Every Fucked Up Text from the Tinder Sexual Harassment Lawsuit
A new legal offensive against Tinder, everyone's favorite iPhone promiscuity simulator, reiterates just how ugly it can be to face a macho-dominated startup office. It also suggests you should never, ever, ever text about your crises.
Part of former VP Whitney Wolfe's allegations of "atrocious" misogyny and mismanagement comes in the form of text conversations. The legal complaint contains screenshots of chats between Wolfe, Tinder CEO Sean Rad (top left), and the company's co-founder Justin Mateen (top right, a former flame of Wolfe's).
The worst of the exchanges are between Wolfe and Mateen, and can be found below. Keep in mind that this isn't just a conversation between two people in the crater of a workplace romance—this was Whitney Wolfe's boss.
Now just imagine this is happening, and on top of it all, the boss of your boss (the company's CEO!) turned on you. That's exactly what Wolfe alleges, with these texts from Tinder co-founder Sean Rad as evidence:
A conversation Rad probably now wishes he'd had in person.
But the text that might haunt Tinder the most, once you put aside all the stuff about husbands on leashed and whores, is this one:
As Snapchat is learning the hard way, don't ever call someone a co-founder if you don't really, really mean it.
To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com