For a certain segment of American sports fans, all change is automatically bad – especially when it comes to their favourite shows. On the other hand, influencer creep symbolizes a broader rot at the heart of ESPN. The vapidity of the new ESPN captures the crisis of modern sports media. But for ESPN, sport has become fluff, visual candy cotton, an inexhaustible source of sugar in a contest for viewer-consumers’ addiction as endless as the feeds on our phones. The network’s approach to covering sport now is properly post-journalistic, built on player access, highlights, fan experiences, viral squirts of memebrain swill skimmed from the trough of online trend culture, and zero contestation.