2nd Down and Tweet to Go!

 Since the advent of social media, there has been no shortage of celebrities and other famous people getting involved. Their troves of loyal fans elevate them up the social media ladder and bring them closer to the level reached only by the likes of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. These followers are not always the greatest thing though, especially in times of crisis.

Monday, September 24^th is a day will live in infamy. The Green Bay Packers lost their game to the Seattle Seahawks by intercepting a pass and preventing a touchdown, or so it seemed. The referee’s, unable to correctly interpret the play awarded the Seahawks a game winning touchdown and in turn, set the “Twittersphere” ablaze.

Almost instantly, viewers of the game as well as players began to voice their opinions. TJ Lang, the Packers’ offensive lineman took to the 140 character social media site in a way that created one of the most viral post of the night. His wrap up of the game was, “Got f*cked by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl.” The post, less then 24hours later had received 67.4k retweets and 16.7k favorites as those around the country shared his same thoughts. There in lies the problem though.

Professional athletes reflect the teams and the league they play for. They are employees and needless to say, their employees (and their followers) do pay attention to what they say. This means that there are lessons to be learned from actions like these for the rest of us.

1.     Think before you Tweet: No matter how angry, upset, heartbroken, excited, or emotional you are, think before you act. Once content lives on the internet, it stays on the internet.

2.    Don’t insult your employer: There is no positive thing which will come out of saying your employer sucks. Not even if they switched from the comfy, high quality toilet paper to the horrible cheap kind, insulting them on a social network only makes you look bad.

3.    Do it in private: If you really need to use Social Media to spread your angry rants, make your profile private. That way people won’t be easily able to see how much you hate Roger Goodell, a random politician, or your freshman year Data professor.

4.    When in doubt, yell it out(loud): If you really aren’t sure if you should post something to your public account, just ask yourself “would I be comfortable saying this out loud in a room with my boss or prospective employer?”

Professional football players and those alike have made the mistakes already and will suffer a marginal fine because of it. Would you really want to risk losing your job though? I can bet you don’t make nearly as much as they do to be so cavalier with your words.