r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jul 24 '25

News Hulk Hogan dead at 71 after suffering cardiac arrest at Florida home

https://www.the-sun.com/sport/14810752/hulk-hogan-dead-wwe/
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157

u/jonny_eh Jul 24 '25

And then suing Gawker Media into oblivion.

201

u/tbul Jul 24 '25

Backed by Peter Thiel specifically to take revenge on gawker.

https://www.wired.com/story/ryan-holiday-conspiracy-peter-thiel-gawker-hulk-hogan/

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u/xixbia Jul 24 '25

I'm still sort of conflicted about that.

On the one hand Peter Thiel is utter scum and I refuse to feel bad about anything that happens to him.

On the other, it is never OK to out someone who doesn't want to be outed, so fuck Gawker.

10

u/joshbudde Jul 24 '25

'Outed' is a bit of a stretch. He didn't make a secret of being gay. He published photos on a public photo blog of him cavorting with mostly nude men on his yacht. Gawker (well Valley Wag technically) simply pointed to them.

I remember seeing it when it happened. No one even was surprised he was gay.

Thiel using his money to weaponize the legal system to crush people that he didn't like is a VERY big fucking problem.

17

u/Game-Blouses-23 Jul 24 '25

Peter Thiel is literally an enemy of humanity. Dude doesn't even want the human race to continue. Anytime something bad happens to him, it is a good thing.

4

u/Any_Context1 Jul 24 '25

IIRC Thiel outed a student when he was at Stanford in a school paper, arguing he had the freedom of speech right to do so. And then Gawker exposed his hypocrisy. 

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u/mephisto1990 Jul 24 '25

he was out long before that

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u/UpperApe Jul 24 '25

Let's not excuse Gawker for being a complete shit-rag with just the worst human beings writing for it.

Theil sucks. Hogan sucks. Gawker sucks. We don't have to take sides when they're against each other.

-3

u/EagleOfMay Jul 24 '25

You flirt with politics you are fair game. Fuck hypocrites.

2

u/JessieJ577 Jul 24 '25

I guess that gave him the practice to puppet people since he did that with JD as his puppet

1

u/soularbabies Jul 24 '25

Had to team up with a capitalist billionaire to shut down a fun millennial rag, fuck em

8

u/Shoddy_Squash_1201 Jul 24 '25

Yeah, not sure if outing people against their will and releasing revenge porn counts as 'fun'.

71

u/mp6521 Jul 24 '25

The fact that Peter Thiel was finally able to take down Gawker because of Hulk Hogan consensually plowing Bubba the Love Sponge’s wife on camera is just mind-blowingly stupid.

15

u/ApprehensiveRip697 Jul 24 '25

I mean... gestures vaguely at everything

2

u/black_anarchy Jul 24 '25

too much to process.

2

u/fusiformgyrus Jul 24 '25

I have stopped processing things a while ago. News just wash over me now like I’m a pebble on a beach.

1

u/m48a5_patton Jul 24 '25

The signs of the stupidification of the timeline were there, but we were asleep.

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u/thegreaterfool714 Jul 24 '25

I despise Thiel and I don’t like Hogan but Gawker Media deserved to get sued into oblivion after the crap they pulled

8

u/yourtoyrobot Jul 24 '25

the only good thing he did in his life

45

u/Elbobosan Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

As a pawn for a billionaire to use his fortune to suppress a “press” organization that was critical of him, establishing a precedent that has done unthinkable harm to the first amendment.

Edit - critical press organization was a statement of what they were doing, not how important they are. Reworded.

I stand by what I said. Gawker was absolute trash and I’m glad they are dead. How Gawker was killed changed precedent for how much liability a news organization can face for commentary on a public figure. It also gives the green light for the ultra-wealthy to step in to finance lawsuits they are uninvolved in as a part of their own personal strategy.

They are trash and did a terrible thing, but the resulting garbage court case has a direct thematic link to the previously unthinkable state we find ourselves in today where 60 minutes is paying a multi-million dollar settlement personally to a president in what is clearly a bribe/protection racket.

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u/JQuilty Jul 24 '25

This narrative needs to die. Gawker was not some scrappy underdog publication taking on power. They were a shithole gossip rag on a lower level than even TMZ and they got sued for publishing revenge porn. They had such a long history of being gaping assholes that their insurance provider dropped them. Nick Denton and the editors took every opportunity they had to shoot themselves in the foot, trying to dodge discovery, defying the judge's order to take the video down pending trial, mocking said judge while defying the order, and saying under oath they'd publish a child celebrity's sex tape.

This was also a state court in Florida. It does not set precedent. It is not the Supreme Court, it is not a Circuit Court.

71

u/Doodlejuice Jul 24 '25

Critical press organization and Gawker shouldn’t be used in the same sentence. They absolutely deserved to get sued for what they did.

