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Illustrating absurdity: Fightlinker
By Zach Arnold | March 3, 2008
In an attempt at humor, Fightlinker posted this item about Luke Cummo on Monday. In response, MMA media outlets took this post seriously and the reaction is unbelievable. Keep in mind that the Fightlinker post about Cummo was posted on a day where other FL site headlines included such items as “How big is Chuck’s dick?”
The fact that elected officials and media outlets allegedly took the Fightlinker post seriously is a hell of a story in and of itself. It also doesn’t say very good things about the overall credibility of the online MMA media outlets when a web site dedicated to making fun of anything and everyone is looked upon as seriously as some of the hardcore news sites. It’s the equivalent of people looking at Scrappleface and putting as much credibility in those parodies as they would for a story on CNN Politics.
In order for a good parody to work, people have to believe that there’s a shred of truth to it. The idea that people actually bought into this fake Dana White quote, in my view, says a hell of a lot about how people view White in general if they actually believed it:
When asked for his comment on the latest suspension, UFC president Dana White said “He put what up his where? Are you fucking serious???”
In my opinion, I expect White to use this incident to further bludgeon the credibility of the true ‘hard news’ MMA media sites online.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Not only is it unbelievable that some sites reported it as news but I find it even more surprising that MMAWeekly found the need to report it on their website. The situation is definitely one I will be following.
Goddamn. MMA fans are fucking dumb.
The reason we reported on it on MMAWeekly was because it had already been picked up by other sites and represented as news. I agree that if you took the time to read the original post on Fightlinker and noted its surrounding context, it was quite obviously bogus.
We at MMAWeekly felt that it was newsworthy to clear the air and make sure that people understood that it was a satirical piece and not something that should be passed along as fact once it was perpetrated on other websites aside from the original Fightlinker posting.
Had it not been reported as news on other sites that are typically considered news sites, we likely would not have given the original story the time of day. In fact, we probably wouldn\’t have even been aware of it.
Hey, if a man wants to pour some Starbucks up his poop shoot, it should be his god given right….
I agree, the MMA community is very dumb.
I’ve never seen a more gullible group than the MMA online scene. From bloggers to posters on forums, they take every rumour as gospel. Then when the rumour turns out false, they blame everyone but their own naivete. I could post something like “Elite XC makes offer to Anderson Silva for $1 mil per fight”, and it wouldn’t take long for someone somewhere to repeat that as truth.
“I agree, the MMA community is very dumb.”
Isn’t this site primarily focused around MMA?
Hard to argue with gullible though…
First off, who reads Fightlinker?
Second off, who in their right mind would read that article and think it’s legit?
I’m with GHK and 45 on this one.
Somebody probably saw just the Cummo article and nothing else. Fightlinker’s new blog layout is a little weird when viewing only one post in the “archive” format. But still, yea, people can be dumb.
Kris said “The situation is definitely one I will be following.”
You sound pathetic
On one hand, I kinda feel bad for taking perverse pleasure in tricking dumb people with stuff like this.
On the other hand, the satire posts on their own are pretty absurd and obviously fake. People fell for the following articles:
Bo Cantrell being announced as Fedor’s next opponent
Chris Wilson saying he was ready to suck dicks to get into the UFC
M1 going back in time to find Fedor’s next opponent
Surely we all know by now that apart from maybe three, no, two people, everyone who refers to themselves as “MMA Media” is an absolute joke.
Nobody really covers the sport in the style you would expect from legitimate journalists.
If the general public was as plumb dumb as MMA fans, they’d be suing The Onion up their asses by now. Gee I feel proud to be an MMA fan today.
Sergio, I love Fightlinker. I check it constantly all day. Seriously. Ryan actually puts a lot of work into that place, and Jackal TV and the weird, random things he dredges up from the world of Japanese fighter blogs and elsewhere make it totally worth it.
Well, that and I love dirty MMA jokes.
I’m curious as to which MMA sites actually reported this as news because everywhere I look I don’t see any.
I absolutely love Fightlinker. It brings much joy to my otherwise dreary grind of a day…
Shane: no doubt they pulled the articles when they found out about their self-clowning. In a mild defense, this spoof article had fewer blatant clues about its assclownery than most Fightlinker articles.
BTW, I second Ben: Fightlinker is one hell of a site, and they put a ton of work into their content.
David @#9: What are you? An idiot? Someone who spends a good chunk of their day researching and commenting on MMA and the media coverage of it, and you say they’re pathetic? For what?
The Fightlinker parody was well done, but any MMA fan, much less a journalist, who fell for it should be ashamed. An OSAC official was quoted that Cummo was “tripping balls.” Funny? yes. Believable? No.
Well, we were bound to have sites come up with parody stuff and so on, and really, I’m not going to comment on Fightlinker because it can be funny sometimes.
Really, if anything, this is just illustrating how the online fight community is taking quick strides in reaching pro-wrestling community levels of absurdity where you have endless streams of sites and you get these awful opinionz4u kind of dudes who are sometimes as clueless as the mainstream media.
The problem I have with Fightlinker type of stuff isn’t what they do, but the fact that you know other people will copycat it and we’ll be seeing more parody work.
The day MMA fans actually use their brains to determine what’s true and what’s not will be a GOOD day. It’ll mean the end of Dana White’s retarded talking points and Kevin Iole’s idiotic rhetoric.
Just saying.
“Sergio, I love Fightlinker. I check it constantly all day.”
Alright, I have to admit… this alone had won me over.
http://fightlinker.com/blog/?p=197