Sarah Phillips of ESPN

[zman1415]

(05-01-2012 10:44 PM)JayPrimetown Wrote:  WagerMinds gets into it a little more saying that she was purchasing Twitter followers. To create a false sense of popularity.

That's really pathetic if true.

Why is that pathetic? She obviously thought there was a way to make advertising dollars off it. It's a bit of a vicious cycle but buy twitter followers --> market yourself as having a big following --> get some site to pay you for advertising based on it. What are these twitter accounts worth and how many kids who own these meme accounts are dumb enough to hand over an account before receiving any thing? If that's the worst scamming that happens here (and get's outed), this story is mild.

There are a few parts of this story that I get outraged about. The scamming is obviously bad news, but scams like this happen on a regular basis. It's half the internet and 3/4ths of the betting websites. How many college kids thought they could find a bunch of easy money (I know I sure tried) with random pyramid schemes and whatever else. We should be outraged at it, but only as much as every other one out there. The kid should pay a stupid tax for letting some random people he met on the internet take control of his website. He should get the site back (and all the free traffic this story generates), but c'mon, this is small potatoes compared to most stuff that happens. The guy who sent multiple thousand dollars for advertising costs? That's straight out of "A Nigerian Prince Would Like To Give You 1 Million Dollars". That I have a problem with, because actual money is changing hands, but how does someone fall for that with their hard earned money?

My guess would be that she started legit (posting on the Covers msg board, cause who the hell fakes an account on Covers, it's not like they'll just magically send you a message and hire you, right?), got some sort of offer from Covers, started to think she was in over her head, and turned over most of the strings to the other dude, while still being the face. Then, out of nowhere ESPN chimes in and her popularity is taken to new heights. Somewhere in that time period, she comes up with a scheme that she thinks will work--using her popularity and legitimacy to pick up people's of their twitter accounts. Maybe the plan was to con people out of them from the start, maybe the plan started as legit but descended from there. The guy who posted his story earlier tonight on his website seems legit (and I have no reason to question his story), but since when did 2k followers mean a quick 500 bucks? That's like me offering you $1000 dollars for a 4 pack of regular season basketball tickets that normally would cost you 75 bucks a pop. But I can't pay you until next week after I get paid. But I'm good for it. I swear. Again: Stupid Tax.

The part that really bugs me is ESPN/Covers. How do you pick up a hire without doing ANY homework? The two sites enabled the rest of the behavior, and neither seems to care about black eye after black eye. Covers now has this one plus Jack Zito in short order. In a business that clearly needs some transparency and legitimacy, this is the opposite of what's needed. That Covers and subsequently ESPN hired her without any sort of background check, without any real effort from her speaks to just how bad both sites are willing to play to the right demographic, no matter if the story actually checks out.

What am I missing here? Should I be more outraged? At different parties?

Edit to note this isn't to defend Phillips, only to wonder why the outrage is at such an extreme level at Phillips when I feel most of the outrage should be directed at Covers/ESPN.