Social Media Defining our Personal Standards for Decorum

-
In less than 10 seconds, it is possible to undo a decade’s worth of work. When Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou tweeted, “With so many Africans in Greece... the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!!!” the immediate response was being removed from the Greek Olympic Team. The head of the Greek Olympic Mission, Isidoros Kouvelos summed it up: "She showed no respect for a basic Olympic value and unfortunately she is out," told Greek SKAI TV. "She made a mistake and in life we pay for our mistakes." It seems a bit extreme a choice, but it reminds us of the standards that the Olympic Games try to maintain.
My curiosity is: How on earth, if you as a country (or a team) have invested so deeply in these athletes and are already putting them under such constant, extreme pressure already that anyone responsible for their conduct or their media exposure would let any of them near an I Phone or a Twitter account? As much as it seems like a Twilight Zone episode (or a Monty Python short) it is a bit demented that any athlete does not have the frontal cortex ability to not destroy their chance for a gold medal by tweeting something racist, crude, or politically incorrect; or even simply checking off “like” on someone else’s Facebook post or tweet.
There is a certain fine line of diplomatic relations and marketing intertwining for the Olympic athletes. Almost every Olympian has a coach, brander, image consultant and bodyguard. Hopefully they are being utilized.  Even if they are able to do back flips literally on a balance beam, every Olympic athlete must also get a perfect”10” in the sport of balancing in the delicate arena of communications. Whether they are indicating politically benign items like Phelps not liking the US swim team caps, or volunteering personal information akin to 29 year-old Olympian hurdler Lolo Jones telling the world she is waiting for the right man and still a virgin.
Two-time Olympian gold medalist runner and chair of the London 2012 Organizing Committee Sebastian Coe is on-line quite frequently. Coe commented on the social media aspects for London 2012 noting, "I have found quite a close correlation between the number of tweets at competitive times and the level of under-performance."  As 2012 gets closer to being dubbed the “Social Media Games” the simple answer is athletes who can’t score a 10 in the game—should not try to play it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Political Pollyanna Principle

-
Right before disconnecting from work for the holidays, a very dear friend of mine mentioned in passing that a cable network was playing every episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing from Christmas to New Year’s Day. So I began watching it. Then I binge watched it for most of the week. While watching, I began to remember my life when the show first aired. I was an hourly temp employee. I had just undergone cranial surgery and seizures were different than prior, but still significant and I had just become engaged to my fiancé, who is still my husband. We were in New York City and both of us were intrigued by the dramedy Sorkin was creating for us. Little did either of us know at the time, that both of our lives would take several random turns leading us to working for the federal government and while we watched it again this year, it was daunting how different a perspective I have on the show in 2023.   The show held up amazingly well overall considering almost a quarter century had pass
Read more

While Extremists Change the Rules We the People can Still Overcome

-
OK. Having watched the last two years and working hard not to hyperventilate and or go completely insane, I have a simple question for the Democratic Party; “What would it take to get legal identification for every registered voter in the US who currently needs one in time for the midterms?     Do we put together a GoFundMe® campaign to get the resources to transport voters who are being disenfranchised to the nearest place they can go to get a legally accepted ID? Do we go out into the communities and work with Americans to help them get their required documents (birth certificate, proof of citizenship, proof of address, driver’s license etc.) or whatever other information is required for an official ID? Whatever their state, city, county, district, territory, parish, or other area name requires?     Do we go to mayors and councils and whoever else we can assist in setting up venues/appointments and a workforce who can go out to their jurisdictions and set up events and other ways to
Read more

No Teachable Momentum

-
Image
Teachers are vital. No matter what age, no matter what subject and whether they are public, private, magnet, charter, kindergarten, grade, middle, high, special needs, advanced, college prep, and multiple other categories we can put them in; they are vital. Just go ask the parents who simultaneously are in the role of parent, teacher, counselor, IT tech, spouse, and employee/job seeker. So it has been remarkably strange listening to the different perspectives on reopening schools, virtually, in person, forcing teachers back to work; throwing out the hundreds of thousands of international students (who pay full freight to universities across the country BTW). Teachers who are generally overworked, undercompensated, underappreciated and undervalued are now being told to go back to work or else    the ones who are higher risk ( nearly a third ) are being basically coerced into going back to teach in person in a few weeks. Threatening their keeping their jobs in a market where schools thro
Read more