The Gen Z-ification of Barstool Sports
This blog was not for me ... until recently.
Hello subscribers and followers real and fake!
Today’s column is quite long — much longer than I intend for these to be, so just know that you will probably have to smash that “message clipped” button at the bottom to get to the links you're after. Let’s talk about Barstool Sports and its new hive of teenage content creators.
The Gen Z-ification of Barstool Sports
Admittedly, I have not often read many stories out of Barstool Sports, as it is an ultra-powerful “men’s sports and lifestyle blog” for the perpetual frat boy. They are not for me and I am not for them. Until recently.
Note: This is, of course, aside from the implosion of their Girl Podcast Call Her Daddy, which was fun for the whole 18+ family.
First, some notes on Barstool.
Barstool founder Dave Portnoy is a 44-year-old proponent of bro culture who “plays a character” known as El Presidente, and who has said offensive, misogynistic and racist things in the past. He calls himself “uncancellable.”
Without getting into cancellation discourse, he seems to be right — he has faced little-to-no consequences for his actions, aside from having to delete an anti-union tweet, losing an ESPN show he didn’t really need for clout and getting his Nantucket Magazine cover criticized. You can find pretty much all of this on his Wikipedia page.
Anyway, the Venn diagram of my interests and the interests of Mr. Portnoy and the Stoolie Boys were two detached circles on opposite sides of the planet until October 2020 when he posted a video of himself working out with Sway Boys™️.
The men of the Sway House, now disbanded but once the fraternity of the TikTok content house world, include some of the most drama-prone muscle-y men on the Gen Z internet.
Let me quickly explain the Sway Boys, ages 17 to 22, and what they’re up to now:
Blake Gray (20) — not really up to much aside from having millions of followers across two TikTok accounts. Was charged alongside Bryce Hall for pandemic partying.
Quinton Griggs (17) — easily the best TikToker name. In the middle of a love triangle at the moment.
Anthony Reeves (19) — also don’t really know him but he’s dating Hype House’s Avani, who I do love.
Kio Cyr (20) — it’s funny, all these little websites describe what these folks do on TikTok, and it’s all like “dances and POV videos.” All of ‘em! Anyway, he also dated a Hype House member. Famous young people keep dating other famous young people. Guess it makes sense.
Noah Beck (20) —beloved himbo, boyfriend of Dixie D’Amelio (19). Please stop defending James Charles, king.
Griffin Johnson (22) — also dated Dixie, but cheated on her real bad. Kind of surprised he and Noah didn’t fight about this more. He and Dixie kept releasing diss tracks about each other for a while. Also he’s a nursing student.
This is where it gets particularly juicy, IMO.
Bryce Hall (21) — noted TikTok bad boy and Addison Rae’s ex. He feuded with Dave Portnoy, which I’ll explain in a moment.
Jaden Hossler (20) — left the house early-ish on to become an emo singer!!!! In my opinion, he is good. He used to date Mads Lewis (18) from December 2019 to February 2020, then from late 2020 to early 2021. Now he is dating fellow emo singer and TikToker Nessa Barrett (17). They have a song together.
Josh Richards (19) — most important character here. He dated Nessa November 2019 to June 2020, then mysteriously on and off until March 2021 when Josh said they were done forever. He is the only one of these boys to get the “entrepreneur” title on Wikipedia. Junior finance boy. He co-hosts a podcast (!!!) with Dave Portnoy.
Worth noting that they pretty much all look the same.
Also, this is a trick because the last one is Tayler Holder (23) from Hype House, who has his own little love triangle going on right now.
Barstool crosses into Gen Z territory with the BFFs podcast
Dave Portnoy (44) and Josh Richards (19) started a podcast together called BFFs, in which they regularly discuss TikTok drama. I want to know why. That’s what we’re going to explore here.
When I went back to the first episode of the podcast, Dave joked about how usually his audience doesn’t know who people like Josh are and Josh’s audience doesn’t know who Dave is. Their friendship was apparently borne of Dave defending Josh against Chase Hudson (who once kissed Nessa, then Josh wrote a diss track about him …. Lord this newsletter is as long as a novel.) And then apparently Josh’s “business partner” “Michae'l” set up the relationship. So that’s WHY it’s happening. But I still don’t know why, you know?
