Male CEO forced to apologise to female tech designer he claimed was fake
Naomi Wu, a 23-year-old designer who creates wearable tech for women, was recently the centre of a strange conspiracy spun by her male followers.
Wu's work racks up millions of views on YouTube where she posts videos on her creative process - she also has tens of thousands of followers on social media.
She calls herself "RealSexyCyborg": as well as creating technology-enhanced clothing, she also chooses to change her body's structure with surgery.
CEO of Maker Media, Dale Dougherty, accused Wu of being nothing more than a fake - a front for the 'real' man behind her, namely her engineer boyfriend.
In a tweet, which has since been deleted, he reportedly wrote:
I am questioning who she really is. Naomi is a persona, not a real person. She is several or many people.
Dougherty has since apologised, writing for Make, the online tech magazine he explains:
Naomi, I apologize for my recent tweets questioning your identity. I was wrong, and I’m sorry
Doughery was touting lies that have circulated online since Wu's LED underlit skirt went viral on Reddit in 2015.
According to a Newsweek interview, Wu believes Dougherty's attitude is simply an example of how Western tech companies treat people like her in China.
She also doesn't think American men understand her city, Shenzhen. On her Patreon page, she says:
It's a city straight out of CyberPunk, on the cutting edge of tech and it's growing at an amazing rate.
I'm right in the middle of it.
She added:
I know it can seem a bit odd by Western standards but it's not disrespectful or frowned upon here, it makes me very happy and I still post lots of tech stuff.
Wu has said she now considers the matter closed.
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