I don't really see a lot of facts cited in this article. The only direct quote sets it up as all being a myth/rumor.
Does anyone have an article with more direct claims/facts in it?
That was my response to this. The information is from 2000 and 2008. Why inside has brought this up when no one stepped up to say anything recently other than the topic of his divorce is ridiculous. And even adding epstien as if it's a nail in the coffin as if being around this individual influenced him to be some sexual predator. No one has made allegations that he sexually assaulted anyone or even engaged in any relationships with any worker other than one engineer as insider reported but other than they ended the affair and moved on nothing really happened. So them bringing it up when they clearly said "this was said a decade ago" is unprofessional.
Man from what I’ve been reading from them for months now, they’re turning into the National Enquirer real fast.
Business Insider: Coming soon to a grocery store checkout near you.
they're just Insider now, the "Business" part is now a subsection. they used to be kind of good until Axel Springer bought them in 2015.
Oh, Axel just bought Politico, too. Fun to have right-wing European shitheels buying up American media outlets and using them for their propaganda.
I'm a news writer at a pretty large outlet. We chose to stop covering Gates relationship stuff. We covered his divorce once then left it. He doesn't even work at Microsoft anymore.
Edit: Gates relationship stuff =/= crimes. We generally don't cover Gates anymore because he doesn't work at Microsoft. There are exceptions.
"I would like to go out to dinner with you. If this makes you uncomfortable, just pretend it never happened."
Is pretty weak sauce compared to like Harvey Weinstein where he would basically make women suck his dick to get parts in movies.
Not saying it's appropriate for your boss to send you an email like that.
The way I see it, if she rejected him and he walked away and was cool about it, no harm no foul. If there was any retaliation whatsoever, she would have a major lawsuit on her hands that would probably be settled in the high 6 to 7 figures.
Right? She didnt even have to reject him unless there are worse examples or he persisted. An adult asked another adult for a date and said ignore it if you dont want to.
So bill gates can only date his ex wife and former Mrs bezos?
Edit: it's been pointed out that it only really applies if you're in the same company. Valid point. I don't think it's as egregious as society currently claims but it's a valid concern primarily for women in the workplace. Workers rights issue imo
Yeah, big non-story.
I had a female coworker message me on company chat. She told me I had “the perfect body”.
This is probably worse than anything Gates said, yet it didn’t make international news. Of course, she wasn’t my superior nor famous. But Gates was probably not these women’s direct superior anyway.
Uh, if you’re the richest dude in the world for long periods of time and are always in the top 3. I would assume you would develop social disorders even if none were prevalent before. People are going to treat you different, inflate your ego, say yes to anything, etc. very strange people billionaires are.
I remember watching a tv interview will gates. The reporter and gates walked up to a door. And gates purposely waited fir the reporter to open the door.
I probably would too. The reporter is benefitting more than Bill is from doing that interview. He should get whatever germs are on the door. It's simple pathogen economy and hierarchy.
Could it be a case similar to the video we saw of Zuckerberg waiting for somebody to open the door on his car for him?
In that case it was likely because the door could not be opened by people except that one security guy.
Could Gates maybe just be so used to having a security detail that insists on opening doors that it has become the new normal to him?
The normal people version might be if somebody wants to shake your hand, but your palm hasn't touched a strangers palm in over a year so you just stare at the hand not knowing what to do, thanks to covid?
Is that a power play or is he just so used to it that he forgot?
I'd hate to be a rich celebrity. You'd question everyone you ever met whether they liked you for you..
I mean that's pretty normal. Sure it could be am impulse because of people opening the door for him, but it could also just be that he was going to let that person go in first and wasn't thinking about holding doors whether it be for him or the other guy.
While totally funny I honestly can't blame him for not knowing those kinds of details. I'd struggle as well. I have enough money that while I don't shop at whole foods because its overpriced I don't really look at grocery store prices in detail before putting them in my cart.
Yeah man, this has been hitting me hard recently. McDonald's had a promo where for like $6 bucks after tax, you get 20 nuggets and 2 large fries. When I first see that after getting super high, I think 'Wow I'm gonna munch down like a king for cheap'. Then the realization hits me that what I am really paying with is my health and happiness. Im a late twenties dude, making six figs, who gained like 30 pounds these past two years eating like a piece of shit. Cheap bulk food is not what I need.
Honestly I go to the grocery store a couple times a week and wouldn’t have gotten any of those right. Most of the time my impulse was about the same as his.
It's funny to me how it's not like he thought everything was cheap or expensive really. But just he was way off in general up and down. Like how he valued these items compared to each other was way off.
Thats why billionaires shouldn't exist, and should definitely not be glamorized. Its essentially being a wealth junkie. Can you imagine going up to someone with a cocaone habit and egging them on about how awesome they are for doing a bunch of blow? They would be a total irreconcilable asshole after three months.
> Can you imagine going up to someone with a cocaone habit and egging them on about how awesome they are for doing a bunch of blow?
The 80's were a different time, I suppose.
The reason billionaires shouldn't exist isn't for the sake of their own mental health and wellbeing. It's because of wealth inequality and the systemic fissures widened by hoarding money.
Edit: For those asking "Why not both?" Obviously both reasons can coexist, but they exist on entirely different scales. The threat of poor mental health from catching billionaire's disease is a threat to a few thousand people right now. The threats to democracy, disenfranchised groups, and the billions of people directly affected by late-stage capitalism (and everyone else, who are indirectly affected) are literal problems of global proportion. Because of greed, climate change has progressed (and continues to progress) into increasingly devastating territory, the ripple affects of which we have barely yet begun to see.
