While Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader was doin’ his thing in the MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday night a Twitter firestorm was brewing about him. After ole boy surrendered a three run homer in the eighth inning an account named MLB Insider Dinger put him on blast sharing racist, homophobic and misogynistic tweets the pitcher sent out back in 2011 and 2012 when he was 17 years old.
The tweets included several uses of the N-word and the reference to white power with an emoji of a closed fist. There was another tweet that simply said “I hate gay people.” Then the dun had one that said he wanted women only for sex, cooking and cleaning.
Ole boy didn’t know any of this was goin’ on until after the game was over. So you already know that the media descended upon his locker like a hungry hawk in the middle of the desert. His response to this foolishness was, “It’s just something that happened. I was 17 years old. As a child, I was immature. I obviously said some things that were inexcusable. That doesn’t reflect on who I am as a person today. That’s just what it is.”
Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! I don’t know how many times durin’ the course of a week I tell young people on social media to stop tweetin’ ignorant and explicit stuff. Everybody wants to tweet whatever comes across their minds. Nobody cares that you’re 15 or 17 when they pull up that foolishness. All they know is that you sent it out and that it reflects upon you as a person.
The crazy thing is, it’s funny how it never comes up in the present because you’re irrelevant when you send it out. It doesn’t hurt you until you accomplish something but what’s the point in being accomplished if you’ve got to deal with the blow back of your ignorance from several years ago that could potentially hurt you today?
Remember when Villanova’s Donte DiVincenzo came off of the bench in the national championship game back in April and scored 31 points to lead the Wildcats to the national title? It was the greatest night of his life up to that point. Well…until someone went through his twitter account and pulled up tweets durin’ the game from when he was in high school two years ago that contained the N-word and deragotory terms for gay people.
As soon as the game was over, just like with Josh Hader, he had to deal with the media in answerin’ dumb questions about his tweeter account and whether it was a true reflection of who he was.
Nobody cared who Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hader was until they showed up on the big stage in the biggest moments of their lives. Then some clown with nothing to do went deep sea divin’ into their social media accounts.
I’m not condoning any of the foolishness that they’ve said. As a matter of fact, they deserve all of the backlash coming their way for tweeting it. I’m just trying to explain to our young people that you can’t write down everything that pops into your head because they become immortalized as you continue to grow and mature.
Don’t put yourself in a position to have to answer for the foolishness that you wrote down 10 years ago. You’ve prepared for a big job interview by takin’ all the right classes, graduating from college or trade school etc., worked the right jobs to prepare you for the big one only to lose the opportunity to get the job because you said something stupid on Twitter 10 years ago.
Like the old timers used to say, “Pay attention to the mistakes of others so that you don’t have to repeat them yourself.” Stop me when I start lyin’!
Playas Thesaurus:
1) Dun: noun – the person in question, dude, guy, etc. It’s whoever I’m talkin’ about and its non-gender specific.
2) Ole boy: noun – the person that I’m currently talkin’ about.
The G is excluded from the endings of all words because the G is near and dear to my heart because I’m from “The G” which is Gary, Indiana. So I only use the G when I’m talkin’ about “The G!”
The caption under the photo isn’t real but its real talk!