SI's The Cauldron vs. Barstool Sports

Article titled, "How Barstool Sports Uses Social Media As A Weapon," pretty much serves as an attempted takedown of the crude, sexist, albeit sometimes funny, Boston-based media company.

I went to bed last night having merely heard of The Cauldron. Never visited it, though. Never paid much mind to it. Only saw its headlines when RT'ed into my Twitter timeline.

But woke up today and this story was everywhere. I'm sure it did wonders for traffic through Barstool's personalities taking aim at The Cauldron staff.

It's certainly worth noting The Cauldron seems to have not reached out to anyone at Barstool for comment. But Barstool responded: Sports Illustrated Blog Runs Cookie Cutter Hit Piece About Barstool Regarding My Al Jazeera Joke

 

Say what now?

 

Never heard of the Cauldron and stopped reading Barstool when I became an adult. But Barstool does have a legion of sheep that will do its dirty work. Others really can't, and shouldn't, be bothered by it. The horribly sad thing about the minions that want to be part of the Barstool army is they're exposing themselves to trouble down the road attempting to operate with a Barstool-level crudeness ... like the tweets about Curt Schilling's daughter.

 

The problem is that those "sheep" often harass people, particularly women in sports media, quite frequently on Twitter and can be unrelenting. So to say that others "really can't, and shouldn't, be bothered by it" is not feasible and is a daily reality for some people. If anything, the story did a good job of helping me figure out who I should stop following on Twitter and made me question some of them based on their support of the Barstool site.

 

Barstool Sports makes me question my decision to spend my adult life in this town even more than January does.

 

That's a good point. For me, once I stopped reading, that was it. I never went back, never was tempted. I realized the stuff they were doing wasn't for actual adults, but 22-year-old bros. Sorry that those in sports media have to deal with those kinds of people on "behalf" of those bozos. That being said, I think many internet "celebrities" have a large group of people who will go to great lengths to make one's life difficult if given the word.

 

The Chernin Group bought 50% of Barstool.

The Chernin Group Is Taking a Majority Stake in Controversial Website Barstool Sports

 

I remember when Barstool was merely some rag you'd pick up in a corner box for free. Even then it was trying too hard, IMO.

 

The Barstool sheep are no worse than the worst portion of any hardcore fan base. You're going to have your fair share or idiots, you either ignore them or try to fight them. Just seems more people try and fight Barstool's lemmings and when they go on the stack, they're relentless.
The Cauldron piece was an attempt to make The Cauldron relevant. The Barstool writer who the piece mainly focuses on -KFC - released DM's from the EIC of the Cauldron basically warning the piece was being published, apologizing, then getting pissy when KFC ask why would you publish for any reason other than attention. EIC kept talking out of both sides of his mouth during the argument and kept claiming "journalism" when KFC rightfully called out his BS.
The cauldron piece was done by a freelancer. It was his first article and went to Twitter claiming his @mentions were gonna be on fire once it published. That's not journalism.
I'm not claiming the Barstool guys are innocent, but there are a lot of but-time media entities that have these unpopular blogs that are searching for ways to get in the public's eye. The Cauldron piece was exactly that - drum up some hits by being the moral arbiter.
And Portnoy, the owner, gave up 51 percent for 10-15 million.

 

That seems awfully low for a site with such grand aspirations. Maybe he needs the cash to run for mayor.

 

He did a Periscope and an AMA on Reddit and said he thought the valuation would be higher because it was profitable, but didn't have enough revenue coming in, so the profit margin meant little.
Say what you want about the site, they've never pretending to be something they aren't. A lot of the content isn't as funny for me now as it was when I was 25, but there is a great deal of content that is pretty damn funny. They've got the best baseball writer in the area and their football guy was good until he left for greener pastures. Their content is constantly ripped off by Boston.com, WEEI, NESN, etc, who are trying to be Barstool without being Barstool.

 

Shocking that Rhody would defend a Boston based scumbag site.