I attempted to get the r/tennis subreddit to cease linking to tweets from @TheTennisLetter, an account with greater than 100,000 followers. Why would I do such a factor? If you comply with them, you already know that the account cheerily helps gamers, posts information and quotes quicker than virtually anybody else, and options the sharpest photographs and most related movies. What’s to not like?
Well, The Tennis Letter is a parasite. Almost none of what they submit is unique. They are an aggregator—consuming all of the tennis content material there’s to eat, then copy-pasting it underneath their very own account and solely itemizing the supply on the backside of their enhanced-length tweets. Here’s an instance:
“Listing the source” is likely to be going straightforward on them. They missed that the quote was from a narrative known as “Ben Shelton’s Big Break,” written by Kevin Nguyen and available to read here. Links are uncommon, and author or photographer names are virtually nonexistent in Tennis Letter tweets. But because the account has grown a lot—they’ve extra followers than Alex de Minaur, presently the world No. 9 on the ATP—the bastardized variations of another person’s work get rather more Twitter traction than the original.
Tennis writers like Ben Rothenberg and players like Taylor Fritz have commented on the unethical practices and informational gaps of The Tennis Letter. But its poor journalism hasn’t inhibited its progress. Pissed off at The Tennis Letter’s blatant heists, I defined their deal on r/tennis and briefly succeeded in getting the mods to ban their tweets, which customers continuously posted to debate information, from the web page. They have been again earlier than lengthy, as a result of The Tennis Letter is quick, and as with too many issues, comfort is valued over high quality. At a time when media corporations are even chopping again on in-person native protection, only a few retailers need to pay for writers to cowl such a global sport up shut. It’s a wasteland, and The Tennis Letter is flourishing in it.
There are many different forms of Tennis Letter tweets which have helped the account explode in reputation. There’s the post-match interview tweet that does not credit score the interviewer. There’s the question that stirs up their audience. (They by no means have interaction with the responses, suggesting that they don’t truly care about them.) And there’s the repost of a video to hijack its virality:
There’s no substance right here by any means. But what’s much more miserable is after I see “legitimate” media corporations aping the identical vapid type. Look at this tweet from The Athletic, which additionally omits the supply: Kevin Clark’s ESPN show This Is Football.
The Athletic tweeting like an aggregator is fucking unhappy, although it is usually pathetic. This is a large outlet with a giant finances and an incredible community of gifted writers and reporters. Unimaginative followers like The Tennis Letter utilizing different folks’s work to go viral is sort of a scholar dishonest on a take a look at; The Athletic, and by extension the New York Times, sinking to the identical stage is the rattling trainer mendacity down and giving up. These aggregators serve no objective. Fire the entire observe into the solar.
