Inside the delightful suicide of Gawker

The late infusion of Thiel into the story made it irresistible. Gawker loathed Thiel even more than it hated Hogan. It learned to its chagrin that the new enemy whose privacy it had invaded was destroying it with the aid of an old enemy whose privacy it had also invaded, a man who in the bargain was a proponent of libertarian ideals that made the Gawker leftists furious. Gawker got a merciless tag-team karma-slapping.

Try to follow Denton’s logic about why he felt that outing Thiel was a kind of righteous duty: “The common perception among straight people is that one’s personal life is a personal prerogative. Except that pretty much every single married straight executive with kids will talk about their wife and will talk about their kids and will be asked about their wife and will be asked about their kids. That’s seen as being biographical detail. I’m a gay guy and to my mind it is simply insulting for different standards to be applied to gay people than are applied to straight people. I don’t see any reason why we should treat it as something shameful to be kept secret so I’ll push back very, very strongly against that.” In other words, any gay person who chooses to be quiet about it runs afoul of Denton’s zeal for proselytizing. All gay people must adhere to Dentonian dogma on this, or be punished. Who made him the pope of the gays?