I equate Barstool to things like Maxim magazine —amusing when you’re young and stupid but lame and sophomoric when you get older. Portnoy is far from my favorite Michigan grad.
And when he's kicked out of super bowl events it's like they're right there with him getting kicked out of them
I don't agree with the idea that this was ever a "racist website". There were certainly an number of posters with racist opinions, but this was not a safe space for racist ideas and ideology to grow and flourish. Then again I'm not in every single thread. Mix
This is how I’d characterize it, this place was never Stormfront. I think it really is a mirror image of this boards demographic (educated) shift from the GOP to more progressive over the last decade which you’ve seen al across the country.
There was a lot of latent racism for many years on here. Significant portion of us were culpable, took part in it. We should all take ownership of that. But as the shifts you described occurred, we collectively matured and were educated, there was a a backlash by those aggrieved white males that felt alienated they weren't similarly experiencing that same personal evolution. [Suppose that life cycle mirrors what were are seeing play out irl culture war]. That backlash consisted of clinging to more racially charged takes, darker rhetoric, and just a generic race to the bottom. It culminated in 3%ers and Stormfront material being passed along on here. InfoWars being commonplace (its still on tmb). You saw it in every mass shooting thread, every police murder thread. The shitpit purge needed to happen, too often posters were giving just enough defenses or whatabouting the shitpit posters to allow them to grow louder.
I see you point but our conversations were pretty much exclusively contained to this site and the comments you’re referring to were not made and supported by its operator. Furthermore, we never projected the ideas into the public sphere and attempted to give then legitimacy. Just doesn’t seem the same to me
If my operation attracted an audience so racist we had to shut down the comment section when it became JV stormfront I'd probably do some soul searching
It's interesting that shutting down the comment section is painted as the site becoming more of a professional operation when it doesnt really address why those sorts of people were attracted in the first place
People had to hide who they were racially on here. As a person who is married to a Mexican woman and has half Mexican children the amount of times that they were called “wetbacks” and “spics” is beyond fucked up. And I am kinda liked on here. Can’t imagine the shit I’d have gotten if I was disliked. I’ve said I am black Irish in here for 12 years and never gone too much to what that means because of it the intolerance of the board when it was young. No, we weren’t stormfront (really low bar) I don’t think we were even close but we did have a shit attitude and accepted shit we shouldn’t have. We lost a bunch of good people because of that and we even made fun of a poster (Mr Clean) who left because of how racist he felt the board was. this board is a lot better and we can still talk shit.
well when you had dumbasses like farva and poweshow posting stupid shit all the time you couldn’t expect much from this board sure there were others but those two really posted some gross shit all the time
ehh in the beginning it was far more widespread. The phrase “nigs gonna nog” was common in every thread. Then Oops was attacked when he stood against that.
when i'd get asked to go delete a few posts from someones history after the search function got fixed and peaked into an era of tmb i wasn't really active for the n-word with hard r usage was everywhere. game threads it was relentless. its insane its the same board with lots of familiar faces. growth is good.
the board used to be casually racist in the way many southern whites especially are raised it grew a real ideological racism section much much later
I have a buddy who looks a bit like Shapiro who used to call into the local sports radio show as “Doc Baseball, Jr.” when we were in elementary school.
Im pretty sure 'Sports are no fun for me' is what he told his parents why he doesnt like going to gym class because he kept getting blasted in the face with dodge balls.
white dudes calling black athletes on their favorite team or opposing teams the n-word was not something i've experienced outside of my friend groups in the south n of 1 obviously
Also how much of a little bitch do you have to be to cancel your 20+ year SI subscription because of one cover I say this as someone who loved getting SI in the mail and only canceled a few months ago when it more or less ceased to exist. I still have every issue from the 2001 Miami national title cover up through a few months ago
Ben Shapiro’s thought process: “Should we as a society address the problems we have that are causing black people to protest? No. Let’s just go back to whites only leagues.”
Athletes have done a lot of shitty things off the field, owners gouge fans so that the average family really can't afford to go to games anymore, but don't you dare bring politics that Ben disagrees with into sports!
And it’s by a lot of the same people that are “woke” and bitch about Trump on a daily basis now. Likes and approval on a message board is serious business.
Probably because LeBron tried to silence someone speaking out for civil rights in China because it hurt his already full pockets but now a few months later he’s back again speaking for civil rights?
If we could get all the cops on here and give them likes and approval every time they didn’t beat/kill a black person, we could change the world. You are truly a brain genius.
Yup, barstool is cool the way Maxim was. Then you actually touched a boob and pictures of girls in bikinis seemed pointless.