Barstool Sports, WWE and The Realization I Will Never Find Success

Every so often, I survey the media landscape and then I re-check my bank account.

My overdraft fees have overdraft fees.

And for some dumb reason, I elected to build a media company in a world where companies are bought up, drained of everything that originally made those companies worth purchasing and then spit out into generic, boring, skeletons of themselves.

Earlier this month, Dave Portnoy purchased back Barstool Sports from Penn National for $1. Penn National only recently bought 100% of the company for $550 million only to return it (and all of its debt) right back to Portnoy for whatever he had sitting at the bottom of his car cupholder.

3 weeks later, Portnoy announced he’d be laying off around 25% of Barstool’s employees unleashing a wave of people whose work experience includes vaping into a podcast microphone, laughing at all of their boss’s jokes and writing 1st-grade reading-level, punctuation-less sentences.

Personally, I don’t care for Barstool.

Barstool Sports is a website where bros go to kill time at the jobs they hate to catch up on in-office gossip and beef between Barstool employees they have parasocial relationships with. If these people can make money saying “poopoo peepee” into mics all day then there’s a chance for me.

Their existence and perceived profitability gave me hope that Deadseriousness could grow into something that could help me afford all 3 meals in a day.

Now it looks like the only way to make a living in this industry is to be unapologetically ignorant until someone buys your brand and strips that brand of anything unique about it to maximize profits via mass firing sprees and churning out bare bones bullshit meant to manipulate algorithms for mass consumption.

Perhaps Portnoy buying back Barstool is good news for me and he can restore the land of the white boys who spit tobacco, call their white friends nigga, and think “That’s what she said” is the funniest thing anyone could ever conceive of.

Even companies I actually enjoy will soon face similar calamities.

In April, Endeavor merged with WWE to form a super conglomerate of combat sports—combining WWE and UFC under one banner.

The wrestling business is booming right now. AEW just had the biggest show in wrestling history. Every WWE event is sold out.

But we are dangerously close to it all coming to an end once Vince McMahon’s deal with the devil ends and he must run hell’s biggest wrestling promotion.

Chris Benoit is down there waiting to put Jimmy Snuka in the crossface.

And when karma finally gets its hands around Vince’s throat, we are going to see an astronomically different on-screen product.

Whether you love or hate the decisions Vince has made, the company was always run by a man who genuinely enjoys professional wrestling.

A board of directors whose sole motivation is to satisfy shareholders is on the precipice of running a very specific business they do not understand nor have any passion for.

They know numbers and dollars.

Your favorite wrestlers are going to lose their job so Endeavor can give Logan and Jake Paul blank checks to run the tag team division into the ground.

There is going to be an influx of boxers and fighters who have no idea how to wrestle but will be in every main event because they generate engagement—regardless if most of that engagement is from wrestling fans complaining.

Can’t wait to see Conor McGregor vs. 70-year-old Hulk Hogan in a “Never Forget 9/11 Hell in a Cell” match in Saudi Arabia.

It’s 2023 and everything is the same.

A handful of corporations own everything.

Every website is the exact same.

Every day I make the mistake of believing being funny and thoughtful would be enough when in reality, I should’ve mindlessly rode trends and turned myself into a contrarian internet clown whose entire fan base is made up of easily influenced, low IQ sociopaths who think free speech means no one is allowed be mad at them when they do racisms.

To the like, 4 people who read this site, thank you.

I recognize there’s a ceiling in how big Deadseriousness can be in this environment but I still think there are a handful of people who want something different and I’ll keep writing for y’all weirdos.

Well, ip until a corporation offers me the bag in which case I will sell out as soon as possible and turn into the guy who says things like “I don’t give homeless people money. They’re just going to use it on drugs,” on my way to a Michael Rubin party so I can take photos with celebrities and drink from bottles that costs more than a public school teacher’s salary.

Random Stray Thoughts:

Dave Portnoy is going to save Barstool with pizza reviews for people who enjoy watching a man nervously attempt to turn biting a slice of pizza into a cringy ‘comedy’ clip.
Vince McMahon will have a new wrestling promotion in hell and that asshole still won’t give Eddie Guerero a good title run.
Hopefully I can make enough money to pay bills from this because I WILL turn into Jason Whitlock or Candace Owens just tap dancing for people who donated to a GoFundMe to build a wall at the Mexican border.