Reddit reviews Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

To me, this story is not just the story of a ten year revenge plot, it's really the story of all conspiracies. You know we live in this world of conspiracy theories (I happen to live in Austin, the hometown of Alex Jones) but few actual conspiracies. But any student of history knows that the world often pivots on something a few people cooked up in secret. So to me, this book was a chance to tell that larger story. The fact that Thiel was willing to go on the record and explain his process was, in my view as an author, an unprecedented chance to lay out how power really works in a way that few have been able to before. It's ironic, Gawker's informal motto was that they showed "How Things Work"--the story behind the story. But in this case, they missed what was actually happening. So did everyone in the media. What I tried to do here was step back, take judgment out of the picture, and show what went down and why. I think the book captures that, but ultimately that will be for the readers to decide.

There is a new book out about Thiel's secret funding of the legal action against Gawker called Conspiracy.

Ryan Holiday is pretty good writer about Stoicism and the inside view of media and marketing. I generally like all the stuff he writes, and he seems to be on the side of Thiel this time. And I don't think he's politically biased, because Thiel was pro-Trump and Holiday was very anti-Trump.

+ryan_holiday:

The central question of this story to me is, who was the bully? Was Thiel the bully or was it Gawker? Was Peter the billionaire who destroyed a millionaire? Or was he a righteous man who attempted to use his money to solve a problem that only power and money could solve? Was it the media outlet that thoughtlessly outed a then-mostly unknown tech investor? Or was it the billionaire who spent millions plotting against him for it? Was it the website who loved to out gay men or was it the team who would back Trump in the 2016 election, and in the case of Charles Harder, write an 11 page letter threatening to sue Michael Wolff for his book about Trump? Was it Denton who never apologized, who ignored judicial orders or was it Thiel, who never showed his face until after his revenge was complete?

It depends on where you sit, but one thing that has been lost in the coverage since the verdict: Gawker thought they were winning until suddenly, they lost. It was Gawker who had filed endless motions and appeals, who had fought Hulk Hogan with scorched earth tactics, and never apologized for obtaining an illegally recorded sextape and publishing it for more than seven million people to gawk at (and then spent $10M+ vigorously insisting it was right to do so). There was a moment in mid-2014, when Gawker’s lawyers threatened Hulk Hogan, telling him that it was his last chance to drop the case before they went after him for attorney’s fees. More than anything, what the jury and the judge reacted to had been their arrogance. The verdict reflected that.

Nick Denton told me, “The idea that Thiel was terrified of the next Gawker piece is still absurd to me—and given how things turned out, we had much more to fear from him than the other way around." But it wasn’t that absurd at the time, when they were a website with hundreds of millions of readers, when Gawker was the site that had never been challenged in court and published whatever it wanted, Thiel believed that Gawker’s power was partly in pretending that it was more powerful than it was. Now that they're gone...it looks different.

As for who is the bully now? As I said, backing Trump and some of the clients Charles Harder has taken on since give me pause...but that doesn't have the power to rewrite where things were in 2007.

a new book just came out about the whole Gawker debacle.

It looks really good. Not so much about Hogan, but more about Peter Thiel and why he helped him/backstory on that.

Hogan did it with a billionaire bank rolling him though.

There is an amazing book on the whole thing
https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-Intrigue/dp/0735217645

Seriously, that story is batshit crazy.

Ronaldo can't really claim Spiegel is damaging his reputation, if they are just reporting on a crime he did years ago.

Hogan's case, he was just shagging his friends wife (like any decent guy) and didn't realize his friend was setting him up to make money off the hidden video.

Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday
https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-Intrigue/dp/0735217645

It's about Peter Thiel bankrolling Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. Read it in a few sittings.