When will we learn? When will they learn? People seem to be asking themselves these questions and other types related inquiries when it comes to the gaffs and snafus on social media that are daily. You can find insane things in less than two seconds with a mere keyword search on any of the platforms nowadays from Twitter, to Facebook, from Instagram to Snapchat. Specifically, if you’re world is heavy on sports, these platforms provide nonstop entertainment–and nonstop debauchery simultaneously.
From tracking your alma mater and their recruiting efforts to just keeping tabs on your friends in the business, favorite writers, players, announcers, etc.–Social Media is often the crowded six-lane expressway in which you travel to your interactive destination. No one said traveling was safe. The roads are filled with people not paying attention to the “rules of the road” aka standards of decency and civility. No matter how safe you think you are “buckled up” online, there’s always something bigger and faster that could side-swipe your momentum and completely alter your existence.
College coaches are literally hiring staff members to track the accounts of recruits. It’s ironic that in this day and age of technological freedom, we’ve become infinitely closer to being watched full-time by Big Brother and seem to be happily going along with it. There had to be some sort of trade-off with the advancement of smartphones, tablets, and applications. The trade? We got lazier, and even more naive than we even gave ourselves credit for being. The types of brand destruction–not promotion–witnessed has been downright nightmarish. Stephen King couldn’t pen a more twisted plot of rise-and-fall. It’s almost Greek Mythology in its nature the way we build temples and alters at the feet of teenagers and complete strangers then destroy them in one full swoop like Godzilla taking out the top of the Empire State Building.
The recent sagas involving Ole Miss’ Laremy Tunsil and Texas A&M’s Aaron Moorehead are simply two more stones thrown into the pond that have turned ripples into tsunamis. Granted, the saturation in coverage is a direct result of the amount of emphasis we’ve put into getting said coverage instantly and supposedly with accuracy, but this is 2016 folks, the amount of coverage isn’t going away as long as mass quantities of humans prefer full-blown train wrecks and soap operas over fender-benders and actual Operas.
The public and their insatiable need for something to become either enraged or inspired over via total strangers isn’t going to care about the aftermath in the moment. The fact of the matter is, we live in a shoot-first, ask questions later–or maybe not even ask them at all–society with regards to our social media consumption.
Prospects trying to navigate these waters without some sense of perspective are basically taking a kayak equipped with a trolling motor to go deep sea fishing. Unless conditions are completely perfect and your geographic location is just as perfect, you’re not going to make it. You’ll likely even need to be rescued. A prospect or a coaching staff with a good handle on their social media platforms are simply taking the 50-foot Viking for an epic day of fun. Although the seas (aka Social Media) can become rough and Mother Nature (aka humans on Social Media) usually try to have the last laugh, which vessel will be easier to handle eight-foot seas, lightning and wind (aka the collective rage from the masses)? The kayak or the yacht?
Facebook began in 2004, it’s the grandparent–the old fart–the curmudgeon–and it’s not even old enough to be in the eighth grade yet. Twitter JUST celebrated its 10th birthday. Instagram and Snapchat are in first grade and kindergarten respectively. And guess what? The collective assessment of those platforms is that they all are acting at grade-level and age-appropriate. Think about that if you’re a recruit–or even worse, an ADULT with an agenda.
Word to the wise, being designated an adult in the eyes of the law, doesn’t guarantee you’ve earned being called an adult. For those reading that are much younger and thinking this is a piece that is failing to reveal both sides of the argument, we’ve got you. It will be revealed in the Laremy Tunsil investigation that an adult (albeit a young one) is behind the hacking of his account and it was an adult that decided to perform a juvenile act on social media taking issue with teenagers and their commitment issues in the Texas A&M saga. So don’t think this is solely about you.
Adults are just as stupid as teenagers when it comes to this platform. This DOES NOT give prospects and teenagers alike carte blanche to feel like “just because they’re doing it, it’s okay for us to do it”, though. That’s not how this works. That’s not how ANY OF THIS works. It’s best you learn the idea of double-standards fused with brand management at an early age–and best to learn it from those NOT NAMED YOU, first. Whether you agree-or-disagree with the idea of double-standards in the first place is inconsequential. In fact, the sooner you accept double-standards in the real world, the sooner you get brought into reality and THEN you start to figure out why-or-why-not things are working out. Doesn’t make it right, but it makes for a problem if you deny it.
So if you’re a prospect on Social Media, how about you show us adults a few things for a change? Most of us old folks like to think that “back in our day” we walked to school uphill both ways in snow drifts (yes, even in Florida) and that everything we did was the right way. Well, not-so-much with this new-fangled technology. Most of us are using it worse than you are, but the fact of the matter is we aren’t trying to earn scholarships to play sports in college, either. We sorta-kinda passed that stage of our lives.
What we’d like to propose is that you explicitly understand that no matter what happens nowadays, somebody is watching. That’s a fact. Unless you’ve mastered how to live off the grid and are auditioning for the next season of “The Last Alaskans” or “Port Protection”–you, and US, are going to be dealing with the revolutionary advancements these platforms have brought and it will be up to someone to teach an old dog, new tricks. The first one we’d like to see, is “know when–to hit send.”