Shkreli Got Prison Time, Holmes Didn’t. Is That Fair?
Shkreli Story time.<p>Not all that long ago, Shkreli was doing a stream on periscope where he asked people to call his personal number and tell him why they hated him. Most people were calling him and making up stories about the drug price killing their grandma or complaining about the wu-tang album, and his response was to be friendly, down-to-earth, and even charming in a way while re-framing the complaints into stuff that worked towards his favor (ie: &quot;I gave the drug for free to people who couldn&#x27;t pay, nobody died&quot; and &quot;Wu-Tang needed money, I like them, and they liked the offer I made&quot;). For the most part it worked. He was trying to make the point that he wasn&#x27;t an evil, awful guy, and that any &quot;hate&quot; people held for him was more of a trend of directing general anger towards him, rather than genuine, personal, hatred.<p>On a whim though, a friend of mine and I called in, and by chance, we got through. The friend told him we hated him, but not for any of that stuff in the news. We hated him for squandering his wealth, time, and talents on ridiculous social media trolling (like the periscope thing). This actually seemed to get to him a bit, the conversation lasted at least 10 minutes. He justified it by saying stuff like &quot;Some people relax by drinking and doing drugs, some people play sports, I like trolling people. What&#x27;s the difference?&quot;. Ultimately, he tried to convince us that he was still trying to do meaningful stuff and that he wasn&#x27;t obsessed with his social media presence (he even held up some book about AngularJS he said he was reading for a new startup to prove it, which we sorta laughed at). But he seemed a little unsettled by how the whole thing ended (us hanging up on him after he kept trying to maneuver out of the conversation in a way that made him look good).<p>I got the feeling that he truly thought anyone who spent more than a few minutes with him would like him, and see through what he saw as an unfair media assault on him. Maybe he had this same attitude going into court too. Only reason I can think for him to behave so brashly throughout.