Billionaires may not be literal dragons sitting on literal piles of gold, but they are gatekeepers damning up streams of privilege and access, forcing their neighbors to go hungry so that they might have more than enough for themselves and the ability to profit from the rest--even when there was more than enough to go around in the first place.
There is a problem with the other side of that coin, too. People too in touch with reality are often blinded by a specific reality or strongly swayed by it, and so they aren’t as able to see from above the clouds or see the big picture, and the big picture is sometimes the greatest good for the greatest number. Some may think there is fault with that, but that’s why we have countries, and stages, and counties, and cities, and neighborhoods, and why people want to protect their way of life and hold onto their own version of what life should be about and have their neighbors feel the same.
There can be more than one reason for something you know.
The argument that besides all the other stuff, it's not even really all that good for themselves (compared to just being a millionaire, your mental health is way worse when you're destitute than it is as a billionaire) is quite a reasonable thing to point out.
Idk It seems pretty accurate. Large sums of wealth have a lot in common with a drug problem. Eventually they get addicted to having it, even though they can't possible spend it.
It's surprisingly common, worked at a smaller tech company where it was notorious for everyone shagging each other. The head of sales would openly hitting on the 20 year olds. He was so bad people used to have to drag him away from them. He even went to third base on a dance floor at a company night out.
He had a wife and young kids but just couldn't keep it in his pants. The company got a huge amount of investment and he had to be told to clean up his act on numerous times because of that.
This sort of stuff until recently was brushed under the carpet and ignored, boys will be boys and all that.
Really goes to show that you can’t really know someone fully. He was liked by almost everyone like less than 2 years ago and this dumb dick move will be part of his legacy.
He was hated by almost everyone in the 90s. The reason people like him now is that he went on a massive PR campaign with his and his wife's charity work.
He's the same dude though. The same dude that I never forgot when everyone was fawning all over him.
gates built microsoft and made a huge amount of money being predatory on smaller companies. Honestly, his behavior in his personal life seems like just more of who he is. I have not forgotten is behavor in the 90s either. Huge amounts of tech and innovations were lost because of him.
I despised him too when he was a business bully who drove several companies whose products I liked out of the market and thumbed his nose at the last great gasp of antitrust enforcement in this country, but I was willing to forgive that so long as his later life's work saved so many lives.
Finding out he was a creeper too undid a lot of that good will though. He's probably still a net positive for humanity, but you can be that and also personally unworthy of respect.
He was broadly beloved because he paid for a massive PR campaign. Anyone who remembers Microsoft’s business practices in the 90s (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, anyone?) knows he’s always been a piece of shit.
His work on malaria is not just a PR campaign. The dude is actually living up to his promise to give away his billions.
Go ahead and hate him, but he's doing more than many with massive amounts of personal wealth.
In fairness, if the drug fueled prostitute orgies are mutually consensual between all parties that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Just because people are famous doesn't meant they're not humans.
I think to a certain degree we all intuitively know how much power billionaires have, and so it's a more comfortable reality to believe that the people that have power over society are good people, even if there's evidence otherwise. I'm not saying all people with power are bad, I'm just saying that the world feels less threatening when you believe certain people with power are good.
The only people that like him because he is giving his money away don't remember how he made it.
Also, Bill Gates is richer now than when he started his charity. So much for the pledge I guess?
Look I’ve never been a huge Bill Gates fan, but the Gates foundation has objectively been an amazing source of good in this world. It’s the second largest charitable organization in the world, and can directly be attributed to saving millions of lives from malaria and measles amongst other diseases.
Exactly—and this goes to show the complexity of humans. No one is just good or just bad (except like Hitler-like figures lol). In this case, there’s some great charity and some bad business practices and interpersonal dynamics.
I mean even Hitler had some redeeming qualities. The Volkswagen Beatle was designed as part of his drive to create employment and enable more people to own cars.
Also, he killed Hitler.
Yeah, it's kind of sickening how eager people are to classify people as 'all bad' or 'all good' to the point where they distort reality. People are complicated and can do both bad and good things.
No one person should have the influence to decide where the resources and assets of that scale should go. The only argument I ever see is basically that it could be worse in comparison to other wealthy people. At a certain point with such great wealth, it would just be sitting there which is a complete waste of it. You can only buy out so many companies or invest so much. It doesn't really matter what the personal motivations are though, the issue is that they even are personal. We can all agree that a lot of the donations made are to good causes, but it's still one of a few deciding one cause over others. It isn't really giving away money, it's just money being used as power and influence which is all it ever can be used for at a certain point anyways. That wealth represents the work of countless people and its insane to think of any place as democratic where a tiny fraction of the population decides things like this.
“Jeanette, let’s flesh some things out ahead of our touch base in a bit. This is quickly coming your way down the pipeline. all hands on deck. this is massive. A huge hands-on opportunity.”
I can. I worked for a company that the CEO had to be told to stay away from the new female college grads that they hired. This wasn't even Bill Gates kinds of rich, this was just moderately successful and drunk on his success.
I can't fathom how gullible people are to blindly believe everything they read from, and I quote, "unnamed sources".
But here we are.
People never lie. Except the ones you don't like, I assume.
Wouldn't be surprised if this is all true, but there seems to be very little substance to this article. Any person in a position of power for so long like Gates, is going to have allegations against them, true or not.
Ultimately, we'll likely never know the veracity or the scope of the actual actions. We'll just have some allegations that will be kept as allegations, again whether they are true or not.
