Social Media is Ruining our National Athletes
Standing 208cm, 105kg, the NBA’s #1 draft pick, rookie of the year, All-Star, and signatory to the biggest contract in Australian sporting history, is Ben Simmons. A destructive and dominating player, with not only a monumental presence on and off the court. With 4.4 million followers on Instagram and a former relationship with Kendall Jenner, who has 115 million Instagram followers herself, it is fair to say that Big Ben Simmons, a young man from Melbourne, has an international profile to rival almost any athlete on the globe. However, like most Australian’s who find international success and notoriety, he has been quickly cut down by his compatriots.
Social media adds a new dimension to piling hate on people who should be national treasures and could potentially derail a legacy that should be remembered fondly. Adam Goodes comes to mind. Ben Simmons’ recent trip to Melbourne garnered some toxic publicity, particularly opinions from the AFL world, which begs the question: is social media really doing more harm than good for people in the spotlight?
Social media platforms enable users with very broad backgrounds to voice their opinion, be it right or wrong, racist or homophobic, or exhibiting tall poppy syndrome. Tall poppy syndrome on social media can be linked to an anti-ambition mindset, which is deeply rooted in the fabric of Australian society as the notion of the Aussie Battler. The Aussie Battler, someone who works their whole life against the odds and is very blue-collar, is still relevant (especially in the country). Despite that traditional mindset being challenged in contemporary Australia, the battlers mindset still exists. It is a mindset which sees high profile athletes cut down due to their ambition to succeed, and leave the blue-collar, battling lifestyle. A CGU Insurance survey found 68% of the nation believe that Australians have a negative attitude to ambition, which corroborates the tall poppy/ battler mindset.
Take Ben Simmons, for example. He moved to the United States when he was 16 to play basketball, had the ambition to make it professionally, did, and is now the country’s highest-profile athlete. However, recent media coverage in Australia of his visiting an AFL club and watching two games hasn’t portrayed him as a pillar of Australia’s future success in basketball. Rather, It has seen him take a pounding in the media, with AFL great and now commentator Kane Cornes publically saying that he is “sick of Ben Simmons” and that Simmons should “head back to Philadelphia.”
What could be worse, however, is the backlash from his post in Melbourne’s Crown Casino following an incident where he and his friends were denied entry. Simmons has accused the Casino of racially profiling him and his friends. Whether he is right or wrong is irrelevant, as in the following days a barrage of abusive articles were published, some featuring headlines from seasoned journalists such as Alan Jones and Steve Price. Their headlines are designed to garner interest, to fester in people’s social media feeds as they either disagree with the men whose perspectives better suited an earlier century or disagree with them.
Ben Simmons in the Crown Casino
How does waking up to messages, comments, and articles criticising every inch of your life, written about you by people who don’t know you personally do any good for a 23 year old from Box Hill, or anyone in fact? That is what social media provides for athletes. There is a glimmer of hope: the warm messages they receive, but the ones that stick are often nasty and critical. Social media has become a way to deliver hate speech.
A study conducted by Queensland University of Technology’s Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez and The Open University of Israel’s Anat Ben-David links “the rise in the popularity of social media with the rise in the popularity of political extremism to consider the ways that overt hate speech and covert discriminatory practices circulate on Facebook despite the platform’s policy on hate speech.” The platform allows people to not only disagree, but share their opinions which can be discriminatory, vilifying and or racist. It enables people to express their thoughts, which is where we often get unstuck with athletes.
Furthermore, a University of Wollongong study highlighted the harm of hate speech, whereby participants cited that hate speech is “crushing emotionally and spiritually. And physically.” Results were from people whose exposure to hate speech could be considered, very sadly, somewhat normal for citizens of different backgrounds and cultures to Anglo-Australians. However, the responses pale in comparison to that of Ben Simmons, as well as other professional athletes.
Comments on one of Ben Simmons posts
Social media does have many upsides. It enables connection with people from across the globe, staying up to date with news, politics, and meme culture. However, for athletes, it is not a utensil with the same upside, especially in Australia. With tall poppy syndrome so relevant within Australian citizens, superstars like Ben Simmons are subjected to unjust criticism, which can have a mental impact that can, in turn, affect performance and post-playing career things like public profile and perception. For these reasons, social media is something high profile athletes should consider to pull back from. Rather than let an Instagram post do the talking, leave it up to their performance on the court on Friday night. Their media coverage won’t be impacted if their playing form stays good enough.
Tall poppy syndrome and the battler mentality will always exist, athletes can’t help that. However, by a smaller online presence, they diminish the opportunity for hate speech to be spread. Let the ball do the talking.
