On Friday afternoon, ESPN’s Robert Griffin III shared a video on social media showing Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark answering a question about people using her name to push racism, sexism, and misogyny. The problem is that Griffin did not record the video and gave no credit to the reporter who did. And they are not happy.
James Boyd, who covers the Indianapolis Colts and other Indiana sports for The Athletic, originally posted the video of his interview with Clark on Thursday. Given the newsworthiness of Clark’s response, the video quickly went viral on social media. But Boyd was not exactly pleased with the way many “blue check” accounts were seemingly using his video as engagement bait.
“If your only goal (which we can see right through) is to take my video and/or add the [eyes] emoji because you paid for a blue check and want the engagement — then that tells me you never really cared what CC had to say anyway. There’s a word for that: Grifter,” Boyd said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
With that in mind, if your only goal (which we can see right through) is to take my video and/or add the 👀 emoji because you paid for a blue check and want the engagement — then that tells me you never really cared what CC had to say anyway.
There’s a word for that: Grifter.
— James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) June 14, 2024
Boyd then called out one of these “grifters” directly: Robert Griffin III.
About a day after Boyd shared his original video, Griffin ripped it and shared it on social media himself with essentially no attribution (Griffin did “tag” Boyd in the video, but it’s not actually visible to others).
Boyd bluntly called him out for the move, which he called “disingenuous and lazy.”
“Instead of ripping the video and tagging me for your own engagement, you could just share the original video with the original question (as many others did). Or even better, you could add your own thoughts to further the conversation. This is disingenuous and lazy,” Boyd said in a post.
Actually, I’ll just be as direct as I was with CC.
Simply tagging me and capitalizing two words for more attention makes this a textbook example of grifting, @RGIII.
If this is how you wish to portray yourself, cool. But at least someone told you exactly what you look like. pic.twitter.com/okd1Mtu9PZ
— James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) June 14, 2024
Boyd was even more scathing in a follow-up post, declaring that this was a “textbook example of grifting” from RGIII.
“Actually, I’ll just be as direct as I was with CC. Simply tagging me and capitalizing two words for more attention makes this a textbook example of grifting, @RGIII. If this is how you wish to portray yourself, cool. But at least someone told you exactly what you look like,” Boyd said.
This is certainly not the first time Griffin has done something like this. A scroll through his X feed shows that Griffin seems to want to be involved in a lot of trending conversations regarding sports and he regularly uses other people’s videos with little or no attribution. Boyd alluded to money as a possible motivation for Griffin’s (or presumably whoever helps manage his account).
“Asking someone with RGIII’s status and his experience in media to not steal my work for his own monetary gain is more than fair. Yes, I know people steal content often (which is still illegal, btw). But for a fellow ‘media’ member to do it and profit is very foul,” Boyd said in a post.
X allows its verified “blue check” creators to participate in a revenue share with the company where they receive a portion of the ad revenue from their posts. Griffin has amassed 2.2 million followers on X. By taking videos like this, which are largely unrelated to him or anything else that he covers for ESPN, he receives a lot of engagement which likely results in payout from X (although fairly nominal compared to other platforms given the exodus of mainstream advertisers on the platform) , all from content he did not produce and does not own – hence Boyd calling him a “grifter.”
Given Griffin’s NFL earnings and his salary with ESPN, it’s hard to think that the X advertising payouts are the heart of the motivation behind Griffin’s social media strategy. What’s probably more the case is that Griffin, and or members of his business team, believe posting viral videos makes him a larger, more relevant, and in demand media personality. Griffin has grown his account to be one of the larger for ESPN personalities by using this tactic often That’s exactly why many celebrities hire help for their social media accounts.
While Griffin is far from the only account doing this, he is a prominent member of the media currently employed by ESPN, and that seems to have struck a nerve with Boyd.