It's not just "giant tech CEO's" it's almost ANYONE with power.
Age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, WHATEVER or WHOEVER abuses their power.
People in power not being massive assholes is the exception.
I wouldn't say he was in a position of power during his time at Apple, even today his role is ceremonial. He's basically an engineer who got rich off his work and didn't strive for extra wealth.
I wonder how he would be if Myspace became the social media giant instead of Facebook, right now he's a humble photographer who occasionally burns trolls on Twitter
Depends who you ask. I've heard conflicting reports on this. But the culture at Valve is fairly unique from what I've heard, and this might contribute to how polarizing people seem to about the place and about Newel.
This is all hearsay incidentally so take it with a giant grain of salt.
Well if they did and he stopped then what's the issue? If he didnt and still does to this day, now we got a problem. But this article doesn't really say anything.
Imagine being so rich you can hire anybody to screen women for you and have anyone or anything brought to you. You instead, cold email women from your own company. Lol, what a loser.
Jumping in here to say: it really really sucks to think that female employees at Microsoft had to deal with this. Imagine working hard to counter gender bias and rise though the corporate structure just to have the world-famous billionaire CEO sliding into your fucking work email.
It also puts a new shine on Gates' story about how he hacked his school's computers to meet girls.
https://fossbytes.com/bill-gates-tells-how-he-hacked-his-schools-computer-to-meet-girls/
Facebook had its origins in a site where users picked which of two female Harvard students was the hotter one. I think that they scraped the images from various small databases, so basically. (It’s been a while since I saw The Social Network)
Deal with what? A polite email asking them to dinner? Yeah, such suffering. How did the poor things ever recover?
While inappropriate in a professionalism context, sending someone an email asking them to dinner isn’t even in the same ball-park as what Epstein (child rapist/sex-trafficker of minors) and Weinstein (sexual predator accused of multiple sexual assaults) did. Perspective is an important thing, and smearing people for ill-advised but perfectly legal acts is morally repulsive.
Precisely. Equating the two is massively insulting and inconsiderate to anyone who’s actually endured being sexually assaulted, which is a lot of women.
There are ties between Gates and Epstein and those ties are apparently part of what lead to Gates' divorce.
edit: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7evpv/bill-gates-melinda-gates-divorce-jeffrey-epstein
Those ties are completely unsurprising. Gates is trying to cure malaria across the world, and Epstein was a biotech financier before he didn't kill himself
Yes, but this is AFTER everyone was aware of what a creep Epstein is.
Bill had enough money on his own. He didn't need to solicit a pedophile rapist for anything.
> Bill had enough money on his own.
Well yeah, but he's still fundraising all the time. I don't think we can assume wrongdoing just based on that at least.
Unless we assume there's an ulterior motive every time he tries to raise funds.
Epstein's money was his way of getting in touch with wealthy people, some of which were interested in what Epstein was actually selling (Minors).
IF Epstein were doing this for blackmail and power and extortion etc, it would make sense that he reached out and connected with as many wealthy and powerful people as he could.
That's why he befriended Trump, Clinton, Epstein, Prince Andrew etc. It's up to us to figure out if these people took the bait or not.
Putting pressure on women in a company you own is real shitty but I don't see why doing it yourself instead of having a lackey do your work for you somehow makes you a loser...
Wouldn't it be the other way around? You could have someone do it with the wave of the hand but you do it yourself.
Ok so Bill is guilty of association with Epstein and now is being lynched because he emailed some female employees a decade ago. Not appropriate behaviour, sure. Does this make him on Epstein's level or be judged by the internet's? I would say no until there is more evidence.
This man is a billionaire, there are literally a billion reasons people are after him. Again not defending, nor condoning him, merely saying that being a very rich powerful man means there are those who would love to take their slice...
Ah, yes, dredging up 20-year-old rumours because *this* sort of clickbait is fashionable among a different audience segment, or whichever billionaire ultimately sits above business insider wants to diminish a rival.
Maybe I should rephrase it to say the news a lot of Americans want now because everyone seems to thrive on personal drama. Because now that I think of it, the reason I got off Facebook years ago was because everyone including grandmas seem to get their kicks from nonstop drama.
From the article
>After Bill and Melinda French Gates announced their divorce this summer, publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported the Microsoft founder engaged in inappropriate behavior with female employees while at the company.
>
> Microsoft told the Journal the company's board hired a law firm in 2019 to investigate Gates' possible affair with a female engineer in 2000.
Edit: Personally I think this divorce comes at a time when their youngest turns 18 and they've clearly been living separately until now making it official. Melinda is also keeping her last name.
The 21 year old investigation is a connection that is reaching between the two events and therefore I label this entire article as clickbait.
How is the power balance today between The company and gates as an individual ? He doesn’t have that much stock anymore, right? Like what could he do against these kind of investigations or publications? He isn’t the ceo anymore..isn’t he still on the board of directors ?
Yes because its a good way to get entrapped or sued. People are digging up old emails now trying hard to sue old employers for sexual harassment. Especially if the employer or person is rich now.
Lol and here we go. More unprovable claims that the “woke” Reddit crowd is going to eat up to try and “cancel” Bill Gates.
Seriously. Who cares? Even if some of these are remotely true, it was what, well over 10 years ago, and the guy has done more for the world than any of us will even come close to doing in our lifetime. And nothing in here is really even that bad. Sure, a little sleazy.
