Revenge, Power and Responsibility

Some time back, the WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan sued Gawker Media for publishing a sex tape video. He won $140 million in damages. And that was that. Until it came out (later) that Hogan had been financed in his lawsuit by Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal. Because, a decade earlier, the same Gawker had outed Thiel as being gay.

It was Thiel’s revenge, cried some. Gawker is disgusting and sleazy and meddling in people’s private lives: they deserved it, said others. Is this the beginning of a trend where the rich can destroy media companies they don’t like, worried others. Are we on a slippery slope to muzzling the media, asked others.

Ben Thompson quoted the famous Spiderman line (“With great power comes great responsibility”) and went on to point out the complexity of the issue:
“No matter how badly Thiel was personally hurt by Gawker, or how morally wrong their actions were, he is the one with far greater power, and the appropriate approach is not to leverage said power in an act of vigilantism.”

Thiel made his billions thanks to the Internet, and his privacy was violated by a company of the same Internet. Kind of like how superhero movies are nowadays:
“The superheroes in superhero movies are always the only force capable of saving humanity from the threats it faces. But with astounding regularity in post-9/11 comic-book films, the threats mankind has to be saved from were either unleashed by the heroes themselves, came into being simultaneously with the heroes, or both.”

Regardless of which way you stand on the issue, perhaps Amazon’s boss, Jeff Bezos, put the final outcome of the entire episode perfectly when he paraphrased Confucius:
“Seek revenge and you will dig two graves - one for yourself.”

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJune 7, 2016 at 8:19 AM

    Like Amma said to you in a separate email about this blog, I too like the Confucius quote. In a sense, though your blog made the point through one chosen example, since wisdom is a core phenomenon, Confucius' quote will be exemplified though eternity.

    Incidentally, Confucius was in China when the Buddha lived in India. That the Buddha's point in this regard is the same should be no surprise because truth is universal. Only, the Buddha backed this idea through karma principles. It was Buddhism's spread to the East which, centuries later, made the karma principle get acceptance outside India - in China and Japan essentially. After a couple of millenniums, I find the West is also pretty familiar with karma ideas.

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