Mike Gundy has strong thoughts about Twitter, says it's 'destroying this country'

As are most fan opinions most of the time.

It was ever thus.

Not sure that Twitter is the problem here.

 

For decades, those dumb opinions would fall into the ether. A rant on sports talk radio, or at worst, a harshly worded letter to the editor.

Never before could you directly tell the athlete or coach that they are a piece of crap, like you can on twitter.

 

And that's different than fanboi looser opinions expressed anywhere else?

I wonder if Gundy would have said sports bars or the OSU Rivals message board are destroying America?

 

It's the ease with which the criticism can be communicated and the lies can be spread and the potential anonymity of it.

Beyond that, this: Within the context of Gundy's answer, citing "Twitter" as an area of critique is like saying "I overheard a guy at the bar." Gundy wouldn't give a rat's ass about that guy, either, Neither would the media.

Twitter, because it's digital, legitimizes the illegitimate in ways only the written word can. Our long-held bias toward the written word as a medium of restraint and thought hurts us in this way. twitter is no more than some drunk idiot shooting his mouth off, yet it feels more consequential than that.

It's the problem here.

 

He wouldn't have been asked about critics from sports bars and rivals message boards.

That's the problem. The media looks at Twitter as some legitimizing place above and beyond the bar or the message board. It's not.

 

Excellent point.

 

Twitter is not even a thing like Facebook that supplies the needed dopamine hit when the slightest action you make is validated with a like, or praise. It is appealing to the far more reptilian parts of the brain.

 

FART NOISES!!

 

If I am a reporter covering a FBS football program and I have received emails from readers/fans, read criticism from fans on Twitter and talked to fans in day-to-day life, whether it is at a bar or at church doesn't matter, how is that not reasonable impetus for a line of questioning?

The reporter serves as proxxy for the reader. He/she is in a position to ask question directly that the reader does not have the access to ask directly.
That is part of the reporter's function.
Another part of the reporter's function is to report back to the reader what the answers were to the questions he/she asked on the reader's behalf.

That is not the sum total of the reporter's function, but it is a real, very legitimate part of it.

That does not imply that the reporter must ask every question related to fan complaints, but there are legitimate, over-riding concerns and questions that swirl when a season does not go well.
Often times it is the reporter's job to ask those questions even when he/she knows the answer.

What f#cking difference does it make whether it comes from a fan on Twitter?
Should the coach's response change if the reporter says: Question came from my father, Class of '75 and former starting QB at this school.
Should the coach's response change if the reporter says: Question came up at lunch I had yesterday with Mr. X, one of your program's top 5 donors.

 

When some loudmouth fan calls Finebaum, no one blames Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone.

If the reporter had framed the question as "Fans are saying. . . " there's no thread.

Edit to include: I agree with Buck.

And if you want to hear fans complain in real time without an intervening technology, just open the windows of the press box.

 

All Twitter has done is shine a light on the truly awful people who were already in the world and now have a platform for their unfiltered thoughts.

Twitter is a tool. Don't blame the tool for society's ills.