Here’s my theory: Josh is “diversifying his portfolio,” Dave is looking to portray himself as a mature purveyor of somewhat fatherly advice (“stop leading her on,” etc) and Barstool is looking to keep a chokehold on the younger half of that 18 to 35 male demographic.
The problem is … I cannot see how the regular Barstool audience is not constantly making fun of this. Nearly every episode of BFFs makes the @TikTokRoom Instagram account, which is, in my mind, the premier source of gossip for TikTok drama. The account does the kind of posts anyone over the age of 22 would comment “I don’t know who any of these people are” under.
Overblown relationship drama among teenagers whose problems would mostly be solved if they kept their gossip off the internet doesn’t quite say “sports bro” to me. Are we witnessing a rebranding of the sports bro? Will we soon admit that some of the best parts of sports are the clashes of personality among players? Let’s keep unpacking.
Dave Portnoy launched a feud with TikTok’s Barstool-iest personality, Bryce Hall
I’m honestly shocked that these two were not on the same team, but a feud was born in November 2020 when Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper (26) came on the BFFs podcast and compared Bryce Hall to Sid from Ice Age. After that, Josh, who is one of Bryce’s best friends, said Bryce would not be coming on the podcast.
Honestly, you don’t have to read much more than this tweet and the one Dave quoted here to understand what’s going on.
“Less dancing in a mirror. Play more sports,” is honestly a great burn.
To me, this dynamic says to me that Dave wants to have a relationship with these famous TikTokers in which he encourages them to be tougher and they look up to him. Maybe he doesn’t need his audience to care about TikTok drama. Maybe he just wants his audience to encourage the Sway Boys to become Barstool Men.
How Barstool Sports got involved with a ~love rectangle~ involving a bunch of teenagers
BFFs’ greatest drama to date has to be the Mads Lewis-Jaden Hossler-Nessa Barrett-Josh Richards love … rectangle. I honestly don’t know what shape to call this dynamic, but based on my learnings from 9th-grade geometry, pretty much everything is a rectangle. Let me try to explain.
Mads and Jaden were in an on-again-off-again relationship from 2019 to 2021. Same for Nessa and Josh. Then in March 2021, Jaden and Nessa recorded some emo music together, and there were rumors they were more than friends … which turned out to be true. Please note that these rumors are almost always true. These people are young adults. This is exactly how I acted at that age. Anyway.
As Jaden and Nessa promoted their music, Mads unfollowed Jaden, deleted many of the photos she had with him, then posted and deleted an Instagram to Taylor Swift's "Better Than Revenge." That’s how you know there’s another woman involved.
When outlets started picking up on that, Mads said she can’t “keep it off social media” because Nessa wasn't texting her back. Nessa subtweets her, Mads subtweets back, they almost makeup and then don’t and it goes back and forth. It isn’t until the March 31 episode of BFFs that Josh weighed in.
(Note: In this episode, they also “draft [their] perfect influencer houses.” So that’s the sports angle.)
TLDR, Josh said that he and Nessa were “on a break” and that whatever is going on with his (best friend!) Jaden is … well, he basically said Mads needs to chill about all of it. He also admitted he was upset and just watching everything happen around him. And, of course, going on a podcast with a 40-year-old man in charge of a media enterprise and talking about it. So maybe not so innocent.
On the April 7 episode of BFFs, Josh said he and Nessa were dunzo for good. On April 13, Jaden and Nessa were spotted together acting coupley.
Jaden got on Instagram Live to ask Josh to talk to him (oh my gosh TEXT EACH OTHER without thousands of people watching) later that day. At some point shortly after, Jaden and Mads got matching tattoos (???? where is Dave Portnoy to talk some sense into these teens?) and other Sway House members (like Griffin Johnson) started taking sides. Josh seems to be the popular one in this situation, although, again, Griffin and Noah have both dated Dixie, why isn’t that more of a thing? I’m digressing.
