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Milo Yiannopoulos

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Milo Yiannopoulos
Milo Yiannopoulos at the moonwalk flash mob tribute at London Liverpool Street station
Born (1984-10-18) 18 October 1984 (age 39)
Athens, Greece
NationalityBritish
OccupationJournalist

Milo Yiannopoulos (born 18 October 1984[1]), formerly Milo Wagner,[2] is a British misogynist and above-the-line troll. He founded online tabloid magazine The Kernel, and sold the company to Daily Dot Media in January 2014. He is a weekly columnist for Business Insider and Breitbart.com and is currently writing his first book, called The Sociopaths of Silicon Valley.

Yiannopoulos was named one of the 100 most influential people in Britain's digital economy by Wired UK in 2011 and again in 2012.[3] He has been called a "rising star of the Right" by The Spectator,[4] the "pit bull of tech media" by the The Observer[5] and "digital media's Citizen Kane" by Forbes magazine.[3]

Education

Yiannopoulos studied philosophy at the University of Manchester and English at the University of Cambridge but did not graduate from either.[2] He told Forbes: "I try to tell myself I'm in good company, but ultimately it doesn't say great things about you unless you go on to terrific success in your own right."[3]

The Kernel

Together with university friends David Rosenberg and David Haywood Smith, journalist Stephen Pritchard and former Telegraph employee Adrian McShane, Yiannopoulos launched The Kernel in November 2011 to "fix European technology journalism".[6] The Kernel was at that time owned by Yiannopoulos's company Sentinel Media. In 2012, the online magazine became embroiled in legal disputes with some of its contributors after it failed to pay money owed to them.[2]

German venture capital vehicle BERLIN42 acquired The Kernel's assets in early 2013. The Kernel's website displays plans for a relaunch in August 2013 with fresh investment and Yiannopoulos reinstated as editor-in-chief.[7] BERLIN42 founding partner Aydogan Ali Schosswald will join its newly formed publishing company, Kernel Media, as chief executive.

The Independent on Sunday reported that the relaunched publication, based between London and Berlin, will focus on "modern warfare, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, pornography and space travel" from August. Newsletter The Nutshell will not return, said the Independent.[8]

In 2014, The Kernel was acquired by The Daily Dot's parent company Daily Dot Media. Yiannopoulos stepped down as Editor-in-Chief but remains an advisor to the company.[9]

Business activities

Yiannopoulos organised a technology start-up awards scheme, The Telegraph Tech Start-Up 100, in 2011. The Start-Up 100 operated through an events company Yiannopoulos had started with David Rosenberg, a friend from Cambridge University, called Wrong Agency. The company was dissolved shortly after the ceremony,[2] with Mike Butcher of TechCrunch claiming the main prize had been given to music streaming service Spotify even though his casting vote had gone to short-term loan company Wonga.[10]

Butcher wrote: "Milo Yiannopoulos was put in an incredibly invidious position – it was a couple of days before a huge event he’d conceived of. He’d built the event on the legitimacy of the methodology behind the judging process. And it looks like that was sat on, unceremoniously. I don’t think he should take the blame for this at all. He could only do what he could do under the circumstances given what my sources tell me was overt pressure from his backer. I reached out to him about all this but he’s declined to comment – perhaps understandably."[11] The Start-Up 100 did not return in 2012.

Other activities

Yiannopoulos is a self-professed "proper nut-job groupie" fan of pop singer Mariah Carey. In 2014, he wrote a column[12] for Business Insider explaining why he had spent $1,200 on a plane ticket to Berlin to purchase Carey's album, Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse, because it was released in Germany five days before the UK and US.[13] "There's a certain cachet to doing something so ridiculous. It puts you squarely in the premier league of fans," he claimed.

