I read a fascinating article on
Saturday called “Is
An ESPN Columnist Scamming People on the Internet?” It is all
about Sarah Phillips who apparently rose to internet fame writing
about sports gambling in a funny blog. This story had a lot of
elements I have a fascination for: con jobs, blogging, social media,
and comedy. Con Artists are scary but intriguing characters, and I
love those type of movies such as “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”
Sarah Phillips and her cohort, Nilesh
Prasad, seemed to be rising in fame enough to get her a column on
ESPN.com, while simultaneously conning people on social media and the
gaming industry to get a sports comedy website online. I don't know
how they thought they could keep this up, eventually they would have
burned all their bridges. It seems that they did, but I am sure
there are more suckers out there for them to get associated with, and
now they are famous!
Also equally fascinating is the way in
which this story is being “reported.” I have to put quotes
around it because it was reported on Deadspin, which seems to take
any e-mail as fact and not check their sources. One
guy even made up a story and sent it to the author. It was
redacted after he posted a blog bragging about how these guys didn't
even check up on the story. A quote from Wikipedia on Deadspin says
“Like Gawker.com, stories on Deadspin come from anonymous tips,
readers and other sports blogs.” Now while I think the initial stoy
is true, and they probably checked that part out. To keep up with
the ever faster internet news cycle, they just accept any old tip to
keep this story hot.
It is true that John Edwards was first
caught by The Enquirer. Is it only scumbags who can call out other
scumbags? When Dan Rather called out George W. Bush for going AWOL
for a year when he was in the National Guard, he had to publicly
apologize and “retire in disgrace.” Mr. Rather has recently
wrote a book telling
his side of the story and is suing CBS news. I think he still
has journalistic integrity, but then again, I am not a Republican.
It seems that one has to be very
cautious about where to get your news. Since the internet now is a
wild west of information with not many controls. The only control is
your virus protections software telling you that the website you are
about to click on seems “shady.” Today, there are many more
levels of authenticity in journalism. Back in the days of Yellow
Journalism it might have been easier to tell good journalism from
bad. Not that many people today seem to care, they are just
interested in the story, since it might be like watching a car crash.
My first title for this blog was “Lies,
Damned Lies and Blogs,” but thinking about it I realized blogs are
the easiest to state that they are inaccurate. They are just the
opinions of people who want to be heard. Some people want to be
heard so badly, they will post anything to get a click. It is ironic
and funny when a blog is used to call out the inaccuracies of a news
story. Yet, there are so many blogs out there that are stating news,
that some people will take as fact, when they are skewed and
bald-faced lies. Yes, I am calling out the political blogs on both
sides, especially if you are hard-right or hard-left. In their war
against each other, they spew the biggest volcano of BS you will ever
see on the internet.
So, as a blog writer I can go that way,
but I would feel like a major scumbag. I don't mind a small
readership. Heck, last week I reported
on the death of Sarcasm, but I put quotes around the word news,
and if anyone thinks it was a true story they are on some serious
drugs. I will try to be funny, try to be accurate (or I will call it
“News”) but I will not be asking for any money because your
gambling tip lost me $3000.
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