(I got this screenshot from Seventeen)
The Barstool-TikTok Cinematic Universe (Barstoolniverse?) expands with a Call Her Daddy episode
April 13 is also the day we welcome Alex Cooper back into the conversation. She had Mads, who people are beginning to see as sort of the orchestrator behind all this drama, on her podcast. Their conversation became a TikTok meme.
Mads: Nmmyeah I’m fine. Uh, I dunno. (Cries)
Alex: Oh my god. So there’s more drama?
Mads: Nmmyeah. I found out this morning that Jaden likes Nessa, so.
Alex:
Mads: Nmmyeah.
In my opinion, if it weren’t for these two podcasts, Mads would have emerged as an overdramatic villain trying to keep two people who want to be together apart because she’s jealous. That tends to happen when you’re posting and deleting Taylor Swift’s worst song and a slew of subtweets. When you get on a massive podcast and unpack your drama with the guidance of an adult, though… now that’s reality TV, which is very mature. Kidding, but seriously. This helped her. She now looks like a victim of Nessa and Jaden.
So then there’s an emergency episode of BFFs, which Dave opens by saying, “Thank you, because our views are through the roof.”
So this is starting to make sense! There’s not a lot of media outlets who have relationships with these celebrities to the point they can get reactions before they come out on social media / get explanations for their vague little teendramaposts. It’s honestly kind of brilliant?
It’s been almost a month since that happened, and the BFFs podcast is still kicking out Gen Z content and not doing badly with it.
So why did this crossover happen in the first place? To expand audiences, essentially. Why is it continuing? Because it’s working.
The more I watch it, the more I see it as kind of … charming? Commenters say Dave has an “uncle” vibe, and Josh is incredibly well-spoken for someone who found fame just from being handsome on the internet. I can’t help but assume it’s going to ultimately help both of their reputations in the long run, making Dave seem more reasonable (and, unfortunately, covering up his cancellable actions) and Josh seem more mature. I’m not going to let myself stop thinking the age difference is a little weird, though.
BFFs is both a foil and a complement to Frenemies, the Trisha Paytas/Ethan Klein podcast. In BFFs, the two different hosts find similarities and hash out drama. In Frenemies, the two different hosts play into each other’s chaotic/deadpan personalities and call out problematic creators. They go in two very different directions, but in my opinion as a consumer of entertainment media, they both work because of those differences.
I won’t say I like BFFs and I certainly don’t recommend it, bearing in mind all those things I said about Dave Portnoy at the beginning, and that’s just what’s readily available on the internet. But I like this dynamic, and I hope other people latch onto it.
In conclusion? More video podcasts from less problematic personalities, please.
Content dump
“If film is the director’s medium, and TV is the writer’s, online video belongs to the editor.”
Let’s stigmatize the internet and put our extremely online selves behind us.
This video really helped me understand what all is going on with Gabbie Hanna right now
How millennials became cheugy (this is my favorite explainer on why this word is honestly harmless)
I don’t think you understand, I’m obsessed
For this edition, I wanna recommend a bunch of newsletters.
Brian Feldman’s BNet, which is internet commentary that I always feel like I’ve never heard before.
Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day, which is all about the weird internet.
Embedded, which includes thoughtful blogs about the most viral moments that take things one step past “here’s what’s trending” and goes to “why should I care.”
Vox’s The Goods newsletter, which is one of the only actual media outlet newsletters I read. Rebecca Jennings writes the Tuesday one on TikTok and its delightful.
Gen Yeet, Terry Nguyen’s newsletter on Gen Z that’s like if mine had more of a brain and was also two years older.
After School, which is a daily (!!!) digest of youth culture from Casey Lewis that always keeps me on my toes.
From yours truly
Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep — what does it mean and why do I love it??
I was the first to write up the word cheugy! I found it on TikTok, then my boss sent it to me, and I knew that was good vibes. And the NYT got to say “Weekman” for the first time :’)
Why does every male influencer seemingly want to get into boxing?
How young creators turned fanfiction into a celebrated art form
If you made it this far, I love you.
<3 Kelsey