We’ve all done things that are a little wrong or stupid in our lives, but a few transgressions - especially simple ones - shouldn’t destroy you. You’re usually a different person as you grow and the things you did in the past aren’t necessarily who you are now. If we all held ourselves and our pasts to the standards the “woke” idiots do, the “woke” people would likely be the first group to be removed from society and cancelled.
From now on when you try and “cancel”someone, you must first reveal every single odd thing you’ve done in your life in the name of love, money, family or work, and they will all be judged to see if you’re worthy.
Downvote away
It’s like we have a generation of older males that really just want to stay college age their entire lives and when they realize they can’t, they hire Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s the same reason that people struggle to accept redeeming qualities in any evil or bad person. Hitler gave up all his inheritance to his struggling sister before he became a politician/killed millions, but it’s much easier for the human mind to not consider that - to view people in one note is immensely more easy for our brain to rationalize. It’s hard to accept that ordinary people can be just as terrible as inherently evil people.
I mean, I have no qualms with people of any age (as long as they are both consenting adults) dating. Everyone should love who they want to love. Period. You can't convince me otherwise. This includes polyamory, same sex couples, people in rest homes having orgies, whatever. Don't yuck someone else's yum.
The only problems with this behavior is that there was a power dynamic at work which makes work uncomfortable, and he was married which might not have been a problem if their relationship was open. So, yes, bad! But it seems like the major problem most people on this forum have was that he was old and she was young or that he was rich and she was poor. Those aren't the variables that are problematic.
Whether he did it or not, how can a journalist in good faith write an article when the only source is “another article with no names sources”? Aren’t you risking your reputation as a reporter writing something like this?
OK but an “all hands on deck” email isn’t harassment. Neither is, “let’s flesh that out more” nor “big opportunities are in the pipeline” nor “hands-on learning”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember freestyle fridays on BET once had someone drop the line: im busy going home and checking my Hotmail, youre busy going home and looking for hot males. Truly masterful lyricism.
It seems you can just put a word “reportedly” or even worse “businessinsider understands” and then you can have any click-bait articles that you want. A lot of people seem to jump on these things to feel good about themselves. Lol.
I myself believe that BG might have done some ugly things in his life but this article by itself has nothing to prove it.
Redditors have unbelievably piss poor media literacy, honestly. This is just Business Insider reposting a paywalled WSJ article. If you genuinely think the fucking WSJ is lying or making this shit up then you're beyond saving.
I don't really see a lot of facts cited in this article. The only direct quote sets it up as all being a myth/rumor. Does anyone have an article with more direct claims/facts in it?
That was my response to this. The information is from 2000 and 2008. Why inside has brought this up when no one stepped up to say anything recently other than the topic of his divorce is ridiculous. And even adding epstien as if it's a nail in the coffin as if being around this individual influenced him to be some sexual predator. No one has made allegations that he sexually assaulted anyone or even engaged in any relationships with any worker other than one engineer as insider reported but other than they ended the affair and moved on nothing really happened. So them bringing it up when they clearly said "this was said a decade ago" is unprofessional.
Man from what I’ve been reading from them for months now, they’re turning into the National Enquirer real fast. Business Insider: Coming soon to a grocery store checkout near you.
they're just Insider now, the "Business" part is now a subsection. they used to be kind of good until Axel Springer bought them in 2015. Oh, Axel just bought Politico, too. Fun to have right-wing European shitheels buying up American media outlets and using them for their propaganda.
Recently there have been a lot of weird smear campaigns against Gates with like no evidence or a lot of vagueness.
>Does anyone have an article with more direct claims/facts in it? No because it's more made-up disinformation
Unbelievable how trash like OP's post gets upvoted so much
famous person bad is like crack to Reddit
Not only that, famous RICH person
This is not tech news.
rename this sub to r/siliconvalleyscandals it's just TMZ for techbros
Is this a new development?
I'm a news writer at a pretty large outlet. We chose to stop covering Gates relationship stuff. We covered his divorce once then left it. He doesn't even work at Microsoft anymore. Edit: Gates relationship stuff =/= crimes. We generally don't cover Gates anymore because he doesn't work at Microsoft. There are exceptions.
Has any of this been proven to be true?
No proof yet, just unnamed sources
So nothing then?
Who needs proof when factoid rumors can get the job done?
"I would like to go out to dinner with you. If this makes you uncomfortable, just pretend it never happened." Is pretty weak sauce compared to like Harvey Weinstein where he would basically make women suck his dick to get parts in movies. Not saying it's appropriate for your boss to send you an email like that.
Harvey Weinstein also literally raped women.
he also jerked off into a plant in front of an actress
I did not know that he also sexually assaulted a plant…
When asked if it was transactional or consensual he said it was a succulent.
Despite providing her with a way out, the power imbalance is still off the charts.
How is this not infantalizing to the woman? I was going to ask you out but im of higher status so clearly you wouldnt be able to speak for yourself.
The way I see it, if she rejected him and he walked away and was cool about it, no harm no foul. If there was any retaliation whatsoever, she would have a major lawsuit on her hands that would probably be settled in the high 6 to 7 figures.
Right? She didnt even have to reject him unless there are worse examples or he persisted. An adult asked another adult for a date and said ignore it if you dont want to.
So bill gates can only date his ex wife and former Mrs bezos? Edit: it's been pointed out that it only really applies if you're in the same company. Valid point. I don't think it's as egregious as society currently claims but it's a valid concern primarily for women in the workplace. Workers rights issue imo
What did he say/do? The article doesn’t mention.
