Gawker, Oligarchs, Nate Jacobs & Newton's Third Law

Recently I was reading a long article about the 10-year "anniversary" of the fall of Gawker -- the early 2000s and 2010s NYC gossip blog that was known for being nasty, funny, and totally no-holds-barred in whom it covered and lampooned (including reporting on Harvey Weinstein's predations long before the rest of the media). As Chatgtp summarizes Gawker's history:

"Gawker.com was a highly influential American gossip and media blog founded in 2002 by Nick Denton. It became known for sharp, sarcastic coverage of media, politics, technology, and celebrity culture, especially focused on New York media insiders and internet culture.

Key things about Gawker:

• It helped define the “blog era” of the 2000s alongside sites like Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin, and Kotaku, which were all part of the larger Gawker Media network.
• The site mixed investigative reporting with aggressive gossip and commentary.
• It became famous — and controversial — for publishing leaked information, embarrassing stories about public figures, and a blunt editorial tone.

The site effectively ended after a major lawsuit involving wrestler Hulk Hogan. In 2012, Gawker published excerpts of a private sex tape involving Hogan. He sued for invasion of privacy and won a $140 million judgment in 2016. The lawsuit was secretly funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who had longstanding grievances against Gawker after it publicly outed him as gay years earlier.

The verdict forced Gawker Media into bankruptcy, and its assets were sold to Univision. The original Gawker site shut down in 2016."

When it shut down, Nick Denton wrote its last post called "How Things Work" about how wealthy and powerful people can abuse, lie, and destroy -- and get away with it. It's not unconincidental that a few months later Trump was elected president and the reign of the oligarchs -- Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, the Eillisons, and others -- began. And not since the Gilded Age has American government, media, and life been this corrupt and cruel, acting with impunity, treating everyone as either an employee or an enemy, absorbing or ruining everything and everyone in its way. 

Gawker spoke truth to power -- so naturally power destroyed it.

And yet ... Newton's Third Law of Motion still exists: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You see this in the opposition to Trump: the massive No Kings protests, the election results that are going horribly for his party, the surge of independent media cracking open the truth. 

Monsters and despots are eventually destroyed -- Caligula, Napoleon, Hitler, and countless others. 

I've watching the third season of the HBO show Euphoria. In the first two seasons, the character of Nate Jacobs (playing brilliantly by Jacob Elordi) is everything that's wrong with American men today: his large size, goodlooks, and family's wealthy allows him to abuse men and women, commit crimes (and get away with it) and just generally be an asshole. 

And yet ... karma eventually comes for Nate. Character is fate -- and the horrible Nate has, not shockingly, gotten deeply into debt after conning a gangster out of money. Naturally the gangster comes to collect -- and it comes in the form of beating Nate senseless and cutting off his pinky toe, and on his wedding day no less! No one feels sorry for him -- his years of abuse and impunity towards those weaker than him has lead him to this point ... and now a force more powerful than him is striking back, horrifcally.

One day the monsters ruling out world will be get their commupance -- and they can only hope that they will have all their fingers and toes and limbs at the end of it.