He despaired that he couldn’t take on the media publisher. His secret strength was to understand what powerful people wanted to see in a protégé or lieutenant and to make himself into that person. Johnson was sometimes called, for his ability to identify father figures in his life that would help his career. I was also shocked that multiple people referred to him as a “professional son,” as Lyndon B. That’s fascinating for a story that has been reported so extensively for so many years. They don’t realize there was another senior-level person involved in the plot against Gawker. Not only does nobody but me or the conspirators know his real name, but also nobody even realized that he exists. A, this mysterious operative who put the plan in motion. Holiday: I was shocked by the very existence of Mr. He estimates that the plan will take up to five years and up to $10 million in funding, which is prophetic. He says Thiel should create a shell company to fund investigators and lawyers to find causes of action against Gawker and ultimately sue it into oblivion. This young man essentially tells Thiel, I know you’re obsessed with Gawker, and I have an idea to destroy them. Then, as you report, in April 2011, he is in Berlin and he takes a dinner meeting with a then-26-year-old Thiel devotee, who you call Mr. Thompson: Thiel ponders revenge for years. So I think what kept Thiel and people like him up at night was: If they can out me, then what’s next? Will they publish a harmful rumor? Even a false rumor? Outing was more or less off limits for most news outlets. But Gawker wrote its own rules, and that scared certain powerful people. Most of the media plays by certain rules. Holiday: I think there is an element of unpredictability to it. I was really struck by your reporting that Thiel went around calling Gawker “the MBTO,” which stood for “Manhattan-Based Terrorist Organization.” Why did he feel terrorized? Thompson: Since Thiel’s war on Gawker bankrupted the company, that’s probably the most expensive internet comment in world history. That blog post felt like the first article in years of negative Gawker coverage against Thiel. But Thiel thought, here is the publisher of a media outlet, not just a blogger, going after me. When you read the comment it doesn’t feel that way. He thought Denton was implying that Peter had psychological problems. But what Peter reacts to the most is the comment on the bottom, which was written by Denton. The article was legal, but it was also tasteless and deliberately insensitive. I think what happened was this: The article comes out, and it is a rude awakening for a private person. But I feel like I would have seen a flicker of it. What was strange, though, is that in speaking to Peter Thiel, I never saw the anger. Ryan Holiday: My initial instinct was that it must have been pure anger. More power to him.” Based on your conversations with Thiel, why do you think he’s so mad about this blog post, if most of his friends (and their friends) knew he was gay? This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.ĭerek Thompson: On December 19, 2007, Gawker’s tech blog Valleywag published a post under the headline “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people,” ending with the sentence, “I think it's important to say this: Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay. I spoke to Holiday last week about the new information he’s uncovered, whether he thinks Gawker could have saved itself before the trial, and whether news reporters reflecting on Gawker’s demise should live in fear of upsetting rich people with their work. A, not only came up with the idea in April 2011-before the publication of the Hogan video-to target Gawker through an open-ended legal fund but also spearheaded the plot to take down Gawker using Thiel’s money. In the book’s biggest revelation, Holiday reports for the first time that a twentysomething acquaintance of Thiel’s, identified only as Mr. Over the next two years, Holiday turned that access into the first reported book that chronicles the lawsuit, from the offending blog post that sparked Thiel’s wrath to the aftermath of Gawker’s sale. Shortly after the verdict, both Thiel and Gawker’s founder, Nick Denton, reached out to Holiday about his coverage of the lawsuit in the New York Observer. This saga is the subject of a new book by the author and ( controversial) media strategist Ryan Holiday, called Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue.

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