# Garry Tan — "Die slow motherfuckers" > [!quote] "Fuck Chan, Peskin, Preston, Walton, Melgar, Ronen, Safai. Die slow motherfuckers." > — Garry Tan, posted to X (Twitter), late January 27, 2024 ## Context [[Garry Tan]] — CEO of [[Y Combinator]] and the most visible figure in the tech-executive-to-local-political-operative pipeline — posted this late-night message naming seven of San Francisco's eleven city supervisors: Connie Chan, Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, Shamann Walton, Myrna Melgar, Hillary Ronen, and Ahsha Safaí, the most progressive bloc on the Board. The construction lifts directly from Tupac Shakur's 1996 diss track "Hit 'Em Up," with the supervisors' names substituted for the original targets. Mission Local first reported the post on January 27; the San Francisco Chronicle covered Tan's apology on January 29. Tan deleted the post and apologized, saying there was "no place, no excuse and no reason for this type of speech and charged language in the discourse," and explaining that he had been referencing a rap track. The apology followed the standard tech-executive arc — provocation, backlash, contextual rationalization — without retracting the underlying hostility toward the officials named. ## Why this matters This is a receipt for eliminationist rhetoric crossing from anonymous online culture into the public speech of an institutional power-broker. Tan was not a fringe poster: he runs the most influential startup accelerator in Silicon Valley and had by then spent roughly $400,000 reshaping San Francisco politics toward "moderate," pro-business, anti-progressive candidates. Wishing the slow death of named elected officials — even as a "rap reference" — normalizes political violence as acceptable in-group expression among the tech right. The consequences were concrete. At least three of the named supervisors (Peskin, Preston, and Melgar) subsequently received threatening hate mail at their homes; one letter enclosed a screenshot of Tan's deleted post alongside the message "I WISH A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH FOR YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES." Police reports were filed, and the San Francisco District Attorney referred the matter to the state Attorney General over potential conflicts of interest. The episode documents the gap between the "rap reference" defense and the real-world threat environment such speech helps create. ## Verification - **First reporting:** [Mission Local, January 27, 2024](https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-supervisors/) — "Garry Tan, tech CEO & campaign donor, wishes death upon San Francisco politicians." - **Apology:** [San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 2024](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/garry-tan-tech-exec-angry-tweet-die-slow-supes-18635493.php) — Tan apologizes for tweeting that local politicians should "die slow." - **Threats / police reports:** [TechCrunch, January 31, 2024](https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/31/san-francisco-supervisors-threats-yc-garry-tans-tweet/); [SF Standard, January 30, 2024](https://sfstandard.com/2024/01/30/garry-tan-vulgar-tweet-prompts-san-francisco-police-reports/). - **Status:** Verbatim, undisputed; post was deleted but widely screenshotted and quoted in contemporaneous reporting. ## Related quotes - See also the [[Garry Tan]] profile, which places this within his broader San Francisco political campaign and the tech-oligarch anti-progressive playbook.