap 3y agoI thought the headline might be exaggerating with "menacing" but no, if anything that's actually an understatement: > “Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew … And if you are down with Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a crew fuck you too … Die slow motherfuckers.” Tweeting death threats at local government officials? That'd have you arrested here.
- p-e-w 3y agoSaying "I wish you dead" is not a death threat. Saying "I will kill you" is. The tweet, while obviously inappropriate, contains no threat whatsoever.
- sunshine_reggae 3y agoAlso, we ALL die slow. That sickness usually takes about 80+ years.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoFortunately most functional members of society don’t interpret things as literally as you are choosing to here.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoGoogle "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?".
- zimpenfish 3y agoGiven that it's apparently a rap reference from one (subsequently) murdered rapper to another (subsequently) murdered rapper during some kind of "blood feud", I'd contend that taking it as an implied threat (assuming you got the rap reference - I didn't) isn't that far-fetched.
- 303uru 3y agoBy the thinnest of threads. He knows exactly what he's doing, it's very Trump-eque. People in power don't make direct threats, because their following knows exactly what they mean. "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest" rhetoric.
- waihtis 3y agoIt's good. People need to become angry at the culprits who have rotted society with all kinds of destructive ideals. I'm not a SFer and not even American but can recognize these names as some of the most ideologically twisted hacks out there
- hatenberg 3y agoTech bro doing tech bro things. Run for office instead of running your mouth off.
- noelwelsh 3y agoThe self-styled tech revolutionaries of twenty years ago gained money and power and are now conservatives fighting to protect their own interests. That's not particularly novel, but the rhetorical style has certainly changed.
- p-e-w 3y agoActually, the vast majority of them aren't aligned with any particular ideology, which you can see from the fact that they liberally donate to representatives from both political parties. The only belief that all of them have in common is elitism, as long as the definition of "elite" includes themselves of course.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoPlenty of rich people oil both sides of the machine. That doesn’t remotely mean that they don’t subscribe to a political ideology.
- noelwelsh 3y agoAgreed. I meant "conservative" in the small-c sense of keeping things the same (where "the same" = benefits me.)
- orwin 3y agoBoth us political parties are conservative to be fair. And both aren't strict conservatives either (strict conservative in the US would be Amish I think?).
- Vaslo 3y agoHis X stream is most complaining about crime and the decline of San Fran. That doesn’t sound like a conservative- only argument to me. Odd that you took it that way just because he bashed a bunch of useless politicians in a dumb way.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoThe news here is that there are still tech bro fetishists that defend these people.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoThis article has gotta win some sort of award for the longest piece of text contained within a set of parentheses.
- noelwelsh 3y agoSorry, I don't think it would even make the minor leagues. Dickens starts "The Tale of Two Cities" with a sentence that is 181 words long. There must be parenthetical remarks that are paragraphs long.
- aspenmayer 3y agoIf not Infinite Jest, then probably something else David Foster Wallace wrote.
- kragen 3y agothe article quotes the tweet as saying Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew … And if you are down with Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a crew fuck you too … Die slow motherfuckers. the article says that this is a reference to 2pac shakur's 01996 hit 'hit 'em up'; https://genius.com/2pac-hit-em-up-lyrics https://genius.com/2pac-hit-em-up-lyrics quotes it as saying Well, this is how we gonna do this: Fuck Mobb Deep! Fuck Biggie! Fuck Bad Boy as a staff, record label, and as a motherfuckin' crew! And if you wanna be down with Bad Boy, then fuck you too! Chino XL, fuck you too! All you motherfuckers, fuck you too! (Take money, take money) All of y'all motherfuckers, fuck you, die slow! Motherfucker, my .44 make sho' all y'all kids don't grow! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_%27Em_Up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_%27Em_Up gives as context that two years earlier 2pac had narrowly escaped attempted murder: > The ferocity of Shakur's raging vocals,[9] as said by long-time collaborator and producer of "Hit 'Em Up" Johnny J, was entirely authentic.[4] He explained that Shakur was initially fueled by his anger against Biggie and Bad Boy Records for the belief that they had a role in the November 30, 1994, ambush and attack on Shakur. He claimed that Biggie and his crew knew of his shooting and wanted him dead.[10] Shakur used this fury, which Johnny "J" described as "superhuman",[4] to attack Biggie and other East Coast rappers.[4] Johnny "J" also stated that he had never seen Shakur so angry and that the words he rapped were in no way an act,[11] describing the recording process as the most "hard-core he had ever done."[4] three months after releasing the dis track in june 01996, 2pac got his ass shot dead by crips keefe d and his nephew in a drive-by, which was apparently completely unrelated to biggie, but rather due to beating up his killers a few hours earlier. (i don't know what else he expected when he attacked a crip unprovoked.) biggie similarly got shot dead in a drive-by six months later. biggie's murder is still officially unsolved, though family members have blamed parts of the los angeles police department allied with the bloods, the gang of the head of 2pac's record label. (not, however, with a .44; with a 9 millimeter.) puff daddy, chino xl, and half of mobb deep are still alive; the other half, prodigy, died 20 years later from medical accidents following hospitalization due to complications from sickle-cell anemia, a condition 2pac ridicules in the above-linked track normally quoting song lyrics gives you a free pass to avoid being taken seriously, but possibly when the song in question was written as a threat of a killing that was actually carried out nine months later, people may see it differently
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- baal80spam 3y agoSomeone please tell me who are these people? I have no clue.
- quickslowdown 3y agohttps://www.google.com/ https://www.google.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mdrzn 3y ago"Added District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan: I will waive rent for living in his head." What a based response.
- skmurphy 3y agoThe skills that make an entrepreneur effective don't always yield political influence. If Garry is understandably frustrated and angry that his efforts to improve SF are being thwarted he needs to change methods, not threaten those who are blocking him. My two cents, reasonable men may differ.