Garry Tan tech CEO and campaign donor wishes death upon SF politicians
missionlocal.org
missionlocal.org
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.
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?
Most bay area politicians are like that though.
> 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!
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.
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.
I see it's flagged, too. tbh, flagging Twitter drama's probably a good thing in general. I mean, he deleted and apologised.
This is legitimately not okay. He needs to step down.
lol, step down? From what, the cellar comedy stage?
High Til I Die is another good one, not a diss track https://youtu.be/LxNTvHSNIYQ
When I was in high school in the early/mid 2000s, there was a series Tupac bootlegs going around. Makaveli 1 - ¿10ish? That's all on YouTube now and probably torrents. Songs getting leaked on message boards too. He put out so much good material in such a short span of time. He was working on collabs with Boot Camp Clik and some other east coast guys and was supposed to do more stuff with Bone Thugs. He had a compilation album he was working on called One Nation that was supposed to end the stupid East/West thing. Which reminds me, it blew my mind when I could get on myspace and talk to one of the guys from Boot Camp Clik about it.
> 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.
People tried to kill Tupac, then Tupac went off on them, then people killed Tupac.
The article summarizes this as “Tupac said mean things and it got someone killed.”
It leads me to the conclusion that the wish in the original lyrics was understandable and provoked, not that it wasn't literally what it says. Which certainly affects the view of Tupac writing and performing it, but not so much that of Tan referencing it.
> 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!
> All of y'all motherfuckers, fuck you, die slow!
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?
YC - calling on you to take action and hold Garry Tan accountable.
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.
But, I mean, calling this "disgraceful" is narratively a lot more fun than just acknowledging that social media affords us all the opportunity to faceplant publicly with age-revealing pop culture humor. I'm sorry to be captain fun vampire, but the narratively-most-interesting interpretation of a story is very rarely the truest.
In your second paragraph you seem to suggest that I only hold my point of view because it makes for a good story. That seems a bit patronizing. Perhaps in return I could offer my own diagnosis: that you spend a lot more time on Twitter than I do. Maybe this stuff starts to look 'normal' once you've been in that particular bubble long enough. All the more reason to stay away, in my opinion. If I ever start drunk-tweeting death threats at members of my local government, then I hope that my friends will not run to my defence but make it clear to me that I have a problem.
Yes, I think you hold your point of view because it makes for a good story. Sorry that's patronizing.
Mostly this whole story is just very stupid and I'm embarrassed to be commenting on this thread at all, but I made the mistake of sticking my toes in it and now I can't resist well-actuallying.
I cannot recall the Simpsons episode where Homer kills Bart. I suppose you could use the image to make a joke about cartoonishly strangling someone.
If Tan wasn't joking about wishing death on the people he listed then I have to wonder what exactly he was joking about. He wasn't the original author of the words in the tweet (a point that I think you're overly fixated on), but he chose them and knew what they meant. However, to me, the interesting question here isn't exactly what Garry Tan was thinking (I'm guessing the answer is "not much" – he was clearly off his head). It's how the CEO of YC is someone who could apparently take lessons in effective communication and good judgment from 14 year olds on TikTok.
Stay classy.
This world has too many politically correct corporate drones. And their work is boring.
An actual relatable human in charge? Sounds like an edge.
> “This is not a joke,” he posted. “This guy wants to guillotine people.”
They always knew it wasn't a death wish but knew they could frame it this way for clicks.
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.
And yet, it keeps happening.
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-ly...
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&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.
I'm fairly relaxed about this sort of thing (e.g. some stories about Gaza and such should definitely on HN), but "firebrand says firebrand-y thing" ... yeah, that doesn't really fit. It's neither especially interesting or especially notable and we could have a story about this every week; perhaps even multiple.
What would be on-topic would be a an in-depth profile about this person, or something like that.
You might not be interested, that's totally fair, then don't upvote.
But flagging it so that people don't know the CEO of the community is expressing death threats? I feel like we should know. We shouldn't be learning about YC/HN from other sites and have it censored/flagged within the community.
Dan unflagged it for the look of things, and I would have done the same, but I resent the accusation that I'm "censoring" things. I told you why I flagged it: it's just a silly off-topic "tit-for-tat of the day" type of thing that could quickly overrun the site if left unflagged because there's countless stories like that every day. Entire sites are dedicated almost exclusively to reporting this sort of thing, and if you're interested in that then follow sites that report on that type of thing.
HN is about "intellectual curiosity". It's not a "tech site" or "YC community forum" or "SF daily news site" or anything else.
I haven't lived in SF for years but the city government is legendary for it's ability to not serve its constituents (which obviously isn't unique).
I can't believe I'm defending a tech bro....
Reddit? Twitter? TruthSocial?
It's the internet equivalent of Mad Max out there. Except with more toxic waste.
There's plenty of toxicity here but the s/n ratio is pretty damn high.
This is schemescape signing off.
From a cursory glance, the quality of conversation appears to be nearly as high (or higher) than HN but that doesn't matter if most posts see less than 5-10 comments.
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.
> 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
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?
> 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.
> “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.
The tweet, while obviously inappropriate, contains no threat whatsoever.
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.
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!
> 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
Happy to see YC take the current site down and say they don’t actually think TK brought positive change to SF.
> 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&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.