As most of you reading this probably already know, there is a website known as barstoolsports.com. It is run by David Portnoy, or "El Presidente." Straight from Wikipedia, Barstool Sports is "a popular satirical sports and men's lifestyle blog." Barstool is run by a bunch of hilarious knuckleheads that continue to turn out great article after great article. But first, here is a brief history of how Barstool came to be.
Barstool was initially a print publication that was handed out in the Boston area. It offered gambling advertisements and also fantasy sports advice and predictions. Later, though, Barstool began to include more varying topics that were both trending in the sports world as well as every other aspect of the world. The print publication turned into a website and blog, which continued to expand as more and more traffic flowed to the site. Writers were hired around the country and off they went. Recently, they moved their headquarters from Milton, Massachusetts to New York City.
Now onto the main reason why I am writing about this topic. Lately, not just with Barstool, but with all forms of media, people are getting offended more easily. While I realize there are sexists, racists, homophobes, and just bad people out there, it just seems like the amount of what you can say without offending someone has become much smaller. I am not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, because I agree, some things are just too mean that even sarcasm can't cancel them out, but it is much easier to make a sexist or racist joke when you're not famous or saying it on social media. Now I'm not talking about the people who actually make these jokes and think they're true, because that would just make them racist or sexist and are just asking for people to yell at them. I'm talking about the people who get a little laugh out of sarcastic, crude jokes. I'm talking about the people that do not actually hold any of those awful values, but ones who just like to laugh a little. I don't think anyone has been more under the microscope in this regard as of late than Barstool Sports.
An article came out a month or two ago condemning Barstool as a site that promotes sexism, degrades women, uses crude humor that is better left unsaid, and also pointed out a ton of controversial issues surrounding Barstool. I don't even remember what site wrote the article, and quite frankly, I don't really care. I'm not sure what prompted someone to write a huge article calling out Barstool, but as a supporter and reader of Barstool, I would like to say a few things.
First of all, coming from the Barstool Wikipedia page, Portnoy has deemed the content of Barstool as "sports/smut." So if you don't like sports and you don't like smut then don't read any of their content. Plain and simple. If you get offended at the slightest crude joke, just don't bother. Clearly the guy/girl who wrote the anti-Barstool article did not abide by this rule for they dug deep into every crevice of Barstool Sports to find the tiniest detail that people could rally around and call them out for. If you like sports, but you don't like bad language, once again don't bother, but don't get upset if you happen to stumble upon an article with a few f-bombs and crude jokes. If you disagree with me and say there is no place for that on the internet, just scroll up to the first paragraph and read what Barstool Sports is. It is a SATIRICAL website.
Satire (n): the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. Satire is not to be taken seriously.
The Barstool writers use these jokes and comments to appeal to the demographic of people they want reading their stuff. That demographic is pretty much any person that enjoys sports, sarcastic jokes and language, and interesting trending current events. Nobody should be taking what they say in their articles seriously. They are not sexist. Don't believe me? They have female workers too, and unlike a lot of other companies, they get paid equally as the men do. Sometimes, those females even use the same satirical methods that the men use, and neither of them get offended. Seem impossible? Well its not, because everyone who works there knows how to tell jokes and be sarcastic, as well as knowing how to not get offended and understand that it is only to get a laugh out of their fans.
Onto another quick subject: girls. Barstool does have a section for girls. No, not a section for girls to go clicking through, but a section about hot girls. "Smokeshows" to be more specific in the words of Barstool. They put up pictures of attractive females in small amounts of clothing. Now before you jump out and say that this is sexist and degrading and they can't do that on the internet, just hear me out. They do not just find pictures and put them on the site without the girls' permission. As a matter of fact, the girls submit photos of themselves and ask Barstool to post them. I don't see anything wrong with that. I am not saying it is wrong to get offended by women half dressed being put all over the internet, but place the blame where blame is due, and that is not with Barstool. They are putting on the internet what their fans want to see, both male and female fans. That person who wrote that diss-track of an article about Barstool had the audacity to call them out in regards to this. Take a look around through the rest of the internet. I'm pretty sure you can find sights that do much worse that Barstool when it comes to women. Oh, and by the way, anyone who gets offended by Barstool in this way shouldn't watch ESPN either. They have a girls section on their site, too, and release a swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated every year.
There have been some other controversies regarding Barstool Sports, one recently of them being called out for the sexual harassment of Tom Brady's infant son. Well, that right away sounds like some crap. Barstool posted photos of Tom Brady's 2-year-old son naked and followed it with comments about the size of his genitals. Somehow, one of those people that take everything seriously, called them out saying they were sexualizing a minor. Portnoy simply countered with an apology and a statement that those comments were meant to be humorous in tone and not to be taken as sexual. While I get that there are crazy people out there who actually enjoy looking at those types of pictures, I do not understand how someone believed that a popular figure in sports journalism would openly comment about a 2-year-old in a sexual way. How does that make any sense? It really doesn't, unless El Pres has some insane hidden interest, which I doubt highly.
They have also had criticism in regards to rape culture. There have been some comments in their articles that can be seen as going a little too over the top, like saying a girl who dresses rather provocatively deserves to get rape, although they openly admit before that they do not condone rape culture. Sometimes people mess up and say things that they shouldn't have. I can guarantee that none of the writers at Barstool actually believe that someone deserves to be raped. They actually stated that they do not condone it. They tried to make another crude and sarcastic joke but it failed. I am going to give a free pass to all the people offended by those kind of statements, because they are a bit harsh. However, I do not get hung up on those kind of statements. They are not bad guys. They do not promote that type of behavior. I get that they made a bad joke. I make bad jokes. I make mean jokes. I do not, however, believe what I say as fact, and neither do they.
When a Barstool writer gets called out on social media about something, most of the time, fans of Barstool will rally around them and back them up. Sometimes they go a bit too hard and can be offensive. What you cannot do though is call out Barstool for this kind of activity. People need to realize that those crude jokes aren't turning good people into bad people, but that they are allowing good people who appreciate a sarcastic joke here and there to have a laugh. The negative impact of this is that it gives bad people the opportunity to use those jokes in an intended bad way, like calling someone horrible names on Twitter in the name of Barstool.
That is not the goal of Barstool. They do not promote bullying, sexism, racism, or everything else people are offended by. They are there to bring forth articles about sports, current events, sometimes girls, and whatever else their audience eats up, including crude and sarcastic language and jokes. They do not wish to offend anyone, but it is their right to publish what they want, especially if it is supposed to be taken as a satire.
Barstool is something I go through every day. I open up the app and scroll through their articles. I love sports. I love sarcasm and crude jokes. I do not get offended by these jokes. I get that as a 20-year-old white male I have the luxury of not being the butt end of sarcastic and mean jokes, and I understand where people are coming from when they get offended. I just would like to say that Barstool is not meant to offend anyone, and if you get offended easily, don't attack them, just ignore them, because there is a very big chance that they do not mean for their words to be taken literally.
