Last week San Francisco 49er’s Quarterback Colin Kaepernick
had some words to exchange with a fan over social media. On Twitter a fan,
@battman_returns responded to Kaepernick’s
tweet about his workout saying the ab workout will not help him find open
receivers. Kaepernick responded with three tweets stating the following.
battman_returns
are you illiterate or just ignorant? Read the tweet again better yet give me
your breakdown of every defensive coverage
@battman_returns
I want every players responsibility on every coverage if you can't do it mind
your damn business clown!
@battman_returns
you got 8 followers bruh your own family don't even want to know what you doin!
Get better at life!
Personally I
believe it is ok for an athlete to respond to a fan post calling him out in a
negative light. I think he could have done it in a better way. As a
professional the spot light is always on. Conducting yourself in a positive
manner is very important. I believe he could have got his point across with the
fan without calling him a clown and saying get a life.
The ESPN article
has a poll at the end asking How do you feel about fans calling out players
directly on social media? At the time when I viewed the page today 23 percent
say they are OK with it, and the players shouldn’t respond. 60 percent are ok
with it, but the players should respond if they wish. 17 percent are not OK
with it. What do you think of these poll results?
Do you believe it
is ok as a fan to call out a professional athlete on social media? Do you think
the fan is just doing this to gain attention? Do you believe the athlete has a
right to respond? Do the athletes need to be held at a higher standard because
they are viewed as role models to many young people?
Courtney Cox
Dorsey, P. (2015 February 18)Colin Kapernick goes off on
Twitter follower who called out the 49ers QB. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/post/_/id/12344669/colin-kaepernick-goes-twitter-follower-called-49ers-qb
For as long as there have been sports there has been heckling, in varying degrees of appropriateness. I believe many times when a fan calls out an athlete they are doing so to see if they can get a reaction out of the player.
ReplyDeleteThe rise of social media has taken the opportunity for heckling (or trolling) to previously unseen heights and has made the attacks increasingly personal and public. I am of the opinion that athletes should not give these people the time of day, but the desire to defend oneself is human nature and I think it is perfectly understandable that some athletes have responded to their aggressors. That being said, they are professionals who represent a franchise and their responses should reflect that fact.
First and foremost I am not a Kaepernick fan, I think he's immature. I saw this twitter rant of his and literally shook my head as it solidified my opinion about him. I will say that I think it's extremely bold and disrespectful the way fans tweet their criticism to super stars directly. However, as a professional, to allow yourself to be so vulnerable to criticism makes you an easy target. As a professional, whatever your career may be you have to have tough enough skin to where you have the power to be above that. Especially with the platform that he holds as a role model and inspiration for children. Its disappointing to see someone in his position handle it so irresponsibly. This isn't about him and he needs to realize that, he doesn't only represent himself. He represents a whole organization, he represents his team, his family, The University of Nevada, a family of Kappa's, and his whole generation. I don't feel the fan was attempting to get attention. It was just another jerk fan, but Kaepernick had no right responding, he has much better things to do and apparently a long way to grow up.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Robinson
From my perspective, I think the poll results reflected that players are not willing to respond proactively. With the development of media, large numbers of actors, athletes, and politicians opened their personal account on Twitter or Facebook. It provides a good channel for fans to leave a message or talk to famous people. I think it is totally ok for a fan to call out a player on the Internet, because the fan can express his feeling at any place, even though his tweet is a little offensive. But there is also a possibility that the fan wanted to get more attention, and he already got what he want.
ReplyDeleteAs for the response, I think it is a personal behavior. But when players respond to fans, he or she needs to remember that his or her words may not stand for themselves. Behind players, there are the teammates, the coach, the team and families. Players should watch out for their words.
-- Veeco Zheng
I agree with Nate. There always has been and always will be hecklers. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done as an athlete. It is the world that we live in now with social media. Any one person can reach out to a professional athlete personally by a tweet. I do not have a problem with Kaepernick responding to the heckler. But I do believe that his response shows that he isn’t as strong willed as he needs to be. Kaepernick responding to this heckler has opened to door for more hecklers to try to get a rise out of him. But, it is Kaepernick’s right to stand up for himself if he believes that he needs to. Every athlete has the right to do so. Some athletes are more strong minded than others though. I am old school when it comes to letting your play do the talking.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to tweet to someone telling them they need to get a life, a couple of my friends may laugh or tell me not to do that again, but when professional athletes, like Kapernick, respond to a fan like he did, calling him a “clown” and telling him “to get better at life,” millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of people see that response and many may not appreciate the somewhat immature comments that he made.
