So now you know one of my big “where do you get your content?” secrets.
I started reading Barstool after Penelope Trunk mentioned it/them. She’s one of those stopped-clock loonies whose great ideas really are great when they aren’t completely insane:
If you want to be a good blogger, you have to read Barstool Sports. I love it so much. It’s a good bet that every day on this site is NSFW, but I love the site for how smart it is. It’s the new millennium version of reading Playboy for the articles. (…)
I had to think a lot about why it’s good and how I can use it to make myself better at writing posts. Sometimes my dream is to write like the guys at Barstool Sports. But I remind myself that I take life too seriously to write like them. I’d feel stupid after a while. So I like reading the site but I wouldn’t like being more like the site. When I acknowledge that about myself, I feel better reading the post.
The writing at Barstool’s been slipping a bit lately, becoming a parody of itself, but still:
I followed the Boston Marathon bombing on their Boston site.
Inevitably, when someone says to me, “Hey, did you hear about…?” My answer is, “Yeah, I saw it on Barstool yesterday.”
The sites are featured in a new article at Entrepreneur Magazine:
And for all those women who oppose Barstool Sports, there appear to be as many supporters. “I know there are people who don’t want to go on the site because there are girls in thongs and their asses are everywhere, but who cares? Get over it. There’s a lot more content there,” says Jaimie, a 28-year-old digital project manager based in Boston and an avowed Stoolie. Barstool Sports even has champions in the same sports-media establishment the site rails against. “Barstool makes me laugh on a daily basis,” says Scott Van Pelt, an Emmy Award-nominated anchor on ESPN’s flagship news program SportsCenter and the co-host of ESPN Radio’s afternoon talk show SVP & Russillo. “It’s not a bastion of great taste. But I’m an adult, and if I want to laugh at things I think are politically incorrect, I’m allowed to. You don’t have to like it.”
