The WNBA has experienced an extraordinary boon in popularity since the arrival of superstars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese in the 2024 WNBA Draft. The explosion in popularity has led to a new media rights deal, CBA, and rapid expansion, with the league expected to grow from 12 teams in 2024 to 18 by 2030.
However, all of that popularity has come at a high price. Fans have become attached to their favorite WNBA players, such as Reese and Clark, in ways that can make discussing the sport on its own merits difficult as they lose their ability to remain objective, and also as certain fans turn things into a racial matter. Former first lady Michelle Obama touched on the state of things last year.
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“These young kids today, what they have to go through, what they have to be able to withstand, because social media is such a huge part of the world,” Obama said, according to Awful Announcing.
“There’s the hate. But now the hate is in your room, on your phone, with you all the time. And you can’t, for whatever reason, tell these kids to turn it off, because they’re making their living that way. I mean, now they are expected to stay engaged.”
“So, I think that makes it feel even worse. But I think, as you point out, that’s happening in sports across gender. It’s just harder not to withstand other people’s horrible, horrible opinions.”
Sports analyst Jemele Hill also touched on how difficult it is to cover the WNBA these days due to the fan response.
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“I hate discussing Caitlin Clark,” Hill wrote in her newsletter. “People are so overly-invested in her success and/or her failure that even the most reasonable critiques of her game are met with a level of vitriol that is alarming.”
Now, fans themselves are taking exception to the current state of WNBA fandom.
“Nobody can joke about anything, nobody can make jokes about their favs, Stan culture making people be parasocial. Same regurgitated talking points. And the classic ‘my favorite player is a victim’ complex,” one fan noted on X.
“These people have somehow made being a fan of someone their entire personality. And I get it that’s the only way some of em know how to build or be part of a community But you make a joke about one of their favs and they’ll wish death on your whole bloodline lol,” someone else added.
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As great as it is that the WNBA is getting the attention it deserves, hopefully, fans get to a place where they can let the conversation around the sport be about basketball first and foremost.
The post Criticism mounts for ‘parasocial’ Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese fans appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions.
