(Original photo: flickr.com/niallkennedy)

Lying Bitches 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, known for his rather dirty mouth, made a big slip-up at the Nebraska-based thinkfluencer festival Big Omaha today. According to Valleywag, Mr. McClure was giving a talk at the conference when he asked someone how good her iPhone battery life was. When she responded with a presumably positive answer, Mr. McClure called her a "lying bitch." On stage. In front of tons of people.

Mr. McClure responded by clarifying his comment:

https://twitter.com/davemcclure/status/332946952176156672

Okay then.

Man about Internet Anil Dash stepped into the fray, corroborating Valleywag's reporting, but saying that Mr. McClure apologized for the faux pas.

https://twitter.com/anildash/status/332950633424502785

But then he added more context:

https://twitter.com/anildash/status/332951296816599041

Wonder if this whole debacle is making Mr. McClure wish for the heady days of reality show stardom.

No One Knows Anything at Twitter Even though Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey claims that he is "not even thinking" about taking the little company public, that doesn't mean other people aren't. Jean-Phillipe Maheu, a Twitter employee and former Bluefin Labs exec, was stopped by an immigration agent at JFK airport, but not for a typical immigration check. Instead, Mr. Maheu was asked the $64,000 question: when the hell is Twitter going to cave and make it rain with an IPO? Mr. Maheu didn't finish his tweet, so maybe he's not even thinking about it.

https://twitter.com/jpmaheu/status/332806410545025024

Nuptial Update Are you getting SO PUMPED for Sean Parker's Medievial Times-themed wedding of the (19th) century on June 1? We know you're busy polishing off your sword and ironing out the wrinkles in your Elven Hooded cloak, but before you get too carried, you should get acquainted with the surroundings of the wedding's exotic locale in Big Sur, Calif. It's a hot spot for celebrity weddings, as SFGate.com discovered. The city, which is about two hours south of the Valley, has seen several (real) celebrities get married like Michael C. Hall, Natalie Portman, and, ugh, Anne Hathaway. If you can't be an A-lister, you may as well get married like one.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dorsey Jack Dorsey is really freaking us out this week, perhaps more so than usual. First, he's doing these weird selfies on his Vine account that nobody can explain, and now apparently he discovered the Marilyn Monroe tag on Tumblr. His always erratic Twitter account that usually spews non-sequiturs and documents the San Francisco sunrise is now spitting out quotes from Ms. Monroe. This one below is particularly special because we ask this every day.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/332864581653368834

X Marks the Spot Rumors surrounding Microsoft's new iteration of its Xbox videogame console are in high gear with the nearing of the console's reveal at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington on May 21. On Tuesday, the International Business Times reported that it had confirmed that the new console would be called Xbox Infinity, although Reddit users appeared to debate the validity of this source. The device, which internally is going by the codename Durango, has seen numerous name ideas emerge, from Xbox 720, NeXtbox, or simply Xbox--just like Apple did with their newest iPad. No Xbox Cheetoh Fingers, then?

Zynga Death Watch Zynga employees appear to be so distressed about the state of their company that they are willingly running into traffic. The Village Voice reports that Zynga NYC's mobile team had its second annual footrace today:

They waited until one light turned red, made the cross-walk at one side their starting line, and ran through a hastily pulled ribbon at the other cross-walk to finish. There were pictures. And applause. And a lot of people standing around going, "What the f*ck?"

Runnin' Scared was kind enough to get a video interview, which you can watch below:

Lafayette Foot Race from Voice Media Group on Vimeo.

Mr. Crowley, who ducked out to run a half-marathon.

Do high-powered tech types have any idea of the right way to spend a weekend? Apparently not: When VC and former Square COO Keith Rabois made a critical, slightly snide remark about how Foursquare is faring, he ignited a two-day-long tussle over when it's okay to criticize a founder.

I swear, sometimes you'd think we were covering the goings-on among seventh-grade cliques.

