Uber exec wanted to sic private dicks on critics ... Hey, Emil Michael, COME AT US, bro Car hire upstart Uber has apologized after a top exec suggested hiring investigators to expose the personal lives of its critics. Senior veep of business Emil Michael said at a private dinner in New York City that Uber could blow "a million dollars" assembling a crack team of gumshoes and journalists to find dirt on the …
The only way that it doesn't is if you are arguing with someone who is demanding you deal with these 'rogue' reporters who aren't toeing the line and doing so by saying facetiously that you could 'deal' with them by doing something over-the-top.
Kind of how when my partner asked me what we're going to do about Christmas this year, I suggested murder-suicide.
But when that's what you're saying, it should be pretty clear by the context and tone. It'd also be pretty easy to clear up, without resorting to the "do[es] not reflect my actual views" line.
I seem to recall more than a few news stories from 1999-2000 involving insane tech startup CEO behavior that have a similar smell to this one. Every corporate executive has to have some serious balls and be willing to do crazy things, but it's that special combination of inexperience and hubris that surfaces these interesting news stories. Even Zuckerberg manages to keep a reasonably low profile and have his handlers take care of things.
Most entertaining of the bunch is the one about the "CEO in the plastic pants" from theglobe.com. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB988750097459636
I imagine we'll be seeing a few more of these before the final pop.
Living in the shadow of the valley, yes, you have tagged a valid precursor. When you go further in economic history, especially American, it shows up frequently. I'm trying to think of an American bubble where it hadn't and striking out.
It is very much a nouveau riche kind of thing. You rarely see that naked exercise of power with old money. Iron fist meet velvet glove. It'd make an interesting sort of analysis, except meeting either manifestation of fist.
This sort of thing is why one's life on-line (browsing habits, searches, who you mix with, ...) should stay strictly private instead of being collected for commercial advantage, which ultimately means selling the information to the highest bidder: knowledge (of you) is power (over you).
Aside: Hitchhiking does offer a periodic change of scene. And you can look up without craning. And there's plenty of leg-room while checking out the scenery. But consider a bicycle as a principle mode; it has many advantages...
Anyway... the coin of apology is everywhere and inexorably being diluted--first by the mob-forced blood-vengeance demand for resort to it (for the slightest misstep, be it verbal, sartorial, etc.--no real limits) and, secondly, by the ease with which an apology can be shit out^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hissued from the corporate body, when circumstances really demand it, and everything being made 'nice' thereby. Apology is approaching meaninglessness asymptotically.
Über deserves a smoking hole, though, and that can't arrive too soon.
According Buzzfeed and others, theres more: Michael specifically criticized one journalist -- Sarah Lacy, the editor-in-chief of tech site Pando Daily, according to BuzzFeed. Lacy recently wrote a column calling out Uber for sexism and said she had deleted the app from her phone. At the dinner, according to an article by BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, Michael "said that he thought Lacy should be held 'personally responsible' for any woman who followed her lead in deleting Uber and was then sexually assaulted."
I'm thinking that the only way Uber might even come close to ending this is fire the VP. But we all know full well, that he'll take his golden parachute and leap into a new VP slot somewhere else.
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