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

by Ryan Holiday

from time to time in life, we

might have to take someone out behind the woodshed.

How we have lost this. How squeamish we have become. We now blindly demonize what is often one of the most effective forms of action. How vulnerable this ignorance has made us to the few real conspiracies, successful or not, that exist in the world. In this rare occasion, though, we got a glimpse, a peek behind the ...

And yet our instinct is to turn away, to put our fin...

There is no question that

what Thiel did over those years was brilliant, cunning, and ruthless. It is equally true that Gawker mostly beat itself.

Regardless of any personal opinions I might have, that was the tragic and absurd message of this book. We live in a world where only people like Peter Thiel can pull something so intentional and long-term off—and it’s not because, as Gawker has tried to make it seem, he’s rich. It’s because he’s one of the few who

believes it can be done.

To borrow a line from Zero to One, to believe in conspiracies is an effective truth. To dismiss anyth...

Would that change how you saw this? Would it change how I saw it?

Still, it became clear to me that a referendum on the merits of a specific conspiracy would be somewhat pointless. To paraphrase the great Margaret Atwood’s line,

I decided not to make a final statement but chose instead to deal in tactics. I rounded no rough edges and I’ll leave it to other experts to sort

through exactly what the implications of ...

Still, I suspect if Thiel’s victory is truly unjust and contrary to what people wan...

what is indisputable is that he saw his actions as a kind of social good and there is something to be admired in that. He felt the world would be better if freed of a certain menace and he set out to change it, he conspired to change it, well within the letter and the spirit of the law.

The world would have probably benefited more had someone as brilliant as Peter spent his time on more productive projects.

But that’s not really a reason to have not done something here, to have tolerated the status quo

What would the world look like if more people tried to change things, conspired to change things they ...

Was the founding of America not a kind ...

When it comes to conspiracies, there are good ones and terrible ones and

complicated ones. As I said in the introduction, the word is neutral, the application is not.

If you want to have a different world, it is on you to make it so. It will not be easy to do it—it may even require things that you are reluctant to consider. It always has. Moreover, that is your obligation if you are called to a higher task. To do what it takes, to see it through.