#4) Sporting News Attacks Chernin Group For Investing In Barstool Sports
Just a Few Examples of the Hate we’ve spewed over the years. There are lots more examples of money our readers have raised from events in other cities as well. These are just what I remembered off the top of my head.
Raised 250K for Boston Marathon victim Marc Fucarile
Our Boy Pete Frates
Wounded Warrior Zach Parker Who We Raised 30K in a day for an all terrain wheelchair
We Raised 104K for slain NYPD officers
Our readers raised 20K in a day for a service dog involved in a hit and run
We Raised 70K for Boston Firefighter Tragedy
SportingNews – I can’t decide what’s worse: Sports “comedy” sites that routinely demean women, or the corporate enablers who reward them. In another race to the bottom moment for sports media, the Los Angles-based Chernin Group has bought a majority stake in raunchy Boston-based blog network, Barstool Sports, for an estimated $10 million-$15 million. No matter that Barstool once joked that women wearing skinny jeans deserve to be raped, according to an eye-opening story by Nick Stellini on Sports Illustrated’s web site, The Cauldron. Good to see rich guys throwing their money behind factories of misogyny and hate. Truly inspiring. So next time you see Chernin publicly supporting this politician or that cause, remember what he privately invests in. As Barstool is now bragging on its site: “We Weaponize Social Media.”
First things first. I didn’t even know Sporting News was still in business. I thought they went under a couple years ago. Not even joking. I guess they are still around? Shocker.
Anyway another day another “reporter” trying to make his name off Barstool. Trying to bait Barstool commenters into saying meany pants stuff to them on social media so they can cry about it and then use 5 comments out of our 1 million followers on twitter as proof we hate everybody. Listen I’ve been doing this gig now for 12 years. We’ve made fun of every race, color, creed, religion, handicap equally. For some reason though we only get labeled as women haters nowadays? Who cares that we launched the career of the most popular girl on the internet Jenna Marbles? Who cares that the face of women in sports media right now says Barstool was her inspiration. (Katie Nolan) Who cares that every single girl we feature in Barstool wants to be featured. That Instagram girls make thousands of dollars through their looks and literally beg us to feature them.
Nope. None of it matters. If I call a girl a slut I’m sexist. If I call a guy a dickhead or cunt nobody cares. If a dude attacks us on twitter and our commenters’ respond and savage him nobody cares. If a girl attacks us on twitter and our commenters respond it’s because we hate women. Basically we can make jokes about anybody we want, but when it’s a girl it’s no longer a joke? Is that the rules? And I’ve said this a thousand times. Intent is the key. Nothing we do or say is out of hate. Anybody who knows us knows that. It’s just sad once proud publications like the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated are reduced to now using our sweat and brains to steal clicks.
Also I’d like to make clear one thing. Barstool represents the overwhelming silent majority. 99% of people feel the same we do. Guys and girls. The people who hate how PC this country has become love us. The people who hate the everybody gets a trophy generation. The people who hate the you can’t tell a joke anymore crowd. We are an escape for people. A place you can come laugh and forget about life for a couple minutes. The people like this idiot who wrote this are the EXTREME minority. That’s why people love us. That’s why we just got bought. Not because we have some fringe lunatic audience. We were already mainstream in the Northeast. Chernin investing in us is a win for all normal people everywhere. They had to know they’d catch some heat for it from the PC crowd because they whine and moan about everything. They try to make it seem like the complaints of a few people are the complaints of everybody. They try to tell everybody what they can laugh at and what they can’t. Everybody is so afraid to say boo nowadays it’s nice to see somebody finally say fuck it. I’m in. I don’t care what the .0001% who like to protest and complain about EVERYTHING say about it. That’s what Chernin did by investing in us.
My last point is about how we weaponized social media. I thought the Big Lead did a fair story on us unlike this hatchet job. They basically said whenever somebody attacks us on social media we need to turn the other cheek because just simply responding will “turn on” our readers. So we should have ignored the girl who attacked KFC from the clouds and was ranting and raving about how unfair life is because KFC has a job and and she doesn’t. It was our job to protect her from herself. To provide her a social media safe space where she can attack people unprovoked, but the people she is attacking can’t respond. Well I just can’t operate that way. If somebody jumps in out of the clouds and personally attacks us I will respond. That hasn’t changed from Day 1. We are never racist or sexist in response unless clearly in jest. There are just as many female who identify themselves as feminists who love us as hate us. But simply responding will activate our fans. If we have 700K followers between all of our personalities on Twitter it’s like somebody insulted their best friend. If 5 people respond out of 700K we’re held accountable. It’s crazy. The fact we weaponize social media is another way to say we have very loyal caring fans. Same reason we can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for all sorts of charities. Frates, Fucarile, police, fire etc. We’ve raised close to 1 million in charity. That’s all another way of saying we weaponize social media. We activate our readers. That’s it. They are passionate and loyal. I just can’t stand people who attack us and then act like they are the victim when all we do is respond.
PS – This may be the most ridiculous quote ever about Barstool Sports
As for Barstool, that kind of coin changes everything. Will “El Presidente” Portnoy stay now that he has millions? I’ve covered companies where newfound riches divided a staff right down the middle. The people who don’t have a financial stake have to work next to the new millionaires. It breeds resentment and envy
Bro I was already rich. I bought a Nantucket House before this deal happened. Read a book. And oh you think my employees will envy and resent me now? Because of this? Like they didn’t already hate me before? Do some research 1 time. I divide us and then buffoons like you reunite us.