[Update: Jordan Terry of Stone Street Advisors tweeted that Tripathi has never worked at Stone Street. He was a financial blogger for Stone Street.]
Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst and a former financial blogger for Stone Street Partners and a campaign manager for a Republican congressional candidate, tweeted a bunch of phony warnings about the city losing power due to the storm. Classic sociopath humor.
It turns out that @ComfortablySnug is one Shashank Tripathi, not some bored student or some troublemaker from the Occupy camp. In fact, he’s the opposite: he’s a hedge fund analyst
with Stone Street Advisors[Update: he was a financial blogger for Stone Street Advisors, not an employee].He was also — and really, should we be surprised? — the campaign manager for Christopher R. Wight, this year’s Republican candidate for the U.S. House from New York’s 12th Congressional District. According to BuzzFeed, FEC documents show Wight has paid Tripathi thousands of dollars this election cycle as a “consultant”, and this Meetup page names him as the go-to guy for a Republican “Super Monday” event. He resigned from the position as soon as word got out that he was falsely crying “power outage”, and I’m sure the Repubs will work hard to distance themselves from this feeder on misery.
Joey deVilla has an update: It turns out that Tripathi’s already internet famous from this 2008 story: The Self-Obsessed, Emotionally Detached Hedge-Funder, in which he brags about “hate sex” with a woman with low-self esteem that left her bruised.
However, Tripathi has since offered a sincere unsigned apology for his alarming tweets.
@ComfortablySmug — Doesn’t This Guy Have Better Things to Do? | GigaOm: Tweeting fake news in a crisis — illegal or just immoral? | Buzzfeed: Shashank Tripathi, Last Night’s Twitter Villain @ComfortablySmug | NYMag: Sandy’s Biggest Twitter Troll Apologizes, But Won’t Find Redemption