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I think that sometimes we forget the fact that famous people have regular people brains under their famous skin. I knew a guy who, hitting fifty or so, with more time on his hands, got really into collecting the wrappers of "Tunnock's Tea Cakes", which are a confectionary product housed in elegant gold packaging. Other people get into horse racing, or MLM scams, or - very, very frequently - history. It is interesting that Thiel has become more interested in 'the antichrist', given a lot of people would cast him as such. But if I was a billionaire, and my new hobby was religious history - particularly the idea of "the antichrist" - there is absolutely no way I wouldn't be using my money to hold conferences about it and shit like that. I mean, wouldn't you, about your thing, were you a billionaire? He's a gigantic nerd like the rest of us. Maybe it's an edgy, mid-life-crisis, "I'm so scary" emo pose - in a kind of Hot Topic way. Or maybe Thiel is actually the antichrist, or trying to summon him. Or whatever. But, usually, when a person does this sort of thing, it's usually just because they're interested in it and have the time. You can take the bad-faith, more exciting view of it, obviously. Or - and this is arguably more embarrassing for Thiel, I think - see it as what it likely is: The hobby a middle-aged man might choose when his obscene wealth meant you would need a really, really, really large amount of Tunnock's Tea Cake wrappers - perhaps the whole company - to scratch the same relative itch. |