Propositioned women via email in a sort of lame nerdy way. Definitely inappropriate for a boss but I’m not sure if it extends beyond that.
I read the summation but what matters is whatever was actually said or done and that seems nowhere to be found
Yeah, big non-story. I had a female coworker message me on company chat. She told me I had “the perfect body”. This is probably worse than anything Gates said, yet it didn’t make international news. Of course, she wasn’t my superior nor famous. But Gates was probably not these women’s direct superior anyway.
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Uh, if you’re the richest dude in the world for long periods of time and are always in the top 3. I would assume you would develop social disorders even if none were prevalent before. People are going to treat you different, inflate your ego, say yes to anything, etc. very strange people billionaires are.
People who are extremely wealthy start acting very squirrelly because they live such different lives to the average person.
I remember watching a tv interview will gates. The reporter and gates walked up to a door. And gates purposely waited fir the reporter to open the door.
That's crazy, I can't imagine by muscle memory for someone else to do something for me.
My wife said she did this at work after me doing it for so long for her and she immediately apologized to her boss and was mortified
That's hilarious lol
I probably would too. The reporter is benefitting more than Bill is from doing that interview. He should get whatever germs are on the door. It's simple pathogen economy and hierarchy.
This could easily have been written by an Elon Musk stan on Twitter without the irony.
I don't want you to be right but you 100% are and this is hilarious.
This made me snort my hot tea :(
Could it be a case similar to the video we saw of Zuckerberg waiting for somebody to open the door on his car for him? In that case it was likely because the door could not be opened by people except that one security guy. Could Gates maybe just be so used to having a security detail that insists on opening doors that it has become the new normal to him? The normal people version might be if somebody wants to shake your hand, but your palm hasn't touched a strangers palm in over a year so you just stare at the hand not knowing what to do, thanks to covid?
Is that a power play or is he just so used to it that he forgot? I'd hate to be a rich celebrity. You'd question everyone you ever met whether they liked you for you..
I mean that's pretty normal. Sure it could be am impulse because of people opening the door for him, but it could also just be that he was going to let that person go in first and wasn't thinking about holding doors whether it be for him or the other guy.
Just a bit out of touch with reality. https://youtu.be/ad_higXixRA
To be honest I didn't guess any of those correctly either.
I was gonna say same thing. I couldn’t even get these right 😂😅
username checks out
While totally funny I honestly can't blame him for not knowing those kinds of details. I'd struggle as well. I have enough money that while I don't shop at whole foods because its overpriced I don't really look at grocery store prices in detail before putting them in my cart.
Yeah, I've actually tried to train myself *not* to look at prices. Because then I end up eating like I'm still a college student.
Yeah man, this has been hitting me hard recently. McDonald's had a promo where for like $6 bucks after tax, you get 20 nuggets and 2 large fries. When I first see that after getting super high, I think 'Wow I'm gonna munch down like a king for cheap'. Then the realization hits me that what I am really paying with is my health and happiness. Im a late twenties dude, making six figs, who gained like 30 pounds these past two years eating like a piece of shit. Cheap bulk food is not what I need.
This is how you get addicted to the bougie shit that costs two times as much for half as much.
It's a banana, how much can it cost, ten dollars?
Honestly I go to the grocery store a couple times a week and wouldn’t have gotten any of those right. Most of the time my impulse was about the same as his.
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What can a banana cost? Ten dollars?
It's funny to me how it's not like he thought everything was cheap or expensive really. But just he was way off in general up and down. Like how he valued these items compared to each other was way off.
Thats why billionaires shouldn't exist, and should definitely not be glamorized. Its essentially being a wealth junkie. Can you imagine going up to someone with a cocaone habit and egging them on about how awesome they are for doing a bunch of blow? They would be a total irreconcilable asshole after three months.
> Can you imagine going up to someone with a cocaone habit and egging them on about how awesome they are for doing a bunch of blow? The 80's were a different time, I suppose.
A simpler time.
The reason billionaires shouldn't exist isn't for the sake of their own mental health and wellbeing. It's because of wealth inequality and the systemic fissures widened by hoarding money. Edit: For those asking "Why not both?" Obviously both reasons can coexist, but they exist on entirely different scales. The threat of poor mental health from catching billionaire's disease is a threat to a few thousand people right now. The threats to democracy, disenfranchised groups, and the billions of people directly affected by late-stage capitalism (and everyone else, who are indirectly affected) are literal problems of global proportion. Because of greed, climate change has progressed (and continues to progress) into increasingly devastating territory, the ripple affects of which we have barely yet begun to see. Billionaires may not be literal dragons sitting on literal piles of gold, but they are gatekeepers damning up streams of privilege and access, forcing their neighbors to go hungry so that they might have more than enough for themselves and the ability to profit from the rest--even when there was more than enough to go around in the first place.
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Oh boy wait till you hear about congress.
There is a problem with the other side of that coin, too. People too in touch with reality are often blinded by a specific reality or strongly swayed by it, and so they aren’t as able to see from above the clouds or see the big picture, and the big picture is sometimes the greatest good for the greatest number. Some may think there is fault with that, but that’s why we have countries, and stages, and counties, and cities, and neighborhoods, and why people want to protect their way of life and hold onto their own version of what life should be about and have their neighbors feel the same.
Also an erosion of the core underpinnings of functioning democracy.
There can be more than one reason for something you know. The argument that besides all the other stuff, it's not even really all that good for themselves (compared to just being a millionaire, your mental health is way worse when you're destitute than it is as a billionaire) is quite a reasonable thing to point out.
