Viswanathan K's Thoughts

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...

Forgive and forget. We’ve all heard that advice/saying. I think part of the trouble with that advice is that it is conveyed in a manner which suggests that you are being the bigger person by forgiving and forgetting. But when you feel wronged about something or by someone, do you really give a damn about being the bigger person? If you are honest about it, retribution is what you truly seek. Or if it makes you feel better, you could use euphemisms like “justice”. These lines from the serial, Revenge , capture what most people feel perfectly: “For the truly wronged, real satisfaction can only be found in one of two places: absolute forgiveness or mortal vindication.” But even though most people feel that way, they never go down the Vendetta Highway for different reasons: first, there is no Monte Cristo fortune to free someone up to act without caring. In fact the opposite is almost always true: the person most probably still has to interact with the “enemy” because they share the...