Opinion (but Fact): Athletes are human, too — they see your tweets

After Scottie Barnes commented on a situation involving an account posting hateful comments about him, it brought a reality to light: Athletes see your hate.

Toronto Raptors twitter learned a valuable lesson this weekend.

After months and months of hateful tweets and comments from a troll account that we will not be promoting, said account deactivated.

Which happens, but the really interesting part came when Scottie Barnes — the target of the hateful tweets — commented on the situation.

Without going into specifics, because the specifics are extremely hateful and don’t need to be repeated, a singular account was spending a lot of time writing hateful content about Scottie Barnes. Everything from criticizing his play, to speculating about Scottie’s private health information, to perpetuating hateful stigma.

This account even went as far as to promote hateful merchandise featuring Scottie Barnes — all really horrible stuff. The kind of things people only have the confidence to do because they are hiding behind an anonymous screen name online.

Until it was not anonymous anymore.

Pro-tip: if you’re going to build a platform spewing discriminatory nonsense, maybe don’t include your anonymous twitter handle on your LinkedIn account.

It was that mistake that led to the identity of the hateful tweeter to be revealed, and eventually they deactivated their account. Scottie Barnes showed his thankfulness to the fans, and even the Raptors admin account jumped in.

This all leads into the conversation none of these people tweeting anonymously want to have — the players can see you. They are online, they are looking at your content, and even if your true identity isn’t being revealed, they can still be effected by your hateful words.

The reality that a lot of sports fans somehow fail to grasp is that professional athletes are… human.

Sure, they make more money than most of us will ever see in a lifetime, and their reality is much different from ours, but at the end of the day, they are same kind of human as the rest of us.

Maybe this reality hit me in the face a little faster than the average sports fan. I sit in a weird middle space where I exist in the online fan discourse, but I also work in close proximity to these athletes. I often share space with them, I ask them questions, I interview them. Darko Rajaković has shaken my hand — I understand I have a slightly different perspective than some of these fans tweeting anonymously behind a screen.

Yes, I’m flexing my brief personal interaction with Darko, he’s cool as hell and I was very excited he introduced himself to me.

Now, this space I find myself in very quickley made me realize that these athletes are human beings and have feelings. When they have a tough game, you can feel their energy in the room during post game conferences. When you see them at practice, it’s hard to deny the camaraderie that builds just by spending so much time together day to day.

Maybe it’s also because I’ve always been a little more interested in the personal stories aspect of basketball over the x’s and o’s of it all — I pay attention to those things more. The value of today’s landscape of sports media is that personal stories are such a huge aspect to building fandom.

Athletes are being more publicly vulnerable than ever, which is fantastic, because it helps fans feel more connected to them. It also helps fight a lot of bigger social battles, since these players hold so much influence. The second they speak on mental health, or politics, or anything else — people listen. It’s fascinating.

Yet, this also opens them up to a lot more criticism. The more open they are, the more ammo people have to attack them with.

The more social media grows, the more connected we all are — and that includes athletes. They have the ability to see, comment on, and share ANYTHING you post about them. At the end of the day, the hateful comments you write about them will likely get back to them.

This isn’t just factual commenting on their performance on court either — it’s personal and it gets ugly. Fans seem to have no sense of decorum when it comes to criticizing athletes online. Whether or not the athletes actually comment on it, they see it.

Which is why it was not all that surprising when Scottie Barnes commented on this situation.

This isn’t to say some athletes don’t deserve personal criticism either, some do. There are a number of athletes who are terrible people in reality. Think about the growing problem of domestic violence in the NBA and how the league seems to have a weak stance on the topic as a whole. Perfect opportunity for criticism — it’s warranted.

Yet, a lot of the hate that athletes get is purely just immature people feeling confident from behind their keyboard. It’s hurting the culture of sports. It’s hurting these athletes who put their bodies and minds on the line to entertain us, who often go out of their way to create special moments for their supporters.

So, the next time you want to tweet something about an athlete specifically, think about if you would say that to their face. If you were standing in front of them, would you be able to look them in the eye and read your tweet out loud to them. If yes, tweet away. If not, keep it to yourself.

Also, if your idea of fun is spending hours and hours specifically targeting a 22-year-old, saying hateful things about their personality and calling them names, it’s time for you to grow up.