What could be stranger than a former professional wrestler winning an eight-figure jury award in a lawsuit against an online gossip site that distributed his sex tape? If the lawsuit also had been secretly funded by a technology billionaire. It sounds like something out of a pulpy television script, but, nope, apparently it’s the sort of thing that really happens now. This week, the New York Times reported that Gawker Media founder Nick Denton suspected that someone connected to Silicon Valley might have been financing Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea)’s defamation lawsuit against his company, which obtained and published the wrestler’s sex tape in 2012. Citing an anonymous source, Forbes named PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel as the Silicon Valley figure in question. Yesterday, Thiel confirmed to the Times that he did indeed support the Bollea lawsuit—along with those of other Gawker “victims.” Thiel wears many hats, among them venture capitalist, entrepreneur, hedge fund manager, and Trump-supporting technolibertarian. He’s invested in the singularity , in anti-aging research , in libertarian utopias at sea , and in a fellowship program encouraging young people to launch startups rather than attend college. The situation is disconcerting. Entrepreneur, technology personality, Internet dad, and Prince fan Anil Dash compared Thiel’s underwriting of the Hogan lawsuit to James Bond villainy—a potentially apt character
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