Cats are people

                                                     TWITTER TRAUMA

                                                          By Myths Cat

I’ve figured out the purpose of social networking service Twitter: it mostly exists to showcase people in sports at their absolute worst.

There’s something about Twitter that turns people into bombastic know-it-alls. If Mother Teresa had a Twitter account she’d have sounded like Stephen A. Smith.

If he’d had Twitter Mr. Rogers would have eviscerated his neighbors in profane rants that dragged on till three in the morning. 

The Twitter landscape is riddled with nonsensical, offensive, bullying, unbelievably arrogant, inflammatory, libelous, occasionally treasonous posts from professional, college, high school and Little League athletes and sportscasters and sports writers of all ages, races and creeds. Tweeting-without-thinking is a pandemic.

Twitter has ended more sports careers than torn ACLs and headfirst slides into second. It’s impugned more reputations than positive drug tests. Twitter may prove to be to athletes what the asteroid was to the dinosaur.

The list of sports personalities who’ve suffered reputational damage due to mindless tweets include the not-so-surprising (Chad Ochocinco, John Rocker) to the somewhat surprising (LeBron James, Mark Cuban).

Most recently Brewers pitcher Josh Hader got in trouble for some reprehensible tweets from when he was in high school. High school and Twitter don’t mix since experts say the human brain isn’t fully developed until age 25. If you spend lots of time on Twitter your brain isn’t fully developed at 55. 

Last summer we saw Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo lose his job after he or his wife apparently maintained multiple fake Twitter accounts that were used to trash members of the 76ers organization including players. 

Another Twitter debacle involved Cleveland Browns safety Damarious Randall who tweeted he’d buy a jersey for everyone who retweets his tweet that the Cleveland Cavaliers will defeat the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. This would have cost him roughly $77.9 million if he was forced to pay up. (I’m trying to confirm that Randall also picked Madeleine Albright to TKO Terence Crawford if they ever fight.)

When he was with the Cavaliers NBA star Kyrie Irving regularly tweeted that the earth is flat. I’m thinking this will cost Irving any chance he had of being the next Norwegian Cruise Lines spokesman. Apparently Irving hasn’t watched the news in the past 2,000 years. More disturbing is that Irving apparently managed to convince many young followers that the earth indeed is flat. Sure, who wouldn’t go with Kyrie Irving over Christopher Columbus and Pythagoras when it comes to science? A small parade of athletes, including NFL quarterback Geno “Don’t Fall Off The Planet” Smith, chimed in on Twitter agreeing that the earth is probably flat.

NFL player Rashard Mendenhall once made comments on Twitter which some construed as defending Osama bin laden. (He still lost fewer followers than if he’d criticized Tom Brady.)

Let’s not forget the plethora of ESPN personalities who’ve been suspended, fired, or, worse, reassigned to the ESPN morning show, for something they tweeted. The only employees left at Disney who’ve yet to tweet something that got them into trouble are Dopey and Snow White - wait, Dopey just tweeted to his 700,000 followers that Grumpy has an STD and now we’re down to six Dwarfs.

Hulk Hogan suffered a hit to his reputation after tweeting something questionable and Paul George took heat over a tweet defending Ray Rice after the domestic violence incident.

Texas Lornhorns back up center Buck Burnette left the team after posting an item on Facebook that was considered racist which meant the Longhorns only had 14 “Bucks” left on the roster. Lance Armstrong once accidentally tweeted his own cellphone number which I believe was ME BIG PHONY.

NFL All-Pro running back Larry Johnson was released by the Chiefs due to a series of offensive tweets one of which contained a supposed gay slur. Bradley Patterson was kicked off the North Alabama football team after tweeting insulting comments about President Barack Obama. (I’m trying to confirm these same tweets made Patterson the front runner for governor of Alabama.)

The point here is that Twitter and other social media - but particularly Twitter - are krpytonite for athletes. Coaches who allow their players to tweet in-season clearly have rocks in their heads.

If I was a coach I’d rather turn my players loose in Rio during Carnival with $5,000 in cash, a case of Tequila and bottle of Cialis than allow them on Twitter. I’d rather learn my athletes were on a road trip to Tijuana with Dennis Rodman, Johnny Manziel, John Daly, Charlie Sheen, Stormy Daniels, Andy Dick and several Teen Moms than on Twitter. 

I wish athletes today could find a healthier obsession than Twitter. Auto-erotic asphyxiation comes to mind.

I’d rather see young athletes eating Tide pods than posting to Twitter.

By way of full disclosure: I maintain an active Twitter account and tweet regularly. I also sometimes read other tweets which frequently are the written word equivalent of throwing a Molotov cocktail through a living room window. Twitter is the drunk guy in the fourth row heckling the comedian. It’s the jerk in the classroom who won’t cut the substitute teacher a break. The difference is those are just stated words that disappear into the ether forever after they are uttered. Thanks to screen shots from exemplary citizens who stay home all day reading Twitter we have an eternal log of stupid tweets.