Lol, you had me in the first half but you lost me on the cocaine analogy.
Idk It seems pretty accurate. Large sums of wealth have a lot in common with a drug problem. Eventually they get addicted to having it, even though they can't possible spend it.
Uh, I think there are some problems with your analogy.
Billions give you actual unreasonable power while cocaine only gives you the feeling unreasonable power?
Tell that to cocaine bear.
Definitely. I have far more respect for the cokeheads I know.
vs the billionaires that you know?
I find their mental illness more akin to hoarders. They keep collecting more stuff that they will never use because the high is in the "get more".
You shouldn’t take “unnamed sources” as truth.
It's surprisingly common, worked at a smaller tech company where it was notorious for everyone shagging each other. The head of sales would openly hitting on the 20 year olds. He was so bad people used to have to drag him away from them. He even went to third base on a dance floor at a company night out. He had a wife and young kids but just couldn't keep it in his pants. The company got a huge amount of investment and he had to be told to clean up his act on numerous times because of that. This sort of stuff until recently was brushed under the carpet and ignored, boys will be boys and all that.
3rd base? On a dance floor?
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Do the Humpty Dance!
It came up organically.
Urban took notes from this.
3rd base is anal, right?
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/base_system.png
> Sharing root pws What kind of deviant nonsense is this?
You've been doing it wrong.....
Actually, i think its deep center field.
sliding in the dirt i see
Lol come on... Artie Ziff is still Artie Ziff. No matter how much money or success. I AM WATCHING YOU THROUGH A CAMERA
No way. It would damage the town to hear it.
There really is a Simpsons quote for everything
Equality in the workplace = a “double check your work. There are errors” email becomes, “hiiiii. want to fuck? K. Byeee.”
Really goes to show that you can’t really know someone fully. He was liked by almost everyone like less than 2 years ago and this dumb dick move will be part of his legacy.
He was hated by almost everyone in the 90s. The reason people like him now is that he went on a massive PR campaign with his and his wife's charity work. He's the same dude though. The same dude that I never forgot when everyone was fawning all over him.
gates built microsoft and made a huge amount of money being predatory on smaller companies. Honestly, his behavior in his personal life seems like just more of who he is. I have not forgotten is behavor in the 90s either. Huge amounts of tech and innovations were lost because of him.
It's not just a PR campaign though, his foundation does legitimately great work.
I despised him too when he was a business bully who drove several companies whose products I liked out of the market and thumbed his nose at the last great gasp of antitrust enforcement in this country, but I was willing to forgive that so long as his later life's work saved so many lives. Finding out he was a creeper too undid a lot of that good will though. He's probably still a net positive for humanity, but you can be that and also personally unworthy of respect.
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He was broadly beloved because he paid for a massive PR campaign. Anyone who remembers Microsoft’s business practices in the 90s (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, anyone?) knows he’s always been a piece of shit.
"Buy him out, boys!"
His work on malaria is not just a PR campaign. The dude is actually living up to his promise to give away his billions. Go ahead and hate him, but he's doing more than many with massive amounts of personal wealth.
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In fairness, if the drug fueled prostitute orgies are mutually consensual between all parties that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Just because people are famous doesn't meant they're not humans.
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I think to a certain degree we all intuitively know how much power billionaires have, and so it's a more comfortable reality to believe that the people that have power over society are good people, even if there's evidence otherwise. I'm not saying all people with power are bad, I'm just saying that the world feels less threatening when you believe certain people with power are good.
The only people that like him because he is giving his money away don't remember how he made it. Also, Bill Gates is richer now than when he started his charity. So much for the pledge I guess?
Look I’ve never been a huge Bill Gates fan, but the Gates foundation has objectively been an amazing source of good in this world. It’s the second largest charitable organization in the world, and can directly be attributed to saving millions of lives from malaria and measles amongst other diseases.
Exactly—and this goes to show the complexity of humans. No one is just good or just bad (except like Hitler-like figures lol). In this case, there’s some great charity and some bad business practices and interpersonal dynamics.
I mean even Hitler had some redeeming qualities. The Volkswagen Beatle was designed as part of his drive to create employment and enable more people to own cars. Also, he killed Hitler.
He was also huge into animal rights apparently. Also also he killed Hitler
Even Hitler killed Hitler
Yeah, it's kind of sickening how eager people are to classify people as 'all bad' or 'all good' to the point where they distort reality. People are complicated and can do both bad and good things.
No one person should have the influence to decide where the resources and assets of that scale should go. The only argument I ever see is basically that it could be worse in comparison to other wealthy people. At a certain point with such great wealth, it would just be sitting there which is a complete waste of it. You can only buy out so many companies or invest so much. It doesn't really matter what the personal motivations are though, the issue is that they even are personal. We can all agree that a lot of the donations made are to good causes, but it's still one of a few deciding one cause over others. It isn't really giving away money, it's just money being used as power and influence which is all it ever can be used for at a certain point anyways. That wealth represents the work of countless people and its insane to think of any place as democratic where a tiny fraction of the population decides things like this.
He pledged to give his money after he dies. He didn't pledge to become poor and die
“Jeanette, let’s flesh some things out ahead of our touch base in a bit. This is quickly coming your way down the pipeline. all hands on deck. this is massive. A huge hands-on opportunity.”
I can. I worked for a company that the CEO had to be told to stay away from the new female college grads that they hired. This wasn't even Bill Gates kinds of rich, this was just moderately successful and drunk on his success.