He hosted the Young Rewired State competition in 2010, an initiative to showcase the technological talents of 15–18-year-olds,[14] and organised The London Nude Tech Calendar, a calendar featuring members of the London technology scene to raise money for Take Heart India.[15] He also organised the moonwalk flash mob tribute to Michael Jackson in London's Liverpool Street station shortly after Jackson's death in 2009.[16] He explained that the idea of a flashmob as a tribute to Jackson was originally a humorous suggestion on Twitter, but then decided to make it happen, inviting people via social networking websites.[16]

Television appearances

He has appeared on Sky News discussing social media,[17] and on BBC Breakfast discussing Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom.[18]

As a gay Roman Catholic, he has debated gay marriage on Newsnight,[19] and on Channel 4's 10 O'Clock Live with Boy George.[20] He later debated singer Will Young on Newsnight on the use of the word "gay" in the playground and Tinchy Stryder on the same programme in May 2014, about copyright infringement and music piracy.

Controversy

Yiannopoulos received criticism in 2009 for tweeting that he hoped the police "beat the shit out of those wankers" at the G20 protests, and then deleting the tweet after a protestor was killed.[21] He later pointed out that he could never have known in advance "via clairvoyance" about the death of Ian Tomlinson and that his tweet was sent in anger about another protester.

Controversy followed his appearance at the TechCrunch Europe GeeknRolla conference in 2009, during which he was criticised for remarks[22] described as "men and women are different, men are better at tech, deal with it" by another participant in the conversation.[23]

On 18 July 2012, Yiannopoulos had a public argument on Twitter with Zoe Margolis, author of Girl with a One-Track Mind. He commented: "We write about how tech is changing the world around us. You write about how many cocks you've sucked this week. Back off." and later added: "Is there a difference between writing about sex for money and having sex for money? Not really. What a grubby, humiliating way to make rent."[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Crunchbase Profile".
  2. ^ a b c d e Arthur, Charles (12 September 2012). "The Kernel sued by former contributors for non-payment". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  3. ^ a b c Hicks, Jennifer (19 December 2012). "Digital Media's Citizen Kane". Forbes. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
  4. ^ Steerpike (26 July 2012). "Homophobe of the year". The Spectator. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
  5. ^ Dowell, Ben (8 July 2012). "Milo Yiannopoulos – meet the 'pit bull' of tech media". The Observer. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  6. ^ Yiannopoulos, Milo (10 November 2011). "It's time to fix European technology journalism". The Kernel. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  7. ^ Williams-Grut, Oscar (19 December 2012). "The Kernel's back to make new enemies". Independent on Sunday. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
  8. ^ Williams-Grut, Oscar (2 June 2013). "The Kernel's back to make new enemies". The Independent.
  9. ^ The Kernel acquired by The Daily Dot publisher; founder and editor Milo Yiannopoulos to move on
  10. ^ "Wonga won the Startup 100 awards, not Spotify". TechCrunch Europe. 17 May 2011. Retrieved 15 September 2012.
  11. ^ Butcher, Mike (17 May 2011). "Wonga won The Startup100 awards, not Spotify". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 21 June 2013.
  12. ^ "I Had To Buy A$1,200 Plane Ticket To Get Mariah Carey's New Album, And It's All The Record Label's Fault". Business Insider. 23 May 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2012.
  13. ^ "Some Guy Spent $1,200 on Mariah Carey's New Album". Gawker. 23 May 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2012.
  14. ^ "Techno teens design public websites". MSN. 25 August 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  15. ^ Arthur, Charles (18 November 2009). "London Nude Tech calendar: unclothed geeks (and ladygeeks) in a good cause". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  16. ^ a b "Moonwalking Jackson Fans Mob London Station". Sky News. 27 June 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  17. ^ Sky News, 19 November 2010, BSkyB, distributed by Fox International Channels.
  18. ^ BBC Breakfast, 13 August 2010, BBC Television, distributed by the BBC.
  19. ^ Newsnight, 15 March 2012, BBC Television, distributed by the BBC.
  20. ^ 10 O'Clock Live, 17 February 2011, Channel 4.
  21. ^ "Twitter mishaps and netiquette for journalists". journalism.co.uk. 30 November 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  22. ^ Yiannopoulos, Milo (22 April 2009). "Men perform better in many technology jobs. Must we apologise for that?". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 17 February 2013.
  23. ^ "Just a Girl – Why we put on the "Balancing Tech Culture" debate @GeeknRolla". TechCrunch Europe. 23 April 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2012.

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