【I Am a Plaything】

The I Am a PlaythingRepublican National Convention speaker list is out, and it is a doozy.

College football star Tim Tebow (update: not anymore!), astronaut Eileen Collins and UFC president Dana White are some of the weirder names on the list, which also includes a variety of politicians and members of the Trump family.

Even among that eclectic group, Peter Thiel's name stands out. The venture capitalist is slated to speak on Thursday night, the final night of the convention, according to the New York Times.

Thiel is now best known as the Silicon Valley billionaire (net worth of $2.7 billion, according to Forbes) that is financing lawsuits in an attempt to erase Gawker from the face of the Earth. So far, he's been relatively successful, with Hulk Hogan's victory forcing Gawker to declare bankruptcy and put itself up for sale by auction.

Before that, Thiel was primarily known in tech circles as part of the PayPal mafia, the early employees of the payments company that executed a coup against cofounder Elon Musk. After that, Thiel became one of the earliest investors in Facebook and went on to cofound Palantir, one of the world's most valuable and secretive startups.

These moves helped Thiel become one of the most respected venture capitalists in the game. He remains on the board of directors of Facebook.

Thiel's politics are complicated. His support for Donald Trump first became public in May, when his name showed up on a list of California delegates pledged to Trump. The news caught just about everyone by surprise due to Thiel's previous political leanings, which have been strongly libertarian.

How strong? Well, Thiel once cofounded a nonprofit that was looking to make floating cities on which there were few if any laws.

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It's worth noting that Thiel is gay, something that had been an open secret in Silicon Valley but not publicly discussed until Gawker began writing about it.

Thiel does not tend to discuss his sexuality publicly. However, his appearance comes shortly after the Republican party adopted a platform that has been called the "most anti-LGBT" in GOP history by the Log Cabin Republicans.

Taken together, Thiel's background might not seem like it lends to Trump's campaign, but the investor has a well-established reputation for going against conventional wisdom and supporting some of the fringiest ideas in the conservative world.

"Thiel is never happier than when others scoff at his ventures," the New Yorkersaid of Thiel in a 2011 profile, "but he’s prone to the mistaken belief that the contrarian view is always right."

Sounds almost like The Donald, doesn't it?

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