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

by Ryan Holiday

One of the worst things that can ever happen to a leader is to unconsciously associate resistance and criticism with opportunity.

There is little of that kind of character or introspection with winning.

Goethe would say that many who clamor for freedom of the press do so in order to abuse

“The pressure for journalists to show empathy has a cost.” They may hold powerful people less accountable, they may tell the truth less directly. This could ripple through a democracy in dangerous ways.

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“The idea of a conspiracy,” Thiel would say to me, “is linked with intentionality, with planning, working towards longer-term goals. In a world where you don’t have conspiracies maybe also those things disappear.”

We have plenty of opinions—plenty of histrionic complaints about how terrible and awful and stuck we are—but not enough people with the patience, coordination, and ambition to do anything about it.

For those who are upset and angry about what happened here, it’s worth asking: What are you really mad about?

Yet this sense of powerlessness over our future and a naïve certainty that the good guys always win remains. This is dangerous, contradictory nonsense. If you want to have a different world, it is on you to make it so.

In a time when computers are replacing many basic human functions, it will eventually come to be that audaciousness, vision, courage, creativity, a sense of justice—these will be the only tasks left to us. A computer can’t practice secrecy or misdirection, a computer can’t feel an urge to remake the world. Only humans can be that crazy.