Twitter, Can it get to Athletes?
So today… As you all know twitter has opened the professional, college, and even high school athlete to his community and fans. While this is great for fans that love to give their number one players support through their seasons, there is also a downside to it.
We can all agree that there is no holding back for some online users in terms of their vulgar language on twitter, Facebook, and especially YouTube. So when a player doesn’t perform as he was “supposed” to, there is no doubt that the criticism from crazed fans is going to explode on the social networking sites.
But how do you let an athlete know the fastest way that you disapprove with his play? Twitter. Like it really matters to me what you have to say about how I performed, that’s why there is a difference between real fans and bandwagon fans. In this article I found, Manchester United midfielder Darron Gibson deleted his Twitter account after receiving a massive amount of “abusive messages… within just two hours of setting up his account.”
The way I see it, if you are a professional athlete and you understand what hard work is, what your abilities are, and that your teammates need you, there is absolutely no reason to worry about what any outside fan says about you on twitter. If you are a well-known athlete, you will have a lot of followers.
While some of them may want to mention how bad you are, there are others that will show you support. Worse case scenario for Gibson was to take his twitter down, now if he were ever to consider getting back on again it might get even worse. My only take on this whole twitter debacle, is that if you want something like a twitter account for reaching out to your fans, expect criticism. Some of the best athletes get it every day, but all it ends up doing is giving you more drive to proving all those doubters wrong.