ReplyDeleteFortunately or unfortunately, depending on your personal thoughts, the world of sports will always revolve around athlete and fan interactions. Besides the wins and losses, the relationships and identification formed within the scope of professional athletics are seen and noticed in every avenue. Fans become so attached to the athletes and specific teams that you will often see them BIRGing or CORFing and displaying their feelings through social media; therefore I don't think it is fair to say whether or not they should tweet/contact athletes. The decision is in the hands of the fan and if they choose to "call them out," it then becomes the decision of the athlete to respond maturely and professionally. I do agree that not only does the public hold the athletes to a higher standard but also they should hold themselves to a higher standard because their actions are so public and visible to millions.
Marissa Tashenberg
Amanda Notley
ReplyDeleteSocial Media has literally taken over today's society, whether it is for the better or worse, that is your own opinion. I feel as if fans that call professional people out on social media need to take a step back and remember that these people that they are calling out are normal people too, that they are just ordinary individuals that make mistakes. I am almost positive that somebody would not call out just a regular joe just for the fun of it and not expect back lash so why are we so surprised that Kaepernicks came back with something to say? Everybody just needs to step back and cool down about this thing, social media should not be the center of attention and should not run our lives.
I think this is a tough situation for any athlete. When you become a professional athlete, you are put in the spotlight. This happens whether you like it or not. When put in the spotlight, especially in the NFL, there will always be fans that will try to attack you on social media in a negative way. Does an athlete become agitated and want to respond to the fan? Yes. But if professional athletes responded to every fan that talked to them in a negative light on social media, they would spend all of their time responding to these individuals.
ReplyDeleteI think what Kapernick did was fine, but he cannot make a habit of responding to individuals like this. People are always going to attack a professional athlete because of the loyalties they may have to an opposing team. Athletes have to take the higher road and ignore these people. Otherwise, they will continue to get attacked and continue to have to respond to people that they will probably never even meet.
As far as the fan, they need to understand that it is very easy to talk in a negative light to someone behind a computer. A lot of get caught up in the game and don't realize that professional athletes are people just like you. If they wouldn't talk negatively over social media to their neighbor, they don't need to do it to professional athletes.
Derek Shay
I do not believe professional athletes should respond to rude or inappropriate comments on social media. I do not believe any person should do that. If we were to imagine this as a situation between two high school students or high school athletes, it would be a case of bullying. While this behavior is discouraged, many people (both children and adults) are immature and continue to ridicule others via social media. I think the most appropriate response would be to not react at all. If Kapernick is confident and satisfied with himself and his professional status, then he should not waste his time replying to criticism from fans on twitter, especially with the response he gave. As a professional athlete he should expect this type of criticism, however with the quick response you can give on twitter I understand it would be difficult to hold back the frustration and desire to defend yourself.
ReplyDeleteAllie McDavitt
Kaepernick is a leader on his team and a person at the end of the day. I wouldn’t exchange words with a heckler because you can delete or mute people on twitter so there was no reason for that. Once you play on the level he plays on its hard to make everyone happy so this is something that he should be use too, or in better words this shouldn’t be new to him. I understand fans will upset you but, you have to keep your composure. He’s not the first one to have a social media exchange and he won’t be the last so, it doesn’t matter who or what the person’s name is if you’re playing at the highest level in a sport or you have a ton of exposure those are things you should come to expect. It may not be right but this is part of the job when you’re Kaepernick.
ReplyDeleteVincent Marshall
I was wondering how I would react if I was publicly denounced, the way Kapernick has been if I was a professional athlete. On the one side I definitely think that athletes, just like every other person, should have the right to speak up if they feel they have been treated unfairly and, as in this case, are publicly insulted. On the other hand, I think it is hard for the athlete to win this war, since all of the attention is put on them. Nobody really cares about the fan, but instead it is the athlete who has to take the public medial backlash those conflicts create.
ReplyDeleteI think relationship between social media and sports is a case for itself. It seems like many athletes underestimate the power of social media and the consequences of their posts. Many sport teams have thus started training programs to teach their players an appropriate use of social media.
Andreas Khuny
Courtney,
ReplyDeleteI do believe that athletes have every right to respond to criticism, and don't see much wrong with what Kaep said except for the irrelevant response regarding the followers of the fan and his family. I would definitely say that the fan is trying to gain attention, because that is what social media is all about. The more people you have reading your tweets, the more important you feel and what better way to have people see your tweets than to get a professional athlete respond to them? As far as Kaepernick being a role model to young people, I would say that he should take that in to consideration when he chooses to publicly speak, which is what Twitter represents in this situation. He is a role model, whether he chooses to be or not, and he should definitely be careful about the way he represents him self on social media; it is the same as being extremely negative during a press conference.
Joey Durant