He would come to refer to Denton and Gawker privately as the MBTO-the Manhattan Based Terrorism Organization. About his life, about his businesses, about his friends, too. Rather, they would sit in the back of his brain and stew for nearly four years, growing bit by bit with each follow-up story, and there would be many. The feelings of anger and powerlessness elicited in Thiel from that article and the subsequent comment from Denton were acute and they were painful, but they were not so overwhelming that they derailed Thiel’s life as an investor and entrepreneur. There was nothing I had ever done to these people in any way whatsoever,” Thiel would say to me.Ĭicero once said that “the beginnings of things are small.” Indeed they are. “It was like a full-on attack out of the blue. Whether one is sympathetic to this reading or not, it was clear to me that Thiel believed Denton had deliberately targeted him and implied he had “psychological problems” for not wanting to be public about his sexuality. The day after the story broke, Denton posted a comment at the bottom of the piece which speculated about the reasons for Thiel’s privacy, that there was something “strange” about him for keeping his secret. There was nothing I had ever done to these people in any way whatsoever” “It was never about the Owen Thomas article,” Thiel said. I would ask Peter why this bothered him so much, especially since he would admit that most of the people in his life, including his parents, already knew he was gay by 2007. And on Decemat 7:05pm, the site published this headline: It was Denton, brilliant, mercurial, who first put the bodies into motion, pushing Owen Thomas, one of his writers at Valleywag, Gawker Media’s Silicon Valley satellite, to cover the rumors that Thiel was gay. Thiel, who founded The Stanford Review, a conservative paper which railed against political correctness, and Denton, who built Gawker into a $300 million company by publishing what other people wouldn’t publish. But the most obvious, fittingly, comes from another similarity: Their shared tendency to say the things others won’t say. So what brought these two similar men into conflict with each other? It was many things. It would be as true for Thiel as it was for Denton, that their nearly unbroken string of success would make them both rightfully believe they were special and extraordinary.
Both socially awkward, opaque, men that someone who spent time with both of them would describe as appearing to live inside their own sci-fi novel. Both free-market libertarians who distrust the “system.” Both builders-entrepreneurs. Both foreign born, both immigrants who chased the American dream and bristled at convention. Yet as different as they are, what I could not shake was just how similar they were: Both rich. Nick, the seeker of secrets Peter, a believer in their power and sacredness. Over breakfast the next morning, we began the first of many conversations about the events that had transpired from 2007 and continue to this day.Īs I would come to find in my conversations, these figures were a study in contrasts: Denton, the thoughtful gossip merchant Thiel, the aggressive philosopher strongman. Then, 20 blocks downtown the next night in a $5 million apartment that had until recently been rented out to cover the mortgage while the courts decided whether he would be forced to sell it in bankruptcy, Denton hosted a salon of writers and thinkers to discuss the future of media. Soon I found myself in each of their apartments first at Thiel’s in Union Square, where over a three course dinner prepared by the chef he travels with, Thiel revealed his painstakingly organized plot to destroy Gawker and the lawsuits he had instigated, funded and directed on behalf of Hulk Hogan and others in order to do it.
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