Gawker itself speculated that Charles Johnson, the conservative journalist-turned-right-wing troublemaker had knowledge of the Thiel suit.

Or short of strings, was there coordination or even just knowledge that someone with deep pockets was gunning for the company? Gamergate, the details of which are too convoluted and stupid to recount here, is seen by many as a precursor to the alt-right, and managed to shame Gawker’s advertising partners out of doing business with the blog network, causing the loss of millions in revenue. Holiday hints at some lingering questions: whether there were strings attached either to the other lawsuits filed since Hogan’s became public, or to the Gamergate movement, of which Gawker was an early and key target starting in 2014. It’s a remarkable story of a conspiracy - this is also the name of the book - spanning almost a decade, from the 2007 post outing Thiel as gay to his vicarious revenge nine years later. A’s identity was revealed last week as Aron D’Souza, an Oxford-educated lawyer based in Melbourne.

A.” The latter was the link between Thiel and Bollea’s lawyers, who Thiel paid $25,000 monthly to dig up cases against Gawker they might be able to fund. The details of this conspiracy got a little clearer this week with the publication of a book by Ryan Holiday containing interviews with all the major players, Thiel, Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, the Hulk himself, and “Mr. Several months later, Forbes revealed that billionaire PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel handed him the bottle. That’s what happened to Gawker in March 2016, when a Florida jury awarded Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan, $140 million in damages from Gawker for violating his privacy by publishing a sex tape recorded without his consent.

If one of his erstwhile victims turned around and punched the schoolyard bully in the nose, you would feel like he had it coming, wouldn’t you? What if the same erstwhile victim was handed a broken bottle, and proceeded to leave the bully bleeding out on the basketball court?

Ryan holiday peter thiel