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comment by iammyownrushmore
iammyownrushmore  ·  3832 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Snapchat CEO Mortified By Leaked Sexist Frat Emails

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.