Is Garry Tan San Francisco’s ‘Twitter Menace’ or True Believer?
However Mr. Tan’s ardour, as it’s for a rising variety of tech trade leaders, is San Francisco politics. He’s one in every of a cadre of love-them-or-hate-them tech executives and traders with a lot of opinions in regards to the metropolis and infinite piles of money to, as they are saying within the tech trade, transfer quick and break issues. (Their critics would say it’s extra like they’re making an attempt to purchase Metropolis Corridor.)
To a few of San Francisco’s political institution, Mr. Tan, 43, has change into essentially the most annoying in a parade of rich tech executives. He has created a bombastic on-line persona whereas spending about $400,000 on native politics up to now few years — with probably much more to come back. And on the social media web site X, the place he has 425,000 followers, Mr. Tan doesn’t simply rub some folks the improper manner, he enrages them.
Simply after midnight on Jan. 27, he posted on X, previously Twitter, that seven left-leaning members of the town’s Board of Supervisors, listed by title, ought to “die sluggish,” punctuated by an expletive. It was a delicate reference to the rap legend Tupac Shakur’s well-known monitor “Hit ’Em Up,” launched 28 years in the past as an insult to his music rivals. However to some folks, it seemed like a risk.
Mr. Tan was, he admitted when an X follower requested him, drunk.
Just a few hours after his publish went up, Mr. Tan deleted it and apologized. However loads of folks had already seen it.
A few days later, some supervisors acquired nameless letters at their houses bearing Mr. Tan’s face and the phrases: “Garry Tan is correct! I want a sluggish and painful dying for you and your family members.” Aaron Peskin, a supervisor who’s contemplating difficult London Breed, the San Francisco mayor, within the November election, was one of some supervisors to file police stories based mostly on Mr. Tan’s publish.
