Sqoot, you’re not alone. New York startup Sqoot recently caught flak for a tone-deaf hackathon ad that implied the event would be catered by women passing out beer; now another startup has come under fire for sexism. A Go Daddy-esque promotional video shot by a third party featured a pretty girl in a Geeklist T-shirt and underwear bouncing around with a nerdy-looking guy.
Shanley Kane, a Ruby developer in San Francisco, found the video offensive. It all went south fast when she started talking to Geeklist’s cofounders about it on Twitter—”please take it down, it’s fucking gross”—which Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur captured on Storify.
Geeklist founders Christian Sanz and Reuben Katz hit back at Ms. Kane for the public criticism and menacingly cc’ed her employer, Basho Technologies.
@shanley @csanz email. Not twitter Shanley. You’re representing a brand too, @basho so take it offline.
— reuben e katz (@rekatz) March 22, 2012
Oops—Basho was quick to back up Ms. Kane.
While @shanley was speaking as an individual, not as the voice of Basho, she has broad support here — and this individual agrees with her. — Justin Sheehy (@justinsheehy) March 22, 2012
Others started piling on Geeklist; one user submitted a bug report about the video:
@rekatz wrong, dude. Take the video offline, then the anger will go offline. don’t shoot @shanley as the messenger — Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks) March 22, 2012
As the founders escalated their attacks:
@rekatz @kevinmarks Also, I met with you twice to discuss a possible contracting job with you, which I did not pursue.
— Shanley Kane (@shanley) March 22, 2012
@shanley @rekatz @kevinmarks Can’t now because you deleted all the tweets where you mentioned sexist. Nice.
— Christian Sanz (@csanz) March 22, 2012
Finally the founders published an apology and promised to take down the video as soon as they can get in touch with the videographer.
“We never meant to offend any person and are very sorry as we clearly have,” the company said. “Geeklist is all about inclusion of every geek. Male and Female alike. We hope you’ll forgive the company and founders and use this as an opportunity to hire more women, support women in tech and their great achievements and promote a healthy work environment for all.”
As for the Twittersphere: “We could have handled it better.”
Adrianne Jeffries is the editor of Betabeat. Follow Adrianne on Twitter or via RSS. ajeffries@observer.com
