PETER THIEL CONSPIRACY TRIAL
The trial had demonstrated vividly that Gawker didn't care in the slightest about truth or journalistic ethics. When Terry Bollea aka "Hulk Hogan" first won his lawsuit against Gawker, public opinion was generally in his favor. It's a NY Post article.) They just didn't care, because they knew no one could beat them in court, or spend the money it would take to try. They loved trashing sororities, and were perfectly fine publishing videos of drunk coeds being sexually assaulted. They didn't just pick on celebrities, though. They published some real news, but thrived on up-skirt shots, sex videos, and leaked photos of celebrities drunk, high, arrested, and in flagrante delicto. It put such tabloids as the National Enquirer to shame. Many people have opinions about the case based entirely on what they think of the principals. That's the short version, but the long version turns out to be detailed, fascinating, and a far-reaching epic story that touches on political biases, the culture wars, and meditations on the nature of conspiracy and revenge. Backed by Thiel's deep pockets, the Bollea lawsuit eventually ended the Gawker empire, driving it and its owner, Nick Denton, into bankruptcy.
PETER THIEL CONSPIRACY PROFESSIONAL
The instrument of his vengeance, improbably, was Terry Bollea, better known as former professional wrestler "Hulk Hogan," who had launched a suit against Gawker for publishing a sex video of him banging his best friend's wife. Angered by this, Thiel embarked on what became a slow, patient campaign to destroy Gawker. The short version of the story: In 2007, Gawker Media outed Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor who founded PayPal. This was far more fascinating that I ever expected. Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after reading these pages-and seeing the access the author was given-no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious-and successful-secret plots in recent memory.
PETER THIEL CONSPIRACY FREE
In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean-for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture? The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit-until it was too late. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental-it had been masterminded by Thiel.įor years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem." When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of pageviews and to say the things that others were afraid to say. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley-vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay.
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