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 24th 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.
