In a move that makes him more cartoonishly evil, Martin Shkreli got his Twitter account suspended Sunday afternoon after harassing targeting Teen Vogue’s writer, Lauren Duca.
If you’re unfamiliar with Shkreli, he gained notoriety after his pharmaceutical company artificially raised the price of a drug that treats a disease that fatally affects HIV patients. By gouging the price from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, Shkreli became America’s most hated person.
The Trump supporter “pharma bro” online harassment campaign began a couple of days ago when he started inviting female journalists to Trump’s inauguration. Lauren Duca, who’s been recently in the spotlight after writing about Trump gaslighting America, posted her response to the social media site.
I would rather eat my own organs pic.twitter.com/IgeCRZqk8w
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) January 5, 2017
Prompted by this, Shkreli started tweeting at her, updated his Twitter bio to say “also i have a small crush on @laurenduca (hope she doesn’t find out)”, and changed his profile picture and header to include a photoshopped picture of Duca and her husband whose face was replaced by Shkreli’s and a “fan-made” collage of pictures of the writer.
How is this allowed @jack pic.twitter.com/Wof8MlYHTL
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) January 8, 2017
After tweeting at Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, Shkreli’s account was suspended. But even after he was removed from the platform, the attacks towards the reporter still continued. Lauren Duca continues to receive threats of hacking and doxxing, and even a fake account was created under her name.
And now I’m receiving threats that my “nudes” are going to be released. Here, trolls, let me save you some time: pic.twitter.com/RIpHO5bL2M
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) January 8, 2017
This whole incident poses larger questions that go beyond this mustache-twirling level of comically evil human that is Martin Shkreli. After the harassment campaign against Leslie Jones lead by Milo Yiannopoulos and his alt-right minions, we must ask more out of Twitter and society to stop normalizing this behavior. Misogynistic, targeted harassment should not be a side effect of a woman getting professional attention. Moreover, we must ask about those women who are also victims of online harassment but don’t have the privilege of a verified account or a large amount of followers that might give them the chance of getting Jack Dorsey’s attention to finally get their abusers suspended from the site.
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