It all started when newly minted VC Hunter Walk tweeted, "Wow, who knew 40,000 developers use the @foursquare API..." Pretty innocuous! But it seems Mr. Rabois couldn't contain a smart remark, and so began the sequel to his Twitter brawl with @dens from back in November:

We assume it's the months of rumors about a possible down round that has Mr. Crowley so sensitive.

Buddy Media founder Michael Lazerow chimed in (on his LinkedIn blog), tut-tutting Mr. Rabois for daring to shit-talk a founder. Mr. Lazerow complained that "founder-on-founder verbal violence seems to be at an all-time high" and then proceeded to take a swipe at Mr. Rabois, pointing out that as helpful as he is, well, he's never started a company, which apparently makes him a second-class citizen in the Valley:

Keith was the Art Garfunkel to the Paul Simon of each of his companies. The Barney Fife to each of his Sheriff Taylors. Change Entourage to Entrepreneurage and Keith is Turtle to the Vincent that is Jack Dorsey.

Art Garfunkel? Way harsh, Tai.

Business Insider added some real value with a recap that confused Square and Foursquare, as well as mixing up Mr. Walk and the Observer's own Hunter Walker. Whoopsie daisy!

@Dens ducked out to run a half-marathon, as one does, but that doesn't mean Foursquare's honor was simply there for the besmirching. Anil Dash strapped on his suit of shining armor and pointed out that Mr. Rabois is on the board of Yelp and maybe he ought to bring that little tidbit up when he criticizes Fourquare:

Whatever your thoughts on the future of Foursquare, surely we can all rally around of keeping hashtags like #hatersclub out of our tech talk?

Gizmodo's Sam Biddle sluttin' it up at CES. (Photo: Gizmodo)

News of the first annual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day swept across the web this morning following an article penned by one of the event's founders, gaming and social media reporter Leigh Alexander. "From booth babes to harassment, snide comments to double standards, women have often had a hard time feeling comfortable around the tech industry," she wrote. In order to demonstrate "the absurdity of objectifying people you claim to agree with or support intellectually," she's encouraging female tech writers to give gendered compliments or make sexist proclamations to men about their work.

Though the actual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day isn't until February 1st, Betabeat--comprised primarily of female writers--could hardly contain ourselves. Here are 25 gendered comments for 25 of our favorite male tech writers.

Walt Mossberg: What's a pretty face like yours doing buried in those product specs?

Mike Isaac: Shut up, honey, the women (Kara and Liz) are talking.

Ryan Tate: Started a flame war with Steve Jobs just to get some attention.

Sam Biddle: Hey baby, want a massage?

Mat Honan: It's cute how you just discovered two-step authentication last year.

David Pogue: All your scoops come from your PR girlfriend.

Michael Arrington: Swaggy? More like bitchy. Men should keep their opinions to themselves.

Steven Levy: Only wears glasses to look more authentically geeky.

John Herrman: 17 Ways John Herrman Uses His Looks to Get Ahead

Peter Kafka: You smell amazing.

Farhad Manjoo: Maybe I'd take you more seriously if your Twitter avatar wasn't so suggestive.

Anil Dash: Nag!

Peter Ha: Only a celebrated reporter because he can fill out a hoodie.

Carl Franzen: Just because it's an all-night hackathon doesn't mean you shouldn't put in a little effort.

Om Malik: He just googled some companies to look cool, he doesn’t really get tech.

Eric Eldon: We know Alexia does all the work and you were just hired as window dressing.

Ben Popper: Why are you being MEAN to STARTUPS?

Josh Topolsky: Why don't you go back to makeup reviews?

Steve Kovach: Your obsession with Snapchat proves you're a sexting slut.

Jason Del Rey: Your Twitter presence is adorable.

Nick Bilton: Maybe try an industry where you'd fit in better, like construction.

Ashlee Vance: Who'd you sleep with to get on the Techmeme leaderboard?

