Katya: ok. i’m on it.
Dan: that’s what I like to hear. and of course I’m around if you want to bounce any ideas off me. just think BIG.
She needed a smoke, and she needed it alone. She got up from her desk and, without making eye contact with Dan, slipped out to the street. The whole situation with Victor and his company put Katya in an awkward spot. A potentially huge story, filled with conflict and intrigue, and she couldn’t write about it because Victor was her boyfriend and it would be the most massive conflict of interest, plus it would probably make him break up with her immediately. She scrolled rapidly through Twitter as she smoked, absorbing information and yet not totally processing it. There was one tweet, however, that caught her eye, from an account called @invisibletechman. She didn’t follow the account, but it had been retweeted into her timeline by a Mashable reporter she followed. The tweet said: News flash to all startup bros: actually, we can hear you. Your silence speaks volumes. What did that mean? Katya wondered. She clicked through to @invisibletechman’s profile. The profile picture was a black-and-white photo of a black man she didn’t recognize, and the bio said: Tryna make a dollar out of some 15-cent stock options. (For my white friends: That’s Stokely Carmichael in the pic.) [email protected]. Katya googled Stokely Carmichael; her knowledge of the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers was limited to Martin Luther King Jr. and a vague idea about why Malcolm X was important.
Invisiblet Tech Man’s account seemed to have started within the past few weeks, and most of his (or, possibly, her) tweets were about what it was like to be black in startup culture. Things like Shit white founders say: “Stay humble.” Nah, man, I’m good and Poll: how many POC work at your tech company? (1) <5 (2) #1 is the only possible answer. He had around two thousand followers—respectable, but nothing mind-blowing. Clearly he (or she) was still trying to make a name for him- (or her-) self. She took a screen grab of the account and texted it to Janelle: you know anything about this? Janelle usually knew about anything on Black Twitter at least a week before Katya did.
Janelle texted back right away: Yeah everyone’s talking about it & trying to figure out who it is…not sure if it’s someone in SF or NY or even if they actually even work in tech. Interesting, Katya thought. She followed the account. You never knew where a story might come from; sometimes Katya got tips from the most random places. And if no one had written about @invisibletechman yet, maybe she could be the first. That might be something Dan would think would “move the needle.”
That night, she got home at nine and found Victor sitting on the couch watching South Park on his laptop and eating microwave popcorn. “Hi,” she said, plopping down on the couch next to him. “Is Janelle here?” He turned and gave her a kiss. “Hi,” he said. “Nope. Haven’t seen her all day.” Phew, Katya thought. One less time Janelle would be annoyed about Victor being in the apartment when Katya wasn’t there.
“So what have you been doing all day?” She tried to keep her voice neutral.
“You’re looking at it.” They were silent for a few moments. South Park blared from his computer. She found the characters’ voices especially irritating.
“Mm-kay,” she said. “Well…I’m going to do a little work out here. Can you put headphones on?”
“I don’t know where they are. I’ll just watch in there.” He gestured toward the bedroom as he hoisted himself off the couch, leaving crumbs of popcorn in his wake. He was still wearing the sweatpants and T-shirt he’d had on when she’d left for work thirteen hours ago.
“Hey,” she said just as he reached her bedroom. “What’s going on with Nilay? I mean…have you guys made up yet?”
Victor rolled his eyes. “We’re done. That’s what’s going on with him.”
“Okay,” Katya said. Was she going to have to spell everything out for him? “It’s just that…you know, you’ve been staying here for a while.”
Victor bristled visibly. “I didn’t realize I was such an imposition. You know that if you were in the same situation I wouldn’t even think about saying something like that to you. Are you seriously telling me I have to leave and go back to the apartment where the guy who totally screwed me over lives? Because if that’s what you’re telling me…”
She was starting to regret even bringing up Nilay. “I mean…” She tried to choose her words carefully. “Sorry if this is, like, awkward, but are you sure it was the dinner? I mean…are you sure that StrollUp was going to, you know, succeed?”
Victor glared at her. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You know we were close to getting that funding and then he just had to get wasted and run his fucking mouth. And really the worst part of it is he won’t even admit that that’s what happened. He thinks that we didn’t pivot fast enough. We were pivoting so fast that I almost got whiplash.” He shook his head. “It’s crazy to think that what he did at that dinner had nothing to do with it. You know that and I know that.” He went into her bedroom and slammed the door.