Update: Deadspin has posted yet another set of messages from Salisbury, who claims he is finally finished sending them. In the latest set, he talks about how he wanted his messages off the record and not posted on the site, but then changes his mind.
Original Article: Former NFL player and ESPN analyst Sean Salisbury has seemingly made some big waves in the blogosphere by threatening to sue Gawker Media-owned sports blog Deadspin (not to mention ESPN itself).
Deadspin has posted a slew of what the blog claims is messages from Sean Salisbury, sent from his iPhone, in which he threatens legal action (in a very grammatically incorrect way). By slew, I mean a seemingly never-ending chain of tantrum-fueled, vengeful, threats. Interestingly enough, the whole thing is aimed at restoring Salisbury’s reputation, which he claims has been tarnished in large part by Deadspin, who has referenced alleged incidents from the past in which Salisbury showed cell phone pictures of his penis to employees of ESPN.
I cannot attest to the accuracy of such allegations, but if these messages to Deadspin really are from Salisbury, I have to say, he’s not doing a very good job of managing said reputation. If he sent them, he would have had to assume they would end up being posted at the site (from the same company that produces Valleywag, mind you). To get an idea of what we’re talking about here, read Deadspin’s posts here and here. I would provide a sample, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. There are so many of them.
Meanwhile, people on the web seem to be having a good time at Salisbury’s expense:
Now because of the rantings, people are talking about Salisbury more than they ever would have otherwise. He is even showing up on Google’s Hot Trends multiple times. It’s certainly putting him in the spotlight, but if it’s his reputation he’s worried about (again, assuming these messages really did come from him), he’s got a thing or two to learn about online reputation management practices. I wonder how long it will take to recover his reputation after this. Now it’s not going to be only articles about him showing his penis showing up in Google results. It’s going to be articles about him showing his penis and articles about him raving like a madman (regardless of whether or not he ever showed his penis to begin with).
Currently, the top two natural results on Google are Salisbury’s Wikipedia entry, and a Deadspin article called “If Sean Salisbury Asks You to Look at his Phone, Don’t do it.” It doesn’t get much better after that. By the way, the Wikipedia article also mentions the penis incident.
