Being a professional athlete is hard. You know what isn’t hard? Being a social media user.
For some reason, professional athletes have an exceptionally difficult time with the latter task. So often we’ll see spectacular performances overshadowed by social media antics.
This should not be a reality, but it is. Rule number one of social media is that jokes are greater than everything, and making a mistake on social media is the easiest, most efficient way to communicate your stupidity to the masses. Stupidity is funny. You will be laughed at for it.
Yardbarker put together five things athletes should stay away from when it comes to social media.
These are five very good tips that all athletes should take into account when posting online. Let’s tack on a couple more:
Make a new account once you’re famous.
Teenagers and college kids say dumb things. If you are an athlete that had Twitter as a teenager, delete your account. I mean it. If you search your tweets from 2010 and it’s a whole gang of idiocy – just start over. You’ll get your followers back. Your old tweets will be found, they will be retweeted en masse, and that’s embarrassing for you, but funny for us. And what’s rule number one of social media? Jokes are greater than everything. So don’t give people the opportunity.
Own your mistakes.
You were not hacked. Even if you were, nobody believes you. Getting hacked by a spam account that posts a bunch about weight loss pills – fine. But if you say something stupid, just delete it, apologize and move on. Owning the mistake makes it go away so much faster than trying to drag it out by saying you were hacked. That just opens the door to more jokes. And what’s rule num-… never mind. You get it.
Don’t react.
Sports fans are capable of being the worst humans on the planet. People are going to say really mean things to you on social media. You have to ignore it. You absolutely cannot respond to the people saying awful things to you. Just block and move on, it’s really the easiest way to go about life. Responding feeds the trolls, and that’s annoying for all of us.
Have any other ways athletes can be safer social media users? Leave a comment below!
