Martin Shkreli, the man dubbed the most hated man on the internet after he raised the price of a HIV drug by 5,000 per cent, has now claimed his obnoxious and dickish behaviour is all an act as part of a social experiment.
The 32-year-old was arrested by the FBI on charges of fraud last week and subsequently sacked from his post as CEO of KalosBios Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to his quite hilarious downfall, however, Shkreli had taken to social media and was bragging about his wealth to anyone silly enough to follow him on Twitter.
His boastful messages included describing himself as “the world’s most eligible bachelor” and bragging about receiving “50-100 date solicitations a day”.
Although it has since been confirmed that his account was hacked for a short while, it turns out it was mainly the nice messages like donating money to charity and giving his Wu-Tang CD away which were courtesy of the hacker.
It feels like “social experiment” is the get-out clause for just about any kind of awful behaviour nowadays, and Shkreli made the sensational claim in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week. No confirmation as to whether he wore a black turtleneck though…
In the interview with the newspaper, he claimed he was just misunderstood as “most people don’t know the real Martin Shkreli” and that his unpleasant online persona is “a bit of an act”.
Speaking to the Journal, Shkreli said:
I think it would make sense to show them [the real me]. What do you do when you have the attention of millions of people? It seemed to me like it would be fun to experiment with. [I was arrested] because of a social experiment and teasing people over the internet – that seems like a real injustice.
If this is all a character comedy act, it’s safe to say it’s gone too far. Maybe that’s what happened with Sepp Blatter and Nigel Farage too?
