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

Author:Ryan Holiday [Holiday, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, azw3
ISBN: 9780735217645
Google: 5pFPDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07637TDJJ
Goodreads: 36681909
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

This is the problem with making enemies, with generally treating everyone with contempt and creating a culture of fear. They despair of revenge until you are weak and

vulnerable. They look forward to the day when the tables are turned. They will descend on you like a pack as soon as they think they can, and in Gawker’s case, they give no quarter because Gawker never would have, either. It’s said that gangsters look good up until their last fifteen minutes, when it turns really ugly and sad. This is where we are in this story, right before the turning point where it suddenly stops looking so good.

Being feared, Machiavelli says, is an important protection against a conspiracy. The ultimate protection, he says, however, is to be well liked. Not simply because people who love you are less likely to want to take you down, but because they are less likely to tolerate anyone else trying to, either. If a prince guards himself against that hatred, Machiavelli writes, “simple particular offenses will make less trouble for him … because if they were even of spirit and had the power to do it, they are held back by the universal benevolence that they see the prince has.”

Not that people had ever refrained from criticizing Gawker in the past, or were hesitant to sue, but the tenor is different now. One alt-right participant would tell me that Gamergate was like the scene in the movie 300, where the Spartans hurl a spear and it grazes Xerxes’s cheek, just barely drawing blood. It’s the moment when the Greeks confirmed that he was not invincible, it’s what gave them proof that they could fight and possibly win. Something had always deterred the pack from descending on Gawker in the past and now that was changing. Which meant that Peter Thiel was no longer fully in charge of what was happening. Events were to be driven by the conditions of the conflict both sides had created.

Yet it would be the destiny of most of these cases to amount to little in the end. But that was because their purpose was never to amount to much by themselves, only to contribute to a ratcheting up of the tensions inside Gawker. Once that happened, once there were enough of

them, the stratagems could be allowed to dissipate on their own.

In World War II the British had been inclined to continue their campaigns of disinformation and confusion indefinitely; it was Churchill’s nature, he loved the sport of it. The Americans finally intervened. They knew that while the cause could be advanced with these tricks, a war couldn’t be won by pinpricks. Once the enemy is weakened, the beaches have been softened, the morale dispirited, now one can resume the main thrust. It is easy to lose track, in the tit for tat, back and forth, of feints and moves and countermoves, of what is real and what isn’t. This is where strategy matters. “It was really Bollea, by far, the biggest focus and the biggest amount of money and the biggest everything,” Harder said.

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