Bryan Goldberg: We never see you around at tech parties. You should come outttttt more.

Christopher Mims: FAKE GEEK GUY ALERT

Adrian Chen: Pretending to like Reddit so he can be the only boy in a girls' club.

Brian X. Chen: What's a nice boy like you doing at a gadget convention?

(Photo: Branch)

Conversation platform Branch announced in a post on its blog today that it is now out of invite-only beta and open to the public. With no more wait list, users can sign up immediately to start a conversation or group on Branch.

The startup also announced a host of new features, including the ability to highlight quotes in various branches as a way to reward positive feedback. "We think this serves two purposes," wrote Branch cofounder Josh Miller. "Creating valuable feedback for writers by letting them know when something they write is great, and a helpful signal for other readers by making branches easier to skim."

A new activity feed feature also allows users to see who is listening or watching a conversation they're hosting or participating in. Sorry, y'all: no more anony eavesdropping.

Branch kicked off 2013 by moving out of Betaworks into its own office space on 23rd St. and 3rd Ave. Mr. Miller told Betabeat that the new office is serving as a coworking space for a veritable who's who of New York tech, including "Amanda Peyton and the Grand St. crew, two ex-Foursquare employees doing a banking app, Anil Dash, Gina Trapani and Paul Ford." Medium, the new blogging platform from Twitter founder (and Branch mentor) Ev Williams, will also host its content team out of the Branch HQ.

LONGREADS

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Take a Hard Line on the Internet at Rally of 40,000 Men (And Me) In which our intrepid reporter sneaks into Citi Field in drag. 

Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set It's the end of the world as we know it, and they feel fine.

The Battle Over Revenge Porn: Can Hunter Moore, the Web’s Vilest Entrepreneur, Be Stopped? Victims and hackers are on the case.

Meet Betabeat's 2012 Tech Insurgents Ambiable agitator Anil Dash, Tumblr's Mad Man Rick Webb, and the merry pranksters of OkFocus.

Jonah Peretti’s Meme Streak Making viral happen inside the factory at BuzzFeed.

THE YEAR IN HEADLINES

Uber Bulldozes Its Way into New York City's Taxi Market Before all the bureaucratic setbacks, CEO Travis Kalanick revealed his grand plan.

Flash Dance! Luxury Flash Sales Sites Regroup After Layoffs Can Gilt Groupe cross the IPO finish line without scuffing the lacquer on its Louboutins?

How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded Insiders dish on Naveen Selvadurai's defoundering.

Records Point to Credit Card Fraud by Silicon Swindler Shirley Hornstein She used her friend's credit card to buy a plane ticket in her name. Twice. 

Investors Wonder About the Future of TechStars New York Will TechStars New York maintain its prominence?

OP-EDS

We Need to Make Tech Uncool Again A call to arms for the idealistic nerd in us all.

Friends Investing in Friends: When It Comes to Startups, Is the Fix Already In? Is Startupland an insider’s game?

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Why We’re Definitely in a Bubble The social media bubble is real, and it's spectacular.   

Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict War in the time of social graphs.

Area Blogger Worried People Will Think Reality Show Is Real A little perspective on Bravo's version of Silicon Valley.

TINY GEMS

Diary of Two Snapchat Addicts We just can't help ourselves.

Google Says ‘Gchat’ Is Not a Word Ubiquitous noun/verb is totally unofficial.

What Y Combinator Startups Actually Do, Based on Their (Unpronounceable) Names Zapier: Birchbox for swords?

Tortoise & Blonde Thought ‘We Want To Sit On Your Face’ Was a Good Idea for a Slogan "This was a family decision."

In Which We Went to Bravo’s Casting Call for the Real Wantrepreneurs of Silicon Alley The first tech party where someone tried to yank up our skirt! 

Randi, Can You Hear Me?

