Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is doing a lot of backpedaling these days.
But when it comes to planning meetings at strip clubs and proposing a service for randomly sharing dick pics? The CEO remains all in.
These ideas are just some of the gems to be found in Kalanick’s current Twitter account, @travisk. We say “current,” because his old account @konatbone is protected and scrubbed of offensive material. That didn’t stop us from finding and calling out some of his particularly questionable old tweets — to which an Uber spokesperson responded that Kalanick’s “tweets were thoughtless and insensitive so he’s deleted them.”
And what about the tweets that he didn’t delete? Presumably, they are not “thoughtless and insensitive” by Kalanick’s standards. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what is still very much up on the CEO’s account.
@sacca we can discuss at the Gold Club tonight
— travis kalanick (@travisk) March 27, 2010
Uber launched in late 2009, and just a few months later Kalanick was joking with Chris Sacca — an early Uber investor — about a meeting at a notorious San Francisco strip club.
Ten days before that, Kalanick proposed launching a competitor to the then-popular ChatRoulette. The angle? His version would focus on exposing male genitalia to random strangers on the internet.
I’m creating a new site – dongroulette.com – you don’t need to pretend anymore
— travis kalanick (@travisk) March 17, 2010
Perhaps that was on his mind because of a recent “eyes wide shut” party he attended?
Escorting 2 masked beauties to a parisian eyes wide shut party … sort of
— travis kalanick (@travisk) December 12, 2009
From apologizing about arguing with an Uber driver, to promising to review his company’s use of a sketchy tool to evade law enforcement, to assuring employees and investors that the kind of sexism documented by former employee Susan Fowler will no longer be tolerated, Kalanick has struggled to emphasize that he is changing. What his Twitter account makes clear is what it is exactly that he’s seeking to change from.
ladies… don’t hate the playah, hate the game – http://su.pr/1wf4l4
— travis kalanick (@travisk) March 25, 2010
Where it not for the alleged toxic Uber culture rife with sexism, the above tweets could easily be brushed aside as the ramblings of a cowboy-hat wearing bro. But this bro just so happens to run a $60-billion company, and even if he is a “playah,” his employees deserve better.
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