#poorsnapchat
#notreally
edit: also holy shit this dude is younger than i am
This app is literally made to send and immediately delete embarrassing / incriminating / sexy photos. How the hell are people are surprised that app creator has gotten drunk and had sex and done/said inappropriate things? The idea had to come from somewhere.
Seeing CEOs as venerated moral arbiters has never proven to be a good idea. They present the same problems as many others in any society, depending on what they were before they were in the grander public view ( and then they are a public figure with their own moral code they are seemingly expected to follow). If he was just some random 20-something, responses would be no less agitated, but probably along the lines of "dumbass kid made some mistakes, we all do, it's just extra shitty that his are so unabashedly misogynist" But at some point he developed a product people trusted and built some values into (or at least used), and other people threw a shitload of money at him. The most interesting part of this whole story is that the product developed was a response to this ability to mine a person's past for anything to be used for future judgement, to send your mistakes far and wide and then they (seemingly) disappear. Though this is nothing new, it's also telling how such a fervent capitalist environment treats it's saviors, first with accolades and praise, then immediately with the search for anything with which to bring them down, most likely from just sheer jealousy. This is mainly through the politicizing, but, while in politics, you can lose your hard-won power (ie. Anthony Weiner), no one is taking away this kid's money. Nowadays we just have the ability to reach really deep into someone's past to extricate this socio-political judgement. Not defending his actions, but, I mean, insomniasexx is right, most ideas are responses to something you have been exposed to in your past, and I think plenty of people have used the underlying concept of this product to their own benefit. It's just easy now read all of the weight of social perception into each action taken by a person instead of just the limited circumstances they stemmed from. Everyone's existence and self-perception is built on a damn pile of skeletons in their closet we hope no one can see, our flashlights have just gotten a lot brighter.
That's just gold. That'll smack down his ego just a bit.
I don't really have much experience with Snapchat, but is this striking a chord with its users/community?
I have been a vocal Snapchatter on Hubski. It really makes me lose any good opinion of the CEO that I had, and it makes me think that to be a start-up these days you don't need much beyond a great idea and a semblance of a way to make it go - Snapchat's security issues have made that clear. It makes me think more about who could be behind my apps. It's not making me stop using it...I'd be sad to lose Snapchat... And I think most of Snapchat's users/community are frankly too young - younger even than the 23-year-old CEO - for this to really impact their use. Not to imply the youth aren't socially conscious but I think they tend to value use over ideals. Heck, I tend to value use over ideals - not unilaterally, of course. But - the true question is - where's the harm here? Who did those emails hurt? So the CEO partied a lot and did a lot of drugs and maybe doesn't have the most respectful opinion of sorority women...There is no physical or clear-cut harm here. There is harm in terms of propagating an anti-feminist environment, but physically no one is hurt, visibly, no one is hurt, so it's hard to be vehemently against him, I think.
There's a missed opportunity, though. Snapchat is the poster child for "the Ephemeralnet" (fuck you, TC). Their whole raison d'etre is disappearing peccadilloes down the memory hole. Here we have a CEO being hurt by the #1 credibility problem faced by anyone who grew up after Google: the infinite memory of the Internet. In a perfect world, a 23-year-old Wunderkind whose fortune has been made on allowing users to not worry about sexts would have been thinking about the inevitability of his past becoming his present since his company first gained traction. In a perfect world, these revelations are part of a pre-packaged media strategy to further the advance of Snapchat's ideology. In a perfect world, this becomes a talking point. In a perfect world, Snapchat hadn't been revealed to pay "privacy" the barest of lipservice while proclaiming the exact opposite to anyone who would listen. That's the harm. Our society desperately needs to have this discussion. This was the perfect opportunity. Instead, we have a punchline.But - the true question is - where's the harm here? Who did those emails hurt? So the CEO partied a lot and did a lot of drugs and maybe doesn't have the most respectful opinion of sorority women...There is no physical or clear-cut harm here.
I agree. This kind of banter is par for the course among many groups of boys/young men. It's distasteful, ignorant, and wrong-headed, but many of us have passed through similar waters, and all of us are friends and family with some who have. There's little reason to think that he hasn't grown up since then. If he was 35 when he sent these emails, I would feel more comfortable judging him.But - the true question is - where's the harm here? Who did those emails hurt? So the CEO partied a lot and did a lot of drugs and maybe doesn't have the most respectful opinion of sorority women...There is no physical or clear-cut harm here. There is harm in terms of propagating an anti-feminist environment, but physically no one is hurt, visibly, no one is hurt, so it's hard to be vehemently against him, I think.