But we hear Ms. Zuckerberg may have some competition. A source mentioned that MTV is also working on a startup reality show rumored to be produced by peripatetic Foodspotter Soraya Darabi and "a Reddit cofounder." Ms. Darabi told Betabeat she was "not involved" in the project and Reddit cofounders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman did not immediately responded to our inquiry, so it's hard to say if that was just wishful thinking. However, an independent New York City-based casting director--not the lovely gentleman from last night!--confirmed that "There’s a bunch of networks" currently testing reality programming about startups, including MTV and possibly CNBC.

In fact, the casting director said he put together a reel of potential entrepreneurs--some in New York--for Bravo this summer, before "Start-Ups: Silicon Alley" had even aired. "Kind of like the 'Housewives' was successful, you look for more 'Housewives," he said, noting that the success of "Pawn Stars" on the History Channel begat "American Pickers" and "American Restoration."

"Tons of networks," he said, "are looking into the startup space."

"Right now, there’s a little trend going on where poeple are kind of into almost like the American dream," he explained. "You could turn on networks and could see people who are the best at what they do, celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay. But there hasn’t been a whole lot of documenting people with amazing ideas starting off." Networks want to "ride the journey," along with entrepreneurs. As for what kind of characters Bravo requested, "Every network has a demographic. You’re not going to send Bravo four 80-year-old people starting a company," he acknowledged. "We’re first looking for really great idea and then you just pray the people have personalities. You just need to be not be really shy."

Sounds like enough fodder to keep Pando Daily's coffers stocked for a week.

Live From New York, It's Makerbot Last night, at the launch of Wired's new holiday popup, Betabeat made the acquaintance of SNL stars Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen. Despite the fact that the room was decked out like an electronics store with gadgets galore, Ms. Bayer, in a grey and black Zara top, could not get enough of the Makerbot 3D printer Wired had on display.

When we asked what her favorite gadget there was, she told us it was "definitely the 3D printer." We suggested that perhaps she might want to check out Makerbot's new store in Nolita, where you can purchase little printed objects. "Did you know," she asked, her eyes wide, "that the 3D printer printed that set of headphones?" She gestured to a pair of red headphones in a glass case across the room. "That is so cool. I literally can't stop telling people about the 3D printer."

As we were leaving, Betabeat ran into her again, and mentioned that a friend of ours had joked that the party space looked a little too much like a Best Buy. "What kind of Best Buy has a 3D printer???" she asked, aghast.

GOOG Goes to Spam Betabeat receives a lot of press releases, and almost all of them route directly to our inboxes, leaving our spam folder for the detritus of the web. Except for one peculiar thing: almost every single email we’ve received from a PR person--or anyone with a @google.com email address, really--gets directed immediately to spam. It’s strange, considering Gmail is a product created and maintained by the company whose emails we are fielding. We’ve asked multiple Google PR reps what the deal is, but their best answer is that we should just continuing marking them as “not spam” to retrain Gmail. Ah, tech reporting is a rough gig.

Bromance Another day, another social media gem from Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer. This time, it’s a bit of Twitter back-and-forth:

Peer Pressure Congrats to Matt Langer, who as per his Twitter account just celebrated six months as a nonsmoker. What’s more interesting is the reason: He admitted to Anil Dash, human conscience of the tech scene, that “not even joking, one of the pros when i was trying to psych myself up to quit was ‘anil won't think i'm a fucking terrible person.’” We thought that seemed a little extreme, until we saw this riposte from Mr. Dash: “Ex-smokers have nothing but my appreciation. Smokers can go die slow, painful deaths.”

Excuse us while we dash out for a packet of Nicorette.

Paging Mr. Cuomo! (Photo: flickr.com/MTAphotos)

A coalition of techies say it's time to do something about our campaign finance morass, and they're starting with New York State. A veritable who's who of Silicon Alley--including Fred Wilson, Andy Weissman, Dennis Crowley, John Borthwick, Kevin Ryan, and Esther Dyson--have released an open letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo, urging him to take point on an effort to make the political process work a little more like Kickstarter or Github.

