BY: Denver Sean
Published 6 years ago
Do you remember HBO’s ‘Taxicab Confessions’?
We were quite fond of the show, but one ride-sharing driver in Missouri decided to stream his own version — without the consent of his passengers.
via NYDN:
Passengers in Jason Gargac’s vehicle were caught on video kissing, throwing up and doing just about everything imaginable, according to the Post-Dispatch, which first reported the story.
“I try to capture the natural interactions between myself and the passengers — what a Lyft and Uber ride actually is,” Gargac told the Post-Dispatch.
Gargac would post the videos on Twitch, used often by gamers. People would comment on the appearance and the behavior of the passengers in Gargac’s vehicle.
“I feel violated. I’m embarrassed,” a female passenger told the Post-Dispatch. “We got in an Uber at 2 a.m. to be safe, and then I find out that because of that, everything I said in that car is online and people are watching me. It makes me sick.”
“It’s dehumanizing,” a passenger told the newspaper.
Since only one party needs to consent to a recording in Missouri, Gargac did not break any laws. He mostly picked up passengers in the St. Louis area.
However, the ride-sharing companies are no longer using him as a driver, and his Twitch channel was taken down. Twitch said in a statement that “we do not allow people to share content that invades others’ privacy.”
Gargac speaks directly to the camera in the recordings, according to the newspaper. At one point he discussed picking up two women passengers after a 30-minute dry spell.
“This better be (expletive) content, I swear to God,” he says, according to the Post-Dispatch. “This better be (expletive) content, that’s all I’m saying. I mean, the blond girl looks kind of cute, if they’re together. The blonde is cute. The one who ordered is not.”
Gargac told the newspaper that Twitch users, including his wife, would take out any offensive comments.
“Saying she was an 8 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10, that’s cringe-y to a point, but I don’t think it goes over a line,” he told the newspaper. “But if you go over the line of like: ‘Oh, I’d do such dirty things to her,’ something like that, I don’t want that at all.”
If HBO was smart, they’d capitalize on this reboot trend and bring back an official version of ‘Taxicab Confessions’ with Uber/Lyft.