Tech Company Stirs Outrage With Tweet About Model’s "Rear"

Laptop-maker ASUS’s controversial tweet comes on a day when the blogosphere is already abuzz over sexism in the tech world.

Via: @0xabad1dea

ASUS makes motherboards and laptops, and they’re presenting a series of new notebooks and tablets at tech convention Computex this week. They are also apparently presenting a model’s butt.

Apparently realizing that not all of their followers wanted butt-commentary along with their tech news, ASUS deleted the tweet. But as many have pointed out, deleting a tweet no longer means no one will see it. Quite the opposite, in fact. One critic called the whole debacle “social media suicide.” ASUS hasn’t yet responded to requests for comment.

News of the gaffe is spreading rapidly in a social media sphere already riled by a New York Times article over the weekend that led with the line, “Men invented the internet.” Wrote Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing, “You guys, ladies suck at technology and the New York Times is ON IT.” The article itself, meanwhile, was about a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit against Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. The suit — along with a series of trend pieces about fratty “brogrammer” culture — has prompted a fair amount of soul-searching about gender bias in the tech world. So it’s an especially inopportune week to make a name for yourself as the company that tweets about ladies’ asses.