Gawker shutting down

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The controversy surrounding the "outing" of Peter Thiel is rather sickening. He's a plutocrat who exercises a great deal of power and influence by virtue of his wealth alone. This rent-seeking behavior is corrosive to American democracy. None of this even begins to mention the fact that his viewpoints are odious, repulsive and damaging. Dredging up personal information and using it against him is a virtue, not a vice. All means must be exercised to "show truth to power" and force pompous elites to recognize that their use of public power cannot be made private or obfuscated by the flaws in our political culture and campaign finance laws.

On the other hand, it's also pretty clear that Gawker's flagrant violations of privacy have little to do with a grandiose political agenda. It's related to its clickbait-driven business model, which is hardly different than any other gossip-driven publication. Gawker has routinely made grievous errors relating to the privacy of others and, perhaps more importantly, has not taken journalistic ethics very seriously. It's an amateur-hour news site that is no substitute for old media sources. Gawker is a constant reminder that the rise of the "New Media" is nothing to be celebrated.

As such, I feel pretty conflicted about all of this. On the one hand, I wouldn't shed a tear if Peter Thiel died of a stroke and was found to have had a very painful death. On the other hand, Gawker needs to voluntarily shut itself down because it's a cesspool of bad journalism.