COLUMN
NEWELL’S NOTES
ROB
NEWELL
I
12
algorithms and Weigh-ins
t’s been interesting to watch the mix of bass fishing and
social media unfold over the past 10 years. The new form
of fishing gold, as far as public perception is concerned, is
the modern metric of likes, shares, followers, views and sub-
scribers, which represent a kind of new standard by which
social media gurus’ fishing skills are judged.
I was not really aware of this form of digital fishing compe-
tition until last summer when I was privy to a spirited discus-
sion among some high school-age bass anglers about the
“best bass fishermen.” I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t rec-
ognize a single name these youngsters threw out as being the
supreme bass fishing masters of the digital universe. In fact,
none of them mentioned well-known pros such as Kevin
VanDam, Bryan Thrift, Jacob Wheeler or Mike Iaconelli in a dis-
cussion about the “best” bass anglers. I was a little perplexed.
Since then I’ve taken some time to watch this new gener-
ation of bass fishing stars at work in their social media world
of Facebook, Instagram and especially YouTube. Yes, this con-
tent has plenty of fishing, but there is also plenty of talking.
Lots and lots of talking, in fact.
There is play-by-play of everything from getting ready to go
fishing, to driving to go fishing, to getting some food while fish-
ing, to the in-depth review of every fish caught while fishing. And
last, but certainly not least, the grand poobah of YouTube
videos is the “unboxing” of any new gear that comes in the mail.
Apparently many of these videos are considered to be
“vlogs,” where young anglers talk to their peer viewers to con-
nect with them on a more personal level.
What really caught me off guard about these vlogs, how-
ever, was the number of views they get. We’re talking 100,000
to 300,000 views per video in a matter of months, not just on
one video, but on dozens.
At that poi nt, I was pretty impressed with this new crop of
anglers. I did a quick check of the viewer numbers for some
of the well-known bass pros I just name-dropped in this col-
umn, and they don’t stack up to the numbers posted by
these fishing sensations on a weekly basis on YouTube.
The huge “followings” social media stars command have
led to rumors of big-time sponsorship deals for this new era
of digital anglers, which has raised some eyebrows.
However, it seems the valuable scoring metrics of social
media, being in the form of likes and shares and views, by no
means constitute a set of strict standards. Apparently, there
are these neat things called “algorithms” that can be tweaked
at any given time to strengthen or lessen the relationship
between videos you watch and the ones you’re served up.
And it’s now become a normal practice in some social media
channels to “boost your post,” or actually pay money to have
your content pushed to new audiences, thereby improving
the numbers.
Yes, as shocking as this may be, social media numbers can
be manipulated. It seems there are plenty of third-party com-
panies that can perform such manipulation miracles for a fee.
I point this out because the only metric I grew up with in
bass fishing was pounds and ounces, determined by a certi-
fied scale.
FLWFISHING.COM I May-juNe 2018