How a Tech Bro Bought a Horse on Craigslist—and Became an Internet Villain

On its face, Cyril Bertheau seems to be on a journey that feel-good adventure stories are made of. The 24-year-old announced in March that he was quitting a six-figure tech job to purchase a horse off of Craigslist and ride it more than 2,100 miles from his home in Austin, Texas, to Seattle, Washington, in just 100 days.

He claims he’s doing it because of a tradition in his family where the oldest son on the father’s side embarks on a big adventure as a rite of passage. “I want to carry on the torch of my family tradition,” Bertheau told The Daily Beast. “This is the fourth generation of this tradition. I’m set on completing my original goal. I just feel the need to complete what I started.”

In early March, Bertheau found a 13-year-old Tennessee Walking Horse named Falcon for $3,000. Bertheau crowdsourced a new name for the horse on social media, and eventually landed on Shiok after a user on TikTok suggested it, claiming the name was “Native American for horse that would fight monsters for you.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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