Very inside baseball for tabloids, I guess.
A not-insignificant percentage of the world wants to see famous people having sex, so thatās the reason they want to keep posting stuff like that.
Add a lawsuit and it becomes ācelebrity who you probably donāt have much sympathy forā versus ātabloid that you probably donāt have much sympathy forā andā¦ well, hard to muster much enthusiasm for the whole shebang beyond meh.
They sort of deserve each other.
Iām sure someone has made the statement that great journalism involves making a jaded, apathetic public aware of things theyād rather not know.
For those whose memories also arenāt firing on all cylinders at the moment, the aforementioned Voltaire quote (emphasis added), which I just looked up:
I do not agree with what you have to say, but Iāll defend to the death your right to say it.
I donāt really see the news value of a Hulk Hogan sex tape (or any sex tape Iāve heard of so far), but maybe I am missing something here? It just seems mean and unnecessary. Did Hulk Hogan do something truly nasty, to deserve this? What happened to letting people have a bit of privacy, unless there is some pressing need to disclose this kind of thing (criminal conduct etc)? I guess thatās been a long time dying for anyone famousā¦
Voltaire said more than one pithy thing relevant to this situation, what about the time he exclaimed: āJesus, these people are just idiotic scumā?
A modern incantation of this quote would be
What you have to say adds nothing useful, interesting, or valuable to the word, but Iāll defend to the death your right to say it.
Well that is covered in the source article, if you read it, so Iāll quote here (Gawker boss Nick D talking, not me)
I have a simple editorial litmus test, which is: is it true, and is it interesting? The interest in is in proportion to the gap between the story that a brand or a celebrity brand is telling and the reality. The more the gap, the more interesting it is. Here, there was a gap between [Hoganās] rather boastful sexual persona that was on display in these radio interviews and elsewhere and the real story, which made it interesting.
They blew $20M on Kinja 
For the nth time, has nobody heard of the Streisand effect?
Streisand is on the Hogan tape?
Well, NOW I want to see it.
What principled reasons? Iām really not getting this. Why is publishing a sex tape that the participants donāt wish to be publicly viewed any different from publishing illicitly obtained nude celebrity photos, say those from āthe fappeningā, that the subjects donāt want publicly viewed?
And for the record, I havenāt watched/looked at either as Iāve (almost) as little desire to see Jennifer Lawrence et al naked as I have to see Hulk Hogan getting it on ā¦
Yeah, Iām assuming (and hoping) that Rob is being a smartass here, because this is imho an order of magnitude worse than The Fappening. This is an obsessive fan plotting with one of Hulk Hoganās friends to make a secret recording of them having sex, with the purpose of releasing it, without Hulk Hoganās permission.
As weird as this apparently seems to some people, Hulk Hogan is the victim here.
Why did he do it? Doesnāt matter. Just like it doesnāt matter why Jennifer Lawrence was taking naked selfies.
Except Voltaire never actually said that. It comes from another writer (Evelyn Beatrice Hall) who used Voltaire as a character.
I believe it was Voltaire who said, āI have viewed the Hulk Hogan tape in question, and found it came up shortā.
20 MILLION? To make Kinja? Thatās f@cking insane.
I canāt see how any reasonable person could look upon what Gawker is doing and not be absolutely disgusted.
Better beware of ever boasting of your bedside prowess then, as that instantly revokes your right to privacy - or does that only apply to celebrities? If thatās all the justification there is, thatās weak indeed. Celebrity or no, bragging or no, I think the decent thing would be to give Hulk a bit of privacy here.
