Social media is an oxymoron, as is the term intelligent footballer. The advent of Twitter and Facebook is making immediate twits out of footballers, but footballers don’t need the assistance of social media to look foolish.
Intelligence isn’t bestowed on everyone. It can’t be assumed that adults on contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars are smart. One need not be clever to kick a football. Ultimately, and unfortunately, the twits will always be exposed. Some make it so easy.
It can’t be assumed that someone having a bad day will respond with kindness to a taunt. It is human nature to react aggressively to being teased. Most people are adept at firing an insult, no matter the consequences. With a little bit of thought those insults can be funny.
Mostly they’re just dumb.
Two days ago Carlton’s Brock McLean exposed himself with a simple tweet about his frustration, today can f— right off. A wag with a few brain cells and a twisted sense of humour tweeted back, did you finally get delisted.
McLean, who is in the final year of a generous contract, has hardly earned his money at Carlton. In three years he has managed 15 games. The club would barely miss him if he was delisted, hence the smartarse response.
Mclean was affronted. Instead of receiving sympathy because of his day from hell, he was insulted.
As most people do when they’re insulted, McLean attacked the twit via tweet, no your mum has given me AIDS.
Hilarious stuff, if you’re an imbecile. Gold, if you’re a journalist looking to break the next big story about stupid footballers. Thanks to stupid footballers, the tweet becomes the story, a gift, because the journalist has done nothing to earn it.
He didn’t make a phone call, wasn’t involved in a press conference or stakeout and didn’t need to do any research.
All the modern day football journalist needs to do is follow footballers on twitter with a sheep mentality. He is a follower. The modern day football journalist probably follows hundreds of footballers on twitter, and when he checks the tweets he is lusting after controversy.
Where is the talent in being a follower? Where is the talent in trolling tweets looking for something controversial?
There is none. Of course, the modern day football journalist may be, on occasion, forced to open a book or archive and do some research, or actually attend a press conference or go to a game now and then. He might actually need to write a real story, heaven forbid…
The modern day football journalist might argue if he’s not following tweets, those 140 characters, then he’s at risk of not doing his job properly.
That’s fair enough, because anyone able to construct a simple sentence or use a phone can now become a twitter. They can tweet, in 140 characters, how they feel about their life, a restaurant, a car, political policy and all manner of other bland, meaningless things they deem important.
It the tweeter is famous, people will follow them. It must be a buzz for a footballer to have thousands of people following him on twitter.
Seriously, so what? That buzz must be like having Facebook friends, another meaningless network of one dimensional images representing living flesh on a computer.
In the twitter age, journalists become sycophants to the people they write about. They will follow footballers purely to wait for something to crucify them about.
Journalists who follow footballers on twitter and write exclusive stories about those 140 characters have become disgustingly servile. There is no originality or class in their stories about tweets.
Mclean might’ve been having a bad day. He might’ve thought some of his followers would offer sympathy, but his performances over three years have hardly been enough to elicit compassion.
He should be smart enough to understand such a tweet will land in the lap of an agitator, and there would be a twitter slap. McLean should’ve been clever enough to realise the responses of unknown people are meaningless. He should’ve been savvy enough to let the insult slip.
Instead, he talked about mothers and AIDS, and a journalist butchered him for it. Carlton fined him $5000 for the offensive tweet, which gave journalists another chance to write another story about a tweet on twitter.
Amazing how this unintelligent, juvenile, limited social media outlet has become legitimate. Amazing how people rag on about twitter, and how journalists burst their pupils while raking through tweets on their phones.
Followers, nothing more, and those stupid rants become the story.
Simply, everyone involved in this garbage is a twit. McLean should’ve known better, given two teammates, Mark Murphy and Jeremy Ladler cost Carlton $7500 when they criticised the umpires on twitter following the 10-point loss to West Coast.
Social media remains an oxymoron. Footballers remain morons. And while journalists use social media to expose the morons, we’re all morons for reading about what the morons tweeted on the oxymoron.
We read what the morons write. Some people tweet about it, and the whole imbecilic cycle begins again.
Pride Cup results
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82 |
Anne (4) |
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81 |
Matt B (5), Russ (4) |
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80 |
Sandra (4) |
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79 |
Matt (4), Dave (4), Wayne (4), James F (3) |
|
77 |
Stevo (4), George (4) |
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76 |
Andy (4), The Pole (2) |
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72 |
Dallas (3) |
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71 |
Eric (3) |
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70 |
Adam L (1) |
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63 |
Jim (1) |
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36 |
Nemo (2) |