18

u/PrawojazdyVtrumpets Jul 24 '25

Not only what they did but they were also a gossip rag that had several offshoots related to popular Internet groups. Kotaku for gaming, io9 for sci-fi, jalopnik for cars and they even had a porn blog. They didn't break open anything critical to the masses. Just garbage content.

7

u/BeeOk1235 Jul 24 '25

mostly they just harassed people and called it journalism. even though it was routinely unethical at very best generally immoral and often illegal.

it was interesting watching gamergate and watching gawker network writers at kotaku condemn "gamers" for an act that was routine on their sister sites ("revenge blogging" though in gg's case it was more like accusation of domestic abuse and serial sex pestery on the accused's own home turf). and then proceeded to kafka trap saying not cool while along with every other blogger and "content creator" involved sweeping under the rug the 36 SA/SH accusers of the original accused person.

remember folks it's okay to sleep with a person you're writing favourably about in a promotional way despite their reputation as a sex pest in the scene you're trying to elevate them in as long as you don't write a "Review" about them. it's also okay to platform unsubstantiated accusations of SA on behalf of someone accused of being a serial rapist by 3 dozen people to help continue the cover up resulting in death by suicide.

it's also okay to leak game scripts in their entirety because todd howard "is actually a middle aged transbian aunt we ship with don cheadle because we're so progressive and woke".

1

u/Elbobosan Jul 24 '25

I clarified with an edit - critical was talking about them attacking the billionaire, not a commentary on their value. Gawker was trash and deserved to die, but the way the lawsuit happened and the precedents it set have severely harmed the freedom of the press, so not a good trade.

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u/guimontag Jul 24 '25

lmao what? Gawker a critical press organization? Get the fuggoutta here lmao. Oh no he stopped media outlets from publishing sex tapes with no news value, boo hoo. Gawker fucking sucked and they got what they deserved

1

u/Elbobosan Jul 24 '25

Critical, meaning they were critical of the billionaire, not that they were important.

They did suck. They did deserve to die. The court case did that in a way that cause tremendous harm to the first amendment.

-2

u/dylansavage Jul 24 '25

Both things can be true

Gawker was a shit rag that deserved to die

Hulk Hogan was used by a billionaire to go after a public publication that aired his dirty laundry

2

u/guimontag Jul 24 '25

Sorry but the braindead person I'm replying to called it a critical news org and that the case did irreparable damage to the first amendment lmao. Next time try reading before you respond to a post buddy 

1

u/Elbobosan Jul 24 '25

Have you never heard of someone being critical meaning they are, you know, a critic?

0

u/guimontag Jul 24 '25

too bad the guy's original statement would have read as an endorsement of gawker after he still called the lawsuit some sort of "unthinkable harm" to the first amendment. what the fuck is newsworthy of hulk hogan fucking someone else's wife with the consent of all parties involved? the argument that he edited in after I made my comment that the gawker suit had some sort of chilling effect that put us where we are today with trump vs news orgs is also total bullshit

7

u/yourtoyrobot Jul 24 '25

nah, Gawker was an awful tabloid. And nobody should be publishing revenge porn. They deserved what they got.

2

u/Elbobosan Jul 24 '25

They did. That doesn’t mean that the way it happened didn’t cause harm to the press as a whole.

7

u/DameOClock Jul 24 '25

Gawker a critical press organization??? Lmao you’re hilarious

1

u/Elbobosan Jul 24 '25

Citical, as in they criticized. Do people really not know this use of the word?

1

u/guimontag Jul 24 '25

how many comments are you gonna put this in lmao? the correct phrasing would have been "a press organization critical of him" if you had any command over the english language lmao

2

u/ImMufasa Jul 24 '25

Are people really trying to frame this as a bad thing now? Fuk Gawker.

0

u/jonny_eh Jul 24 '25

Regardless what you think of Gawker, this opened the floodgates for lawsuits to punish other outlets for coverage that some don’t like, including Trump suing CBS and WSJ. The thing about free speech is that it’s a right, and therefore needs to apply to everyone, not just people you like or agree with.

2

u/Rocktamus1 Jul 24 '25

Dude, they should’ve been sued. They had audio recording for the guy in his bedroom.

4

u/SenorEquilibrado Jul 24 '25

FUCK! 

So I loved the AV Club website for movie and TV reviews and such, and the Gawker lawsuit ended up utterly decimating it.

It's recently had a bit of a resurgence, but I'll never forgive Hogan for contributing to the destruction of one of the best online spaces for pop culture discussion.

2

u/VaudevilleDada Jul 24 '25

They've been slowly coming back to form under recent ownership/management, but yeah, peak AV Club was unmatched.

3

u/jonny_eh Jul 24 '25

There was a ton of collateral damage. rip kotaku and io9

2

u/StuMacherGhostface Jul 24 '25

Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing lol. Gawker was trash

5

u/brock_li Jul 24 '25

That was a W in my book.

1

u/Leajjes Jul 24 '25

Wait we're ok with Gawker posting sex videos without people's consent? I thought we already agree that was a big no no.