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A review by shivamt25
Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday
4.0
Ryan Holiday is a media critic in New York Observer and is an author of notable books such as The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy. His new book, Conspiracy gives the readers a chance to know the inside planning which went on to destroy Gawker Media.
The book starts some 10 years back with an article on Gawker which outed the PayPal founder Peter Thiel as gay. After which it describes how Peter Thiel created a specialized team to bring down the Gawker empire along with its founder, Nick Denton. The case this team picked as a missile for the annihilation of Gawker was that of Hulk Hogan, a former wrestler, whose sex tape was leaked and posted on one of the websites of Gawker. The battle ended after approximately 10 years with Hulk Hogan a lot richer and Gawker bankrupt and sold.
The book works on many levels as it is more like a successful screenplay for a thrilling courtroom drama (I heard that a movie is in discussions). There is a hero who is, more or less, blameless and wants revenge for he was wronged by this big bad firm (evil organization) run by this unapologetic boss Denton(nemesis). So, he assembled a team which has a smart mastermind in mysterious but ambitious young man Mr. A and a hard-working lawyer, Harder. All they need was a weapon with which they can finish what they started, which they found in Hogan. In creating this movie-like impression, Holiday might have, unknowingly maybe, written this book with more of a sympathizing attitude towards Thiel. At many times he defends Thiel’s actions narrating them as innocent innocuous mistakes or overshadowing them with the validations of counteracting to Gawker’s or Denton’s misdemeanours. We get from the book that Gawker was a media firm which had no respect for people’s privacy, was involved in a lot of illegal activities and was so powerful that it was untouchable (indicating this highly, to say, even for a billionaire to topple it). And Theil is just a private person who was affected deeply and wanted the situation to change (but actually it felt more like he wanted revenge, just like any ordinary person). But the conspiracy the book is talking about did not look so great till the end as Theil’s actual goal of freeing the media space with such privacy penetrating firms wasn’t fulfilled.
The book is decent in the way it is written, just not in achieving its goal of convincing the readers about how immense this all was. But one thing which this book did is made me contemplate over how much the media and its consumption has changed from back then. The book described how Gawker became successful in the first place. It actually was a pure supply-demand game. There is no requirement of a gossip spreading website if there are no hungry for gossip readers. Nowadays, any such chatter is just a click away. It's just very tempting for us to click on such links, just have a look or forward it among friends. But what happens when such websites go too far? Does leaking a sex tape of some celebrity on the internet comes under journalism? Do firms like Gawker have the right to post something so personal to someone over the internet for everyone to see? Questions like these come to mind while reading the book and are well contested by counter attacks from questions about freedom of speech and freedom of the press (US Law, first amendment).
This is not the first case where firms like Gawker were criticized for targeting people with unsubstantiated posts online. The Internet has provided a tool to every blogger to report any gossip and leave it to someone else to defend it or provide explanations and confessions. The driving force is the numbers – the views, likes, shares and comments. “A story which increases these is a story worth publishing no matter what” is the new motto. In a recent example, Buzzfeed ran an article singling out Armie Hammer which made the latter delete his twitter account. Many celebrities have been the victims when their objectionable pictures were leaked online.
It is difficult to define what all can be reported in the name of entertainment. Some will say that people have the right to know and hence it’s our duty to publish. So, the question is where does one draw a line?
The book starts some 10 years back with an article on Gawker which outed the PayPal founder Peter Thiel as gay. After which it describes how Peter Thiel created a specialized team to bring down the Gawker empire along with its founder, Nick Denton. The case this team picked as a missile for the annihilation of Gawker was that of Hulk Hogan, a former wrestler, whose sex tape was leaked and posted on one of the websites of Gawker. The battle ended after approximately 10 years with Hulk Hogan a lot richer and Gawker bankrupt and sold.
The book works on many levels as it is more like a successful screenplay for a thrilling courtroom drama (I heard that a movie is in discussions). There is a hero who is, more or less, blameless and wants revenge for he was wronged by this big bad firm (evil organization) run by this unapologetic boss Denton(nemesis). So, he assembled a team which has a smart mastermind in mysterious but ambitious young man Mr. A and a hard-working lawyer, Harder. All they need was a weapon with which they can finish what they started, which they found in Hogan. In creating this movie-like impression, Holiday might have, unknowingly maybe, written this book with more of a sympathizing attitude towards Thiel. At many times he defends Thiel’s actions narrating them as innocent innocuous mistakes or overshadowing them with the validations of counteracting to Gawker’s or Denton’s misdemeanours. We get from the book that Gawker was a media firm which had no respect for people’s privacy, was involved in a lot of illegal activities and was so powerful that it was untouchable (indicating this highly, to say, even for a billionaire to topple it). And Theil is just a private person who was affected deeply and wanted the situation to change (but actually it felt more like he wanted revenge, just like any ordinary person). But the conspiracy the book is talking about did not look so great till the end as Theil’s actual goal of freeing the media space with such privacy penetrating firms wasn’t fulfilled.
The book is decent in the way it is written, just not in achieving its goal of convincing the readers about how immense this all was. But one thing which this book did is made me contemplate over how much the media and its consumption has changed from back then. The book described how Gawker became successful in the first place. It actually was a pure supply-demand game. There is no requirement of a gossip spreading website if there are no hungry for gossip readers. Nowadays, any such chatter is just a click away. It's just very tempting for us to click on such links, just have a look or forward it among friends. But what happens when such websites go too far? Does leaking a sex tape of some celebrity on the internet comes under journalism? Do firms like Gawker have the right to post something so personal to someone over the internet for everyone to see? Questions like these come to mind while reading the book and are well contested by counter attacks from questions about freedom of speech and freedom of the press (US Law, first amendment).
This is not the first case where firms like Gawker were criticized for targeting people with unsubstantiated posts online. The Internet has provided a tool to every blogger to report any gossip and leave it to someone else to defend it or provide explanations and confessions. The driving force is the numbers – the views, likes, shares and comments. “A story which increases these is a story worth publishing no matter what” is the new motto. In a recent example, Buzzfeed ran an article singling out Armie Hammer which made the latter delete his twitter account. Many celebrities have been the victims when their objectionable pictures were leaked online.
It is difficult to define what all can be reported in the name of entertainment. Some will say that people have the right to know and hence it’s our duty to publish. So, the question is where does one draw a line?