Lane Would

TechCrunch is a bully. Or at least they were today.

1. What Anthony neglects to reveal is that there is a palpable bias against Shirley at TechCrunch. Deserved or not, that should have been disclosed.
2. Anthony accuses her at the top of the article of exaggerating her connection with Eliza Dushku and others for personal gain at the ThriveGulu event, with no inclusion of all the work she put in for the event before the tech community branded her with a scarlet letter and forced her to play a silent role because everyone knew this article was coming out. From what I understand, there is no bad blood between the parties involved in the ThriveGulu fundraiser.
3. Anthony’s calling out of Founders Fund legal action against Shirley simply pulls from their complaint without offering any intelligible context. 
4. Although in the tech community it has been very evident that this article was coming out for a while, Anthony only reached out to Shirley for her input (after she made herself available weeks earlier, according to Mr. Ha’s article) the morning that the article came out and implies that her non-response is incriminating.

Let’s assume it all.

The things that Shirley is accused of sound a LOT like the tech industry I’ve come to know. I hear so many conversations about relationships that tech industry B-listers have with top CEO’s. Seems like everyone is besties with Jack Dorsey and Dennis Crowley. Someone went to the same party, took a photo and regaled their friends about how “down to earth” person X was or how Person Y is just as much of an ass as all the rumors say. Reality is, there’s no relationship at all.

I don’t care how many people you have in your address book. If you can get a response from Zuck if you email his incredibly easy-to-decipher address. If Fred Wilson shook your hand and Peter Thiel heard about your idea from your “advisor.” Most of us are not as big of a deal that we convey that we are. 99% of the industry is guilty.

So I ask: Do we all want established media outlets to come sort through all of the claims we’ve made on twitter? I DON’T. I’ve exaggerated before. I’ll admit it. But so have you.

Shirley Hornstein is a human. She’s not evil. She has friends and people that love her. She has a future. She’s SUPER young (younger than you probably think). And she has the top media company in the tech industry trying to take her down. Sound fair to you?

So shame on TechCrunch for publishing something that belongs on TMZ. Shame on Anthony for smiling at all the retweets he gets tonight. Shame on the editors for allowing their bias to let something like this to ever go live, much less put it on the home page. And shame on my friends for enjoying such a hurtful piece.

We should want the best for people. Healing, reconciliation and health. Sure, there should absolutely be accountability for our actions. But Anthony’s article was not written in hope to bring something good about from it. He seems to have set out to destroy Shirley. I hope he doesn’t succeed.