Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal), Nick Denton (owner of Gawker Media) and Hulk Hogan (the famous wrestler whose actual name is Terry Bollea) have nothing much in common for them to feature in a book that’s based on a true story. If one were to weave fiction around their lives, the normal tendency would be to link the wrestler to some kind of publicity with the media house, where PayPal could have been a sponsor.
But Ryan Holiday, in his book Conspiracy, weaves a story around how the three got intertwined in a real-life drama, which unfolds as one reads the 300-odd pages of the book. It reads like fiction and, hence, is fast-paced, but it is actually a real story involving these people and the trauma that some went through for over nine years before the episode concluded. Hence, while it may read like a storybook, it is based on intensive research and conversations with all the involved characters, which is quite remarkable.
The storyline is simple and could have been from the pen of Jeffrey Archer. Gawker used to make a profit by bringing out scandals about any celebrity—that’s why advertisers liked it because it got viewership and, hence, was value for money.
Journalists who wrote for it were not well paid and may not even have been on its rolls, but made a killing exposing anything, which individuals would deem as private. And being an online channel, it was able to get to millions of viewers.
Now, in 2007, millionaire Peter Thiel got exposed on Gawker as regards his personal sexual predilections, to which he took umbrage. But this is where there was a catch. In the US, laws on freedom are very different from those in, say, India and it’s hard to sue the media on this score. Nick Denton, who owns Gawker, was super-confident that he would get away with anything, as the courts there always support such people in the name of freedom of press. Besides, he proudly used to say that he had a great appetite for risk and loved facing odds. This is something that we, in India, can appreciate, where we hear all kinds of tales on US President Donald Trump, where the media is neither tormented by the authorities nor does it get sued. Even if there is a genuine case of infringement of privacy, it never really gets out.
Coming back to the Gawker story, Thiel started his planning in a careful way so as to ensure that he had a tight case against the media house, as he wanted to teach Denton a lesson without breaking any law. The plan was what can be called a ‘conspiracy’, where the target never suspects what’s going on and doesn’t know who is actually building the case. This, as per Holiday, is the essence of a conspiracy. The author brings in a lot of Machiavelli and the principles that must be used to lay the trap, and that’s what makes the book even more interesting.
Thiel hired an unknown person to do the job, who roped in a legal person, who, in turn, didn’t know who the client was. Interestingly, as Thiel didn’t want to reveal his name and yet the case had to be built, a third person was brought in. This is where Hulk Hogan came in and became the instrument to get after Gawker. In one of Hogan’s weaker moments, following a divorce proceeding, he had gotten filmed by his friend in a sleaze act with his wife, and this video was sent to Gawker. Such high celebrity action was of great use to improve viewership and advertising interest, and Gawker revelled in the video. Denton refused to pull it down even as a case was made that it was shot on the sly and, hence, was not permitted.
Thiel picked on this case with the argument being that an illegally recorded video is not the same as one taken with permission and, hence, the case of defamation was built on these grounds. After all the twists and turns, Denton’s empire became bankrupt, as the damages were just too high.
The story is all about the details of the case and the arguments and counter-arguments put forth in the hearings. Thiel finally won after a decade and spent millions of dollars. It was a major victory for him, as he had planned it meticulously.
Conspiracy is a tale of the use and abuse of power, where the consequences are really damaging, if not annihilating. The book is painstaking in research, as putting all the pieces together requires a lot of work. A real-life story reading as good as fiction, Conspiracy is quite enjoyable.
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