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It hurts a lot when you are targeted by a group of gossip lovers/creators and Valleywag is a master at doing so. While it may have targeted many, Gawker’s tech gossip column has definitely got quite a label from Peter Thiel. The CEO of PayPal and also a Facebook investor and hedge fund manager has called Valleywag the Al-Qaeda of the Silicon Valley (perhaps he avoids naming Owen Thomas the leader). While this sounds amusing, poor, or whatever categories you would put that in, to me it appears that Thiel had reached his melting point after being targeted on numerous occasions by Gawker. Plain frustration and anger to second it. I guess he had nothing better to do that just draw a comparison of the blog to terrorists. I was quite surprised reading:

Terrorism is obviously a charged analogy, but it’s like terrorism in that you’re trying to be gratuitously meaner and more sensational than the next person, like a terrorist who is trying to stand out and shock people. It becomes this unhealthy dynamic where it just becomes about shocking people.

While he might be right about showing his unhappiness on being the center of all the gossip I personally think that calling terrorism a charged analogy is quite stupid. He could have shown his disgust at Valleywag’s posts by countering them in a much effective way. And if putting that label makes him a hero, I bet he is a terrorist too. Why? Well isn’t he fitting the definition of the charged analogy and trying to be more sensational?