I like how they talk about “Mr. A” using his interview with Thiel to pitch the conspiracy rather than a startup. An aspect not covered in the book.
This podcast made me read the book. The book is interesting, but this podcast is somehow better because of the way Roberts questions Holiday down a few logical paths.
I also read the book. It's a bit overwrought with classical quotes and psychological exploration. Don't get me wrong, I love the classics, but I often wanted the book to get on with the details of the story.
That truly was a case in which there was no good side to it. There was nobody worth rooting for, and no matter who won, it would have been bad. Publishing a private citizen's sex tape is not news, and for that matter, neither is outing someone who is not wanting to be outed. Using your vast wealth to bankroll someone else's lawsuit is also quite shady.
Agreed. Every time someone expresses outrage at the lawsuit, I want to ask them why Gawker gets a free pass for their behavior. The truth is, they sealed their own fate by stepping outside the bounds of both law and civility.
Well the entire media coverage of the event was on Gawkers side because the media wants to be able to print anything. Therefore if you hadn’t investigated further i could see why you would take Gawkers side.
Hell, it's even worse than that. "Sex tape" implies Hogan and a ladyfriend set up a camera and put on a show.
They were recorded having sex via hidden camera, without their knowledge or consent. That's a sex crime that they treated like it was leaked nude selfies.
It’s not really. Holiday has always been a “finger to the wind” public intellectual. Stoicism isn’t really a marketable ideology in a time of social and political upheaval, so he’s staking out a more “activist” position to sell himself.
This time, I guess it’s that conspiracies to destroy your opponents might actually be a good thing because they represent action over inaction (he more or less says as much about two thirds of the way through the interview). That seems a weird quasi-fascistic stance (Marinetti and other proto-fascists argued in favor of the same bias towards any action, regardless of its morality), but not one that’s out of fashion in our era.
Holiday as a "public intellectual"? he's always struck me as a marketer, retweeter of self-help quotes, and curator of other people's ideas, at best. something about him tells me there's nothing there.
>he's always struck me as a marketer, retweeter of self-help quotes, and curator of other people's ideas, at best. something about him tells me there's nothing there.
Yeah, sorry. In America, to me, public intellectuals are synonymous with all of that. I guess that’s less true elsewhere in the world. But it’s probably too generous to even given him that label and plays into how he’s trying to market himself.
Ok, I doubt I'll ever take an hour to listen to this, but I really enjoyed the book. It was very interesting to see the little particularities of the legal system and the participants that had a big impact. I basically read it straight through in one shot as the host said he did as well. I found the writing to be florid at times (there was a seamless segue between an anecdote of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon and Hulk Hogan's decision to sue against the distribution of the hidden camera sextape that made me actually laugh out loud) but I found the asides were unobtrusive enough that it didn't affect the reading.
Yeah, in the interview with Holiday, he muses whether it might be good for a handful of billionaires to conspire to destroy public education in America, including planting stories about the evils of schools and teachers in the press[0]. Seems like a real stand-up guy...
[0] 40:52 for anyone interested. I’m not exaggerating, this is pretty much verbatim.
> Yeah, in the interview with Holiday, he muses whether it might be good for a handful of billionaires to conspire to destroy public education in America, including planting stories about the evils of schools and teachers in the press
Yes, he proposes a thought experiment, and them points out how it sounds interesting from an ends getting something accomplished point of view, but also specifically says he recognizes that if he were on the other side he might find it a lot more suspect, and questions (as in actually questions) whether this approach, which is the whole thing being discusses, as it's what Thiel did, is something we should support or not.
So yes, a pretty stand up guy that's willing to note that even if something works for an outcome that he supports the method about which it's achieved might be suspect and we should examine it much closer before supporting it wholeheartedly. What more do you want?
He tosses in a couple of asides about how if you were on the receiving end of this atrocious idea, you might not like it so much, but your characterization is far too generous for something radically awful that he’s floating as a “thought experiment.”
And of course it’s not just a “thought experiment,” it’s something that right-wingers are doing across the country to aggregately awful and racist results (go look up the track record of Betsy DeVos’ charter school empire). It’s the same kind of dubious “just asking questions” nonsense these guys pull all the time.
> but your characterization is far too generous for something radically awful that he’s floating as a “thought experiment.”
He's floating it as a thought experiment to bring up the question of whether a tactic like this, for whatever goal, should be considered good or bad, given that it relies on secrecy. His thoughts are that government should get out of education. He's not actually saying he thinks peopls should go about it this way, he's raising the question of should we be okay with a tactic like this? The extremity of the argument is to make you think critically about it.
The entire conversation is couched in this context. I'm not sure why you refuse to consider it in this one exchange.
> And of course it’s not just a “thought experiment,”...
So you think the person that's calling it out as possibly something people should be wary of or at least examine very closely because of all the possible unintended consequences (which is a point they both spend quite some time elaborating on) is the person that should be viewed negatively? It's not just that something was said, it's how it was said, why it was said, and the larger context. To me it feels like you're missing that.
Gawker always said it was in the business of publishing true stories. Here is one last true story: You live in a country where a billionaire can put a publication out of business. A billionaire can pick off an individual writer and leave that person penniless and without legal protection.
If you want to write stories that might anger a billionaire, you need to work for another billionaire yourself, or for a billion-dollar corporation. The law will not protect you. There is no freedom in this world but power and money.
There's so much at play here, that boiling this situation to a generalization like this is outright deception.
* Gawker ignored a court order to take down a post
* Gawker's legal defense had a poor strategy of attacking Hogan's character
* Gawker either didn't coach their witnesses, or they just ignored any coaching:
* You have the author of the post saying he didn't consider any of the reasons Gawker's legal team said made the sex tape newsworthy
* In a trial by jury, the author also said he'd only hold back a sex tape if the subject was under four years old
Yeah, the lawsuit was bankrolled by a billionaire, but it would have been a slam dunk for any lawyer. The fact that they sought $100 Million but were awarded $140 Million by a jury should be telling about how poorly Gawker handled this situation.
One could also say that if someone puts a video of you having sex without consent, then companies like Gawker will ignore you unless you're a billionaire.
They published a video of a young lady having sex in a bar bathroom, and despite both the lady and her father pleading with Nick Denton to remove the video, he only said "These things pass". The family could not sure, and the outcome was unsure, and Gawker has insurance against these things, so Gawker felt they could get away with it as long as they got the pageviews.
Should you need to be a billionaire to have a non-newsworthy video of you removed?
"You live in a country where a billionaire can put a publication out of business."
I highly doubt Thiel would have been able to do that had it not been for Gawker's general being shitty. Outing Thiel was shitty, publishing the sex tape of a private individual was shitty, and saying that they would publish kiddie porn if they felt it was "newsworthy" was shitty.
Gawker was able to be taken out due to their own actions.
This podcast made me read the book. The book is interesting, but this podcast is somehow better because of the way Roberts questions Holiday down a few logical paths.