The problem, as they see it: "Today, elections in Albany are dominated by a small group of affluent campaign donors, professional influence-peddlers and deep-pocketed vested special interests." Not to mention some of those state capital buildings are downright Politburo-back-deal chic.

So what does this have to do with the technology business? Glad you asked. The undersigned are confident they've got just the model for reform: "We think that the open and diverse culture of the web that can help fix politics in New York." To wit:

All around us, we see the flowering of diverse, distributed networks of large numbers of people who are coming together to identify common concerns and act in concert. On crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter, thousands of New Yorkers are financing each other's creative businesses and projects, pooling small donations to fund big dreams.

The letter concludes that, "It is time to bring this same way of doing things to campaign finance in NY State, and create a national model that will strengthen small-d democracy." They're encouraging their fellow tech leaders to add their names to the petition. (It is interesting to note that Reddit cofounder and Internet politico Alexis Ohanian isn't on the list just yet.)

In a statement announcing the push, New York Tech Meetup chairman and Persona Democracy Media founder Andrew Rasiej got figurative:

"Democracy is an incredible application, but it’s time for an upgrade to work out some of the bugs that have crept in. Tech leaders are encouraged that Governor Cuomo has made public funding of elections a goal for New York."

The whole thing is more a call to action than a specific plan, but we suppose you've got to start somewhere.

Mr. Dash

Amiable Agitator

The day after Barack Obama won his second presidential term, @FakeDorsey, a satirical Twitter account mocking serial entrepreneur Jack Dorsey’s precious worldview, tweeted, “Pretty incredible to think we made any progress at all in this world before we had twitter, and @anildash telling us all what we should do.”

As the adage goes, it’s funny because it’s (partly!) true.

While Karl Rove demanded a recount on cable news, Twitter offered up real-time polling data. And Mr. Dash—the first employee of proto-blogging company Six Apart, who has been writing about how technology shapes culture since 1999—has also swayed public opinion on a number of knotty issues recently, from whether hosting a marathon after Hurricane Sandy was the best use of the New York City’s resources (nope), to how to close the gap in tech talent (train “blue collar coders” rather than just a “priesthood of highly-skilled experts”), to how startup investor Ashton Kutcher could avoid caking on brownface to sell potato chips (“Make some different decisions”).

His disarming combination of radical empathy and prescriptive real talk tends to humanize discussions about technology that are otherwise siloed in the startup world’s upbeat echo chamber. A sense of humor helps. “I’m sort of like Gandhi in that way,” Mr. Dash tweeted back, gently ribbing the real Mr. Dorsey’s celebrity crush.

But in a Quora question about his influence in Silicon Valley, Slacktory editor Nick Douglas compared Mr. Dash (once tapped by the White House to help federal agencies innovate) to a more contemporary leader, calling him “the Obama of tech”: “Someone trustworthy with important matters, who also has good shit on his iPhone. He can banter with curmudgeons without becoming one, and he can work with snobs without becoming one.”

Many of his blog posts on Dashes.com and his tweets to his 430,000 Twitter followers are about trying to “make sure that technology does the right thing,” Mr. Dash told Betabeat. “The tech world doesn’t acknowledge that there are values built into your apps and into software and its features.”

Mr. Dash takes the same tack at Activate, his strategy consulting firm, to help big media and tech companies to get with the digital program, urging them towards building app-like streams instead of antiquated web pages, for example. Although Mr. Dash and his co-founder Michael Wolf keep mum about clients they advise, Daniel Loeb—another insurgent on our list—named Mr. Wolf to Yahoo’s board not long before the company installed Marissa Mayer. Sources have also mentioned Activate’s work with Reuters.

“The people that are in these positions of power understand that my value is in telling them the truth. Right? That’s the trick to play, to tell people the truth and have them thank you for it instead of getting mad about it,” he said.

