Barstool Sports is a famous and well known sports and pop culture blog founded by David Portnoy in 2003. Within Barstool Sports is also Barstool Smokeshows, a page and blog dedicated to posting, praising, and sexualizing skinny and pretty college aged women. Around many college campuses, it is not hard to find a barstool “Saturday’s are for the boys” flag proudly billowing or an embarrassing drunken video taken from a party being shared on platforms such as these. Although the company began as a way to discuss college life and sports, it has snowballed into a sexist and unfunny company which promotes and pokes fun at sexual harassment, racism, cyber bullying, drunkenness, and idiocy. Barstool creates a culture of toxic masculinity by sharing and praising men taking advantage of woman, making sexual comments, becoming physical with others, or drinking and doing drugs.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/barstool-sports/7800558#
A large reason for why Barstool is both unfunny and cruel towards women and minority groups is the lack of female representation on the writing and creating teams. Very few women work or write for Barstool and those that do are often harassed sexually or verbally. Little action is taken against the assaulted and those in positions of power, creating a sense of fear to discuss such attacks and disregard for those that are reported or occur. For example….
Welcome to the ESPN family @BarstoolBigCat (& welcome to all ur minions who will respond to this so kindly) pic.twitter.com/AzgfdDx2FK
— Sam Ponder (@sam_ponder) October 16, 2017
Because the writers and creators of Barstool’s content are one dimensional, often white, hyper masculine men, the content that is created is geared towards the same audience. There is little respect or room for non offensive, racist, or sexist humor and commentary. The woman that do work for this company often serve as visual props or objects to lure more men into viewing this content, rather than working alongside their male counterparts to rebrand the companies culture and image (even the merchandise Barstool creates is sexist, as seen by their misogynistic tops and tapestry’s). If women however were given a voice within this company, it would be extremely beneficial to barstool. Being more inclusive of different genders, races, sexualities, and cultures would increase Barstool’s views and fanbase. Jokes would be funny and relatable without being sexist or offensive. Barstool has a large influence on the young men who consume it, and thus should make sure to post content that does not reinforce rape culture and toxic masculinity.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-barstool-sports-culture-of-online-hate-they-treat-sexual-harassment-and-cyberbullying-as-a-game