It's not easy being Michael Arrington. To kickoff TechCrunch Disrupt SF this morning, the Uber investor directed a fierce and poignant native ad for his CrunchFund investment Uber—right there on stage, in real-time. With Uber CEO Travis Kalanick by his side, it was a veritable duet of damage control! But then Lyft investor Peter Thiel had to spoil the cozy fireside mood by acting just like Arrington.

By now, everyone knows the Disrupt house rules. The deck is stacked and Arrington's investments always come out on top. The man was booted from office for conflict of interest and TechCrunch doesn't even switch it up to improve the optics. When Arrington gets tough in an interview, you're supposed to sit back and admire the swagger, nevermind that it is in his financial interest.

"Annoying" is child's play. What does it take to get Arrington to call you a "worthless dick"? Half a Tweetstorm, a chiffonade of real talk, and liberal heaping of righteousness, as Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis discovered this afternoon.

Lewis didn't add a 5/5 footnote that Founders Fund invested in Lyft twice, but he's not the one on stage. When it came time for Lewis' fellow Founders Fund partner to get on the self-promotion block, Thiel was ready:

Well that's a little premature. Balancing Palantir's ties to the CIA must be a hurdle for Thiel, its Libertarian investor. Still, it's unwise to give a chess master like Thiel too much time on his next move, so Arrington decided to—oops—just topple the board.

Did I say little boys? I meant teenage girls.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via Getty]