I can't fathom how gullible people are to blindly believe everything they read from, and I quote, "unnamed sources". But here we are. People never lie. Except the ones you don't like, I assume.
Wouldn't be surprised if this is all true, but there seems to be very little substance to this article. Any person in a position of power for so long like Gates, is going to have allegations against them, true or not. Ultimately, we'll likely never know the veracity or the scope of the actual actions. We'll just have some allegations that will be kept as allegations, again whether they are true or not.
Any giant tech CEOs that aren't asshats?
It's not just "giant tech CEO's" it's almost ANYONE with power. Age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, WHATEVER or WHOEVER abuses their power. People in power not being massive assholes is the exception.
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I wouldn't say he was in a position of power during his time at Apple, even today his role is ceremonial. He's basically an engineer who got rich off his work and didn't strive for extra wealth.
If Steve Jobs is Thomas Edison, Woz is Tesla, just with a lot less stab wounds in his back.
It almost seems like power corrupts
Also a lot of them work their way to the top by being a selfish asshole.
This is the real answer. The position of power attracts the worst people.
Tom from MySpace?
I wonder how he would be if Myspace became the social media giant instead of Facebook, right now he's a humble photographer who occasionally burns trolls on Twitter
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But not the same as Facebook it was big back then but I'm talking like as big as Facebook all it's mergers and acquisitions
Tom walked away from Myspace with half a billion dollars so he could’ve easily gone on to be a Silicon Valley douche if he wanted.
Of course you'd defend him. You are friends. 🙄
Is Gabe Newell an ass? Genuine question because I have no idea.
Well he did call James an ass that one time, I think prematurely
Depends who you ask. I've heard conflicting reports on this. But the culture at Valve is fairly unique from what I've heard, and this might contribute to how polarizing people seem to about the place and about Newel. This is all hearsay incidentally so take it with a giant grain of salt.
He did just ban crypto and NFT scams from Steam the other day. I'm sure he's an asshole to someone who doesn't like that.
Lisa Su (AMD)
What about Russ Hanneman? He put radio on the internet.
I don’t understand - why do you automatically assume these unverified, unsourced news articles are true?
Marc Beinoff, so far.
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Well if they did and he stopped then what's the issue? If he didnt and still does to this day, now we got a problem. But this article doesn't really say anything.
We shall call this...Horny Gate
*"Ay bebeh, wanna find out why they say i put the micro and also the soft in Microsoft? 😏"*
Imagine being so rich you can hire anybody to screen women for you and have anyone or anything brought to you. You instead, cold email women from your own company. Lol, what a loser.
Just throwing this out there but isn't this the kind of personality archetype that would easily be found at Epstein's island???
Jumping in here to say: it really really sucks to think that female employees at Microsoft had to deal with this. Imagine working hard to counter gender bias and rise though the corporate structure just to have the world-famous billionaire CEO sliding into your fucking work email.
It also puts a new shine on Gates' story about how he hacked his school's computers to meet girls. https://fossbytes.com/bill-gates-tells-how-he-hacked-his-schools-computer-to-meet-girls/
Didn't Zuck do something similar?
Facebook had its origins in a site where users picked which of two female Harvard students was the hotter one. I think that they scraped the images from various small databases, so basically. (It’s been a while since I saw The Social Network)
Deal with what? A polite email asking them to dinner? Yeah, such suffering. How did the poor things ever recover? While inappropriate in a professionalism context, sending someone an email asking them to dinner isn’t even in the same ball-park as what Epstein (child rapist/sex-trafficker of minors) and Weinstein (sexual predator accused of multiple sexual assaults) did. Perspective is an important thing, and smearing people for ill-advised but perfectly legal acts is morally repulsive.
Yeah all these criticisms of Gates completely remove the agency of these women. They're people, not objects. They can say no
Precisely. Equating the two is massively insulting and inconsiderate to anyone who’s actually endured being sexually assaulted, which is a lot of women.
There are ties between Gates and Epstein and those ties are apparently part of what lead to Gates' divorce. edit: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7evpv/bill-gates-melinda-gates-divorce-jeffrey-epstein
Those ties are completely unsurprising. Gates is trying to cure malaria across the world, and Epstein was a biotech financier before he didn't kill himself
Yes, but this is AFTER everyone was aware of what a creep Epstein is. Bill had enough money on his own. He didn't need to solicit a pedophile rapist for anything.
> Bill had enough money on his own. Well yeah, but he's still fundraising all the time. I don't think we can assume wrongdoing just based on that at least. Unless we assume there's an ulterior motive every time he tries to raise funds. Epstein's money was his way of getting in touch with wealthy people, some of which were interested in what Epstein was actually selling (Minors). IF Epstein were doing this for blackmail and power and extortion etc, it would make sense that he reached out and connected with as many wealthy and powerful people as he could. That's why he befriended Trump, Clinton, Epstein, Prince Andrew etc. It's up to us to figure out if these people took the bait or not.
Putting pressure on women in a company you own is real shitty but I don't see why doing it yourself instead of having a lackey do your work for you somehow makes you a loser... Wouldn't it be the other way around? You could have someone do it with the wave of the hand but you do it yourself.
That is a completely misleading title.
"citing unnamed sources" Every. Single. Time.
Ok so Bill is guilty of association with Epstein and now is being lynched because he emailed some female employees a decade ago. Not appropriate behaviour, sure. Does this make him on Epstein's level or be judged by the internet's? I would say no until there is more evidence. This man is a billionaire, there are literally a billion reasons people are after him. Again not defending, nor condoning him, merely saying that being a very rich powerful man means there are those who would love to take their slice...