Next: Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld, Dwolla: The Credit Card Killers

Back to the beginning.

(Illustration: Robert Grossman)

Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, recently tried to disabuse the tech industry of its infatuation with the word ‘disruption.’ “We don’t want ‘disruption,’ where we just move things around. We want a direction. We want a purpose,” he said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, humbly suggesting the biannual conference change its name. But it’s more than just semantics. The tech sector’s claim to produce world-changing products and services often gets drowned out in a chorus of me-too companies solving problems no one ever complained about. The umpteenth nightlife-recommendations tool or empty real-time dating app can obscure the whirr of a nascent robotics sector in Manhattan or a futuristic, even revolutionary, experiment in manufacturing in Queens.

However, there are insurgents in our midst, quietly pushing the city closer to Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of "reclaiming our title as the world capital of technological innovation." To identify those mindful mutineers, we tried to look beyond established leaders (see: Wilson, Fred) to the next class of innovators, who are forcing corporations to come to terms with the mobile revolution or shepherding startups toward making money without selling out. We found investors, developers, educators and agitators. We identified pioneering companies that set off the self-education craze (you’re welcome, Peter Thiel). We spotted a trio of provocateurs in Long Island City and an open-source radical on Roosevelt Island. Looking at this constellation of entrepreneurs, you can start to see the outline of New York’s tech future taking shape.

Valery Komissarova, Grishin Robotics: Rallying the Robots

Phineas Barnes, First Round Capital: the Bottom-Up Investor

Marleen Vogelaar, Shapeways: the Manufacturing Maven 

Anil Dash, Activate and ThinkUp: Amiable Agitator

Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld, Dwolla: The Credit Card Killers

Mike Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare: The Principal of New York

Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

Deborah Estrin, CornellNYC Tech: the Entrepreneurial Egghead

Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, OKFocus: The Merry Pranksters

Daniel Loeb, Third Point LLC: the Poison Pen

This story appeared on the cover of the November 14, 2012 issue of The New York Observer. 

(Photo: CNN)

Last night, the now-notorious Reddit troll Violentacrez, whom Gawker recently exposed as a 49-year-old Texas-based programmer named Michael Brutsch, appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 for God knows what reason. In the painfully awkward two-part interview, during which Mr. Cooper thankfully gave us a commercial break to collect ourselves and tweet our thoughts, Mr. Brutsch invoked every possible excuse to justify his poor behavior, which includes creating controversial subreddits like PicsofDeadKids and Jailbait.

Throughout the interview, Mr. Brutsch referred to his Reddit username Violentacrez in the third person, echoing other statements he's made about Violentacrez being a character he played and attempting to distance himself from taking personal responsibility for his actions. He also admitted that his sole purpose for creating racist and misogynistic subreddits was to get a rise out of people (he bragged he has a "gift" for it) in order to accumulate "meaningless internet points."

Shortly after the interview aired, Mr. Brutsch again took to Reddit under his clean handle "mbrutsch" and admitted that appearing on CNN was a "huge mistake, which I will not repeat." He also agreed with users who alleged that Reddit's statement given to CNN is actually riddled with factual inaccuracies. "It was suprising that the admins straight up lied about banning VA multiple times," one user wrote. "Didn't surprise me at all," replied Mr. Brutsch.

Still, it was rather shocking to witness Mr. Brutsch's willingness to completely throw Reddit, a platform he has essentially dedicated his life to for the past five years, under the bus in order to save his own neck. Though he was once a Reddit power user, tapped by administrators to wrangle the darkest subreddits and keep illegal content from cropping up on them, he has continually called Reddit admins out for lying and for not having his back.

"Reddit encouraged and enabled this kind of behavior," he said last night on CNN. Even Redditors whose inconsistent "free speech" logic (keep Jailbait, but block Gawker links) put them in allegiance with Mr. Brutsch probably won't appreciate hearing him blame his trolling on Reddit, both as a platform and community.

