We May Finally See the 'Dead' in Deadspin After They Attack a Young Chiefs Fan for Wearing Native American Gear. A Kid Who Happens to Be Native American.

The Washington Post. Getty Images.

It feels like a lifetime ago, but there was a moment in our history when a reportedly edgy, irreverent, humor and sports website known as Deadspin was a thing. To call them a rival of ours would be grossly overstating their importance. But they were an adversary. A comic foil. In a time when they were a cheap, store brand knockoff of us, they got undue attention and unearned respect from a legacy media who had yet to come to grips with how deep Barstool's appeal was among a vast audience who love to be entertained more than they want to be talked down to by self-righteous, self-important trust fund babies who hate their readers and everything their readers enjoy. 

So the dynamic was, Deadspin would put out the occasional clickabatory hit piece directed at Barstool that bounced off our armor like a ping pong ball, Dave Portnoy or someone would nuke them from orbit:

… their pageviews would continue to decline, while we'd keep expanding. 

But after a while, it was easy to forget Deadspin ever existed. I mean that with total honesty. They became that kid from school whose name randomly comes up in a conversation and you and your friends try to recall the last time anyone heard what happened to him. As far as I can tell, the last time any of us posted a blog about Deadspin was in the spring of 2020 when their writers were all attacking one of their own for taking a paycheck during some labor beef no one remembers and Nate called them out as bunch of hypocrites. But even looking this stuff up now is the equivalent pulling our your high school yearbook to jog your memory about that aforementioned classmate. 

It just became sad. They once thought they were our rivals. The more moral, ethical, respectable version of Barstool. They weren't. But if they were, this would be like a Premier League team getting demoted to whatever fifth-tier league Wrexham is in. We're Bruce Wayne, still living that billionaire/watchful protector life only with bigger and better crimefighting gadgets, then seeing the Joker working a children's party making balloon swords.

But this is one of those times when Deadspin has once again become relevant. Just not for any reason they'd want to be. Going after innocent little kids who are guilty of nothing but joyfully supporting their favorite sports team is no way to run a business. It all started with this image from the Chiefs-Raiders game Sunday:

Any reasonable person seeing this young lad on his/her TV screen might have seen it as somewhat problematic. Any rational X/Twitter user would have checked the Community Note for clarification. Regardless, any thinking adult would have withheld judgment before flying off the handle and rushing to the internet to denounce a child without knowing the full context. It's a basic rule of civilization that hasn't changed just because we can react to things immediately and give the whole world our take. Wait until you get the full story. Especially when you're talking about another person's children. That's Adult 101. 

But no one ever accused Deadspin of making that class part of their employee training. So one of their writers ran right to their dashboard to post this:

This is one of the rare times I'm not going to include the link or the excerpts. You can click it in the Tweet if you want. But without even checking, you could write the whole thing in your head. Just another lazy, perfunctory, zero-effort product from one of their AI bots. And as yet another Community Note points out, the whole hatchet piece on a grade schooler could've been avoided with a few seconds of research. After review of the face paint, the call by Deadspin is reversed:

And because the article naturally included an airing of grievances about how the NFL is shameful for allowing a team called the Chiefs and how hateful this kid's attire is, let's pick up the flag on that offense as well. There is no party foul on the head dress:

If you're offended by someone decked out in the traditional symbols of his own people, that's most definitely a You Problem. If you're offended by any fan painting his face in their team colors, I'll suggest that's also a You Problem, but one we can discuss as long as you're talking about adults:

But when you attack a child for any reason, or demand that a sports league has some obligation to protect you from being hurt by a kid dressing up to go watch his team with his family, without taking the time to learn any of the facts, that is very much an All of Us Problem. 

Deadspin has tried to keep its last, precarious, desperate grip on relevancy all these years by clinging to its righteous indignation. To hire professionally offended writers and tell them to keep the outrage coming. Which is a hell of a business model, when you think about it. And all it's managed to do is drive the paying customers away. In droves. And now that they've decided to do pioneering work in the field of going after seemingly charming Native American families for the crime of inoffensively rooting for their favorite team and their culture, I don't see how they survive. 

One thing is for certain: If the Armentas decide to sue Deadspin into the ash heap of history as some are suggesting - the way Hulk Hogan did to Gawker - no one would ever miss it.