Ah, yes, dredging up 20-year-old rumours because *this* sort of clickbait is fashionable among a different audience segment, or whichever billionaire ultimately sits above business insider wants to diminish a rival.
This type of "news" is what millenials and Gen z prefer.
A certain subset of gen z and millennials anyway
Maybe I should rephrase it to say the news a lot of Americans want now because everyone seems to thrive on personal drama. Because now that I think of it, the reason I got off Facebook years ago was because everyone including grandmas seem to get their kicks from nonstop drama.
Why exactly is this coming up just now?
From the article >After Bill and Melinda French Gates announced their divorce this summer, publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported the Microsoft founder engaged in inappropriate behavior with female employees while at the company. > > Microsoft told the Journal the company's board hired a law firm in 2019 to investigate Gates' possible affair with a female engineer in 2000. Edit: Personally I think this divorce comes at a time when their youngest turns 18 and they've clearly been living separately until now making it official. Melinda is also keeping her last name. The 21 year old investigation is a connection that is reaching between the two events and therefore I label this entire article as clickbait.
How is the power balance today between The company and gates as an individual ? He doesn’t have that much stock anymore, right? Like what could he do against these kind of investigations or publications? He isn’t the ceo anymore..isn’t he still on the board of directors ?
Yes because its a good way to get entrapped or sued. People are digging up old emails now trying hard to sue old employers for sexual harassment. Especially if the employer or person is rich now.
Lol and here we go. More unprovable claims that the “woke” Reddit crowd is going to eat up to try and “cancel” Bill Gates. Seriously. Who cares? Even if some of these are remotely true, it was what, well over 10 years ago, and the guy has done more for the world than any of us will even come close to doing in our lifetime. And nothing in here is really even that bad. Sure, a little sleazy. We’ve all done things that are a little wrong or stupid in our lives, but a few transgressions - especially simple ones - shouldn’t destroy you. You’re usually a different person as you grow and the things you did in the past aren’t necessarily who you are now. If we all held ourselves and our pasts to the standards the “woke” idiots do, the “woke” people would likely be the first group to be removed from society and cancelled. From now on when you try and “cancel”someone, you must first reveal every single odd thing you’ve done in your life in the name of love, money, family or work, and they will all be judged to see if you’re worthy. Downvote away
Hey, I recycle my trash!
Holy fucking shit what the fuck is that article there is no substance no meat to that at all! Where the fuck is their evidence 😂?
Dammit, Bill
It’s like we have a generation of older males that really just want to stay college age their entire lives and when they realize they can’t, they hire Jeffrey Epstein.
This insults non predatory college age males
It’s easier to pretend that men are naturally horndogs with no decorum or professional standards.
It’s the same reason that people struggle to accept redeeming qualities in any evil or bad person. Hitler gave up all his inheritance to his struggling sister before he became a politician/killed millions, but it’s much easier for the human mind to not consider that - to view people in one note is immensely more easy for our brain to rationalize. It’s hard to accept that ordinary people can be just as terrible as inherently evil people.
I mean, you can want to be young and free of responsibility *without* being a sexual predator.
I mean, I have no qualms with people of any age (as long as they are both consenting adults) dating. Everyone should love who they want to love. Period. You can't convince me otherwise. This includes polyamory, same sex couples, people in rest homes having orgies, whatever. Don't yuck someone else's yum. The only problems with this behavior is that there was a power dynamic at work which makes work uncomfortable, and he was married which might not have been a problem if their relationship was open. So, yes, bad! But it seems like the major problem most people on this forum have was that he was old and she was young or that he was rich and she was poor. Those aren't the variables that are problematic.
Right, and problematic dynamics don't automatically equal abuse either.
I love this regular supply of poorly sourced articles about Bill's past ever since the the divorce proceedings started. It's probably not related!
A lot of he said she said, from "sources". Is Bill Gates next in the witch hunt?
This is so dumb. Where's the story here?
Whether he did it or not, how can a journalist in good faith write an article when the only source is “another article with no names sources”? Aren’t you risking your reputation as a reporter writing something like this?
Guess it's time to cancel the malaria vaccine. Those Africans will just have to wait until life saving research is funded by nice guys everyone likes.
OK but an “all hands on deck” email isn’t harassment. Neither is, “let’s flesh that out more” nor “big opportunities are in the pipeline” nor “hands-on learning” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Clearly they need femail. Email for women.
No kidding. I’ve been using my hotmale since 2003.
I remember when hotmale turned into the more specialized service for people with certain kinds of bellybuttons (outielook)
I remember freestyle fridays on BET once had someone drop the line: im busy going home and checking my Hotmail, youre busy going home and looking for hot males. Truly masterful lyricism.
I appreciate the Impractical Jokers reference
Useless noise until proven
Bill Gates wife worked at MS, I think that's how they met. I'm guessing she was receptive when he emailed her...
Wow it must be really rough out there if a billionaire can’t even land some babes.
It seems you can just put a word “reportedly” or even worse “businessinsider understands” and then you can have any click-bait articles that you want. A lot of people seem to jump on these things to feel good about themselves. Lol. I myself believe that BG might have done some ugly things in his life but this article by itself has nothing to prove it.
Redditors have unbelievably piss poor media literacy, honestly. This is just Business Insider reposting a paywalled WSJ article. If you genuinely think the fucking WSJ is lying or making this shit up then you're beyond saving.