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

by Ryan Holiday

Mankind has always crucified and burned, a great playwright once said. We take a secret pleasure in the misfortune of our friends, said another wise man. For Gawker it was no secret pleasure but a conspicuous one and to it they added the power of blogging. Nick’s instincts were captured and compounded by the economics of his instruments: twenty-something writers with school debt and little income. Overeducated children of Boomers, the children of parents whose idealism became materialism, the writers believed they had something to say because those same parents had told them they were special and important and talented. Previous generations of writers came to New York City with a dream. This generation came with a bone to pick—for the broken economy, for the collapse of old industries, for the hypocrisy and fakeness that had finally become acute. They wanted a seat at the Algonquin and ended up sharing a bedroom in Bushwick, writing twenty articles a week (nineteen of which no one would read) for $12 apiece. Of course they were pissed. A New York Times writer would later dub this ethos the “rage of the creative underclass.” A Gawker headline captures it better: “It’s OK to Be a Hater Because Everything Is Bad.” The existentialists spoke of ressentiment, or the way that resentment creates frustration which fuels more resentment. Philosophers might have said this feeling was pointless, but they knew it was a fearful force. Gawker would revel in ressentiment, of its writers a...