We've reached out to Reddit general manager Erik Martin to ask for comment on Mr. Brutsch's accusation and will update when we hear back. But it's true that Reddit administrators have been supportive of Mr. Brutsch's behavior in the past. Mr. Brutsch also brought along to the interview a gold-plated bobblehead that Reddit administrators gave to him for creating Jailbait, a subreddit where users posted sexualized photos of minors. The Atlantic Wire points out that the statue was given to Mr. Brutsch as a token for creating "Worst Reddit," which still seems like a knowing nod and thumbs up to his behavior on the site.

This reporter is a frequent user of Reddit, in both her personal and professional life, and a fan of the platform as a fount of information. At its best, it can be an open forum for thoughtful conversation, hilarious asides and friendly knowledge sharing. But this incident has shed new light on the dark underbelly of a platform that just recently hosted a Q&A with the President of the United States.

It may seem like cognitive dissonance for Reddit to host forums like RapingWomen alongside TwoXChromosomes, but the site is also a microcosm of the Internet at large: full of some of the most wonderful people, but also some of the worst. Still, the laissez-faire attitude of Reddit admins towards the sexist and misogynistic content is concerning at best and borderline-disgusting at worst. As Anil Dash put it, "Reddit does many good things, but is also a horrendously sexist culture."

Of course, this realization is nothing new--the MensRights subreddit has been around for ages, and the internet as a whole has long been a complicated place for women to exist. But the Violentacrez scandal, coupled with that of Creepshots and Predditors, has put the conversation about Reddit's attitudes towards its female users at the forefront.

At least one woman we know, an active Redditor who has attended meetups and accrued a fair amount of "meaningless Internet points," has shut down her account in response to the recent news. "[Violentacrez] is the catalyst, yes, but the general culture of casual racism and misogyny as well," she tweeted.

Through its handling of the Violentacrez crisis, as well as last year's Jailbait scandal, Reddit has emphasized time and time again that it wants to be a platform that embraces free speech, right up to the line of illegality (but never crossing it). This will turn off some users, and perhaps cultivate a culture rife with racism and misogyny, under the banner of free speech. It is not, however, somehow immune to the criticism these types of decisions will evoke from Redditors and the media alike.

As Ken at Popehat wrote in his excellent piece on Reddit, Gawker and anonymity:

Creepers and pedophiles and bigots make up only a tiny minority of Redditors; people angry that they are being criticized make up only a slightly larger minority. Comments from Reddit administrators in the wake of the child pornography outcry has made clear that Reddit wants to be a free speech site that permits everything that the law does not prohibit. That's fine. I'd defend Reddit's freedom to publish what the law allows. But Redditors need not be taken seriously to the extent they believe they have a protected right to be free of criticism and ridicule and inquiry. You can argue all you want that forums like — oh, say, the /r/BeatingWomen subreddit — should be free to thrive without criticism. Moderators can indulge your feelings by banning critics. Moderators can decide to ban links to Gawker on the theory that if you take pictures of children in public and post them for the sexual pleasure of misfit neckbeards, you have a right to privacy that should prevent anyone from identifying you. But Reddit administrators and moderators and Redditors can't stop everyone else from calling out their conduct and their oddly inconsistent philosophy. Private individuals decrying, ridiculing, and even using their skills to identify Redditors are using a classic "more speech" remedy to speech they don't like. It's a feature, not a bug, of free speech.

Of course, individuals on Reddit are also responsible for their own actions. No matter how much Mr. Brutsch claims Reddit "encouraged and enabled his behavior," it was still just a platform full of--as he says--"college kids," and it was ultimately his decision to dutifully play into their twisted tastes. Now, he's paying the price for that: he's lost his job and his health insurance and has ultimately become the face of Internet trolldom. Reddit's reputation will recover from this poor publicity fiasco, but the rep of its most notorious troll probably won't.