Former pharmaceutical executive and internet troll Martin Shkreli took over a Facebook group affiliated with UC Berkeley students on Monday, posting live streams during which he took questions from members of the group and discussed a potential visit to the campus.
Shkreli, who is known for instituting a 5,000 percent price hike on a crucial drug used by HIV and AIDS patients, became a member of the Facebook group "UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens" Monday morning. Once he was a member, he proceeded to post his phone number to the page and troll students who called him.
The bizarre live stream lasted more than an hour, during which Shkreli — who was named "The Most Hated CEO" last year — discussed the Wu Tang Clan and brought out nun chucks and his guitar, but denied requests to play the Oasis hit "Wonderwall." Group members seemed to welcome his presence on the page despite Shkreli’s controversial actions as head of Turing Pharma and as a supporter of President Donald Trump.
"This whole interaction with him is quite ironic because the majority of people dislike him, but it was an interesting interaction," Rachel Trujillo, a moderator of the Facebook group, told campus newspaper The Daily Californian. "I saw he would just post something and it would get 2,000 likes in a short amount of time..."
CAUTION: Video contains vulgar language and profanity.
At one point, the self-proclaimed "Pharma Bro" mocked "social justice warriors" — a derogatory term frequently used to describe liberal activists — and referred to one Facebook user as a "social justice warrior b*tch" who needed to "come out of her safe space." He also took a dig at alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos — with whom Shkreli once had a scheduled speaking engagement — saying the former Breitbart News editor, who resigned Wednesday from his post, was "condoning pedophilia."
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Yiannopoulos, whose presence at Berkeley sparked violent protests earlier this month, lost a book deal after a tape surfaced of him advocating relationships between "men" and "boys" as young as 13 years old. A joint appearance by Yiannopoulos and Shkreli at UC Davis was cancelled in January amid large protests, but it appears Shkreli, who was indicted for securities fraud, is still willing to visit UC Berkeley.
"I’d love to come to Berkeley," Shkreli said. "It’d be an honor."
