The Ups and Downs of Twitter

This post is somewhat different than the usual ones I write. I'm either attacking a certain media member or a certain sector of the media. Tonight I'm writing about the effects of social media. Well, the effects of twitter on me. At first, I thought it was fantastic, and I still do for the most part. I used to have tweetdeck open all weekend long. I'd come home from work and do the same, daily, until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and went to sleep.

I made friends through twitter. Close friends that I speak to regularly and go out for suppers and hockey games together. I've hosted dinner parties and hockey nights with many of these friends at my house. Hell, I even traveled thousands of kilometers to meet some of these new friends. I will always hold them in my heart and I thank this medium for making this possible. Lately however, I am actually starting to get annoyed. It's not because I don't enjoy social networking anymore and I won't quit it anytime soon, but a lot of things "said" on twitter are quite disturbing. Maybe I'm following the wrong hockey fan bases. Maybe celebrities and professional athletes take what they tweet not as seriously as those that follow them do.

Last night, following the firing of Coach Paterno, Jeoffrey Lupul and Ashton Kutcher tweeted about how such a great coach who had won so many championships was fired. Kutcher further went on to tag #NOCLASS. No class people. A pervert, who knew about what had happened and did nothing about it had no right to be fired, because championships are more important than the lives of all those boys that were raped. The good thing about twitter in this case, was how everyone attacked these guys for their moronic comments, and we got to see what is important to them. (they have since deleted those tweets and claimed they had no idea about the rapes. IMO, that's BS)

Another thing that has bothered me about social media, is closer to home. It's mainly about the Habs. I don't know if some people are trying to be funny or think they are funny, or if things they say come from deep down inside their twisted souls. Maybe they are just ignorant, read half a tweet, draw their own conclusions and then attack. They attack the coach, they attack the players, they attack the organization and they attack the media. Many of these tweets are just out right disturbing to tell you the truth, so much so, that I sometimes, most of the times, don't even read my timeline. Had the pleasure of talking with a well respected journalist in Montreal today and even he agreed. Saying how they are "sick of the venom" and "stuff I get is very depressing,truly frightening or more ignorant than you can imagine." I am glad I'm not the only one who feels like this.

People say how Habs fans are passionate. You can be passionate about about your team. You can love and support your team, I do, but I don't beat up on players. I don't blame Scott Gomez for not playing tonight against the Coyotes, when he just got the "green light". Many people assumed that this said "green light" meant he could go from being injured and out of the line up since October 20th, straight to a game....without practicing with full contact. Others wanted to throw Jacques Martin under the bus for not playing Gomez. I don't get it. I'm not a fan of Martin but I think he knows what he's doing. Furthermore, the attacks on Gomez are as disturbing as the previous attacks on Andrei Kostitsyn. Some fans find it ok to attack certain players on the Habs, because some media do it OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Some players are not producing and/or not playing well, but they seem untouchable. How about we all just relax a little bit. How about we just enjoy the fact that there is hockey on our TV's again. How about, people stop panicking 15 games into a season that has been riddled with injuries again. And, for the record, for those calling for Jacques Martin's head on a platter, it doesn't look to me like the players don't like him, or have stopped playing for him. In the words of this respected journalist "IT'S JUST A GAME"