The Twitter Question

Now if you follow me on twitter (by the way, that's a good idea @JagsFan93), you'll know that I tweet some stuff that I'm not too proud of sometimes. But, I'm not famous, so the adverse effects are not there just yet. But what if you are a famous athlete and you say something controversial on twitter? Then that could be a serious problem, as has been evidenced this past month. What does it say about athletes, and what is fair game and what isn't?

The Jay Cutler controversy started because NFL players commented on Cutler's toughness through tweets, and then those tweets spread like wildfire across twitter, and it soon becomes a major controversy across the sporting universe. Just ask Maurice Jones-Drew. This is just one of the many examples of how that verified check can cause you as many problems as it solves. Lebron's famous "karma" comment about the Cavaliers was a tweet that spread like wildfire. If you only could imagine what would happen if say Justin Bieber tweeted something controversial. The tweetverse would be all over it (including me). But I digress.

If controversies stemming from tweets were to lessen, it would just be from athletes and other famous people tempering themselves when they tweet. Twitter is a great way to connect with fans and thank them for their support, and it's also a way to get breaking news much faster than the rest of the Internet or ESPN can get to it. But, the problems with twitter are just as big as the advantages. Twitter has no censors, except for the people tweeting, and they are the only ones who can stop controversy before it starts. The line has been clearly been drawn in the Lebron and Jay Cutler cases for what is PC and what isn't. But, because of how blurred the line is between in taste and tasteless, just one wrong word can cause an outrage.

The lesson here, that I should also take into account, is just watch what you tweet. Just like when you're talking to the media, anything that can be used against you will be, and the dancing around those choice words is the issue facing those people with the verified check, and most everyone else. Take the Jay Cutler controversy and learn from it; about how fast tweets can go from the initial tweeter, to almost every ones news feed.

Biting your tongue is the best option when you're talking, so just hold up on hitting that enter key or tweet button, and problems could stay only on the keyboard on which they were typed.