Martin Shkreli is what would happen if the worst anime-avatar-having, deplorable-something-or-other-named, hateful and anonymous accounts on Twitter all Voltron'd into a single person. The former pharmaceutical CEO and former Twitter troll, who burst onto the scene out of a sewage pipe when he bought the rights to a drug designed to treat AIDS patients and then proceeded to price gouge said AIDS patients, has been nothing but terrible since we all had to learn how to spell his name. (Which not for nothing sounds like something Professor Frink would shout on The Simpsons: "HOYVIN!" "GLAYVIN!" "SHKRELI!")
Furthermore, he's sexually harassed journalists, committed securities fraud, been accused of running a Ponzi scheme, and just generally been a garbage person. He's currently out on bail and awaiting sentencing for his securities-fraud convictions... Or, I guess I should say, he was out on bail. But a judge revoked that bail after Shkreli pulled one of his most disgusting stunts yet.
The noted troll took to Facebook and offered his followers a challenge in a since-deleted post. He offered them money to steal strands of Hillary Clinton's hair on her book tour:
This led a judge to call Shkreli a "danger to society" and said that his Facebook post was a "solicitation of assault." His lawyer (and the worst people you'll ever want to encounter on Twitter) claim this is outrageous. His lawyer compared it to the Kathy Griffin photo, which is obviously not the same thing because taking an artistic but controversial photo is different than telling your fans to grab hair from someone's head and that you'll pay them $5,000 to do it.
Now, there are those on the alt-right who are trying to claim that Shkreli is being sent to jail for joking about Hillary Clinton, but those people leave out some key things. First, again, you can't use the "I was joking" defense when you have a public history of weird money-related stunts. And second, SHKRELI HAD ALREADY BEEN CONVICTED OF SECURITIES FRAUD! He was awaiting sentencing, and he chose to tell people that he'd pay them to attack Hillary Clinton. It takes a shocking amount of privilege and a lack of self-awareness for these people to claim that the justice system is being unfair to a rich white guy who has defrauded people out of millions of dollars, but meanwhile blame the deaths of innocent black people at the hands of cops on the fact that a kid was playing with a toy gun. The justice system is definitely unfair, but it's not to Martin fucking Shkreli.
