The murky waters of twitter

During the Canucks game tonight, a tweet was sent out by a reporter from the Calgary Herald about the hit shown above that landed Daniel Sedin in a hospital.

 

This tweet of course caused a lot of angry reactions in Vancouver, due to the insensitive nature of it. As you would expect, the reaction was quick and vicious in response. Think of all of the naughty words you were taught as a child and then add in a couple of more, and that was what was being thrown in the direction of Kristen.

Since this became a big topic, I just wanted to weigh in on it.

1) If you say something stupid on Twitter, you just need to own up to it. “The internet never forgets” is not just a cliche, it is just how things work. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, if you post something online someone will grab a screen cap of it. This is why people will always remember Logan Couture’s twitter account tweeting out this:

 

Logan of course said his account was hacked, but for the rest of his career, YouJizz will play a role in it on twitter.

So if you do say something you regret, then yeah, just own up to it. Even if you delete the tweet, quickly tweet an apology then put up a little write up if you want to get more in depth. I understand deleting an offending tweet, because otherwise more people might just see that tweet and react again, but just make sure to explain you know what you did was shortsighted.

Now, Kristen deleted the tweet at first, which was met with more anger, as it was viewed as just trying to ignore what happened. She would later apologize, though:

The problem, of course, was the delay in response to her initial offending comment. The twitter world is fast to react, so you have to keep up with it or else it will bury you.

2) Therein lies the beauty and the danger of twitter. Now more than ever Twitter delivers your thoughts at a rapid pace. It can be oh so easy to say something on Twitter before you realize if it was a smart thing to do or not. This is also why it can get tricky when you’re seen as a voice of something (whether it be a reporter or whatever), you have to be super careful when tweeting fast due to the fact that Twitter will eat you alive if you say something it deems stupid. There will be times when I watch a hockey game where I have a funny joke but I won’t use it because I feel the timing might be off, due to a think like a player injury or whatnot.

So on one hand I understand Kristen and her attempts to use Twitter to engage her followers and talk about a meaningless game by playing up to her home crowd by calling out the Sedins for being soft. On the other hand, she made a mistake by not waiting to see how Daniel was before making her statement. Although she apologized, Daniel was not moving right after that hit, so it’s hard to think she didn’t see Daniel lying on the ice not moving, before making her comment. I think she saw Daniel go down on a hit by a smaller player and she jumped at the chance to play the “Sedins are soft” narrative”.

And that is the tricky nature of Twitter. I know I will say stupid things at various points, and I know I will say some things that might possibly offend people, but I do my best to make sure I don’t go too far one way or the other. My reputation is on the line if I tweet something really stupid, which is why I make sure to think “Would I be able to back this tweet up if a lot of people called me out on it?”

3) If you see someone say something stupid don’t lower yourself to another level by wishing death upon them. It doesn’t fix anything and it only makes you just as bad or worse as the person who said the initial thing. Call her out for being short sighted, or downright stupid in her opinion, but try and hold back on the death wishes and words that rhyme with bunt.

I know in sports emotions run super high, but at the end of the day it was just a beat writer saying something stupid. All that was effected was her own reputation, that’s enough punishment for her. People in Vancouver will never forget that comment, believe me.

Anyways, I just wanted to weigh in, because I think everyone deserves forgiveness if they actually learn from their mistakes, though they also deserve the hit to their reputation that comes with it.

At the end of the day, all that really matters is that Daniel Sedin is ok, who cares what a random person thought of the hit.