This Week in the Twitterverse

This Week in the Twitterverse takes a look at the social media happenings of the previous week, or whatever else I feel like talking about. Mostly I make fun of people who are better at things than I am. No purchase necessary, void where prohibited. Consult your doctor if this column lasts more than four hours. If you come across anything you think should be in next week's column, send it to @Bry_Mac.

So… how’s things?

It finally happened. We ran out of things to talk about.

I'm not saying we've covered most of the ground worth covering. Or that we've discussed all the interesting topics of the day. I'm saying that we have literally exhausted all topics of rational communication. You want proof? This was the national media on Tuesday:

Via

We've crossed the Rubicon into the land of blather. What’s worse, we've still got ten weeks to go before the season kicks off, and six weeks before we even get to fall camp. Even pro basketball and hockey will be over in a matter of days, and we'll be left all alone with baseball and our thoughts. This is gonna suck.

This is also a very dangerous time for student athletes; screw something up, and it'll be talked about for weeks. Case in point, Johnny Manziel. Senor Juanito del Futbol lashed out publicly and viciously against his adopted town of College Station, and basically threatened to bail.

Manziel obviously had some kind of blowout with the coaching staff, or a teammate, or the A&M administration, or a roving band of Vikings or something.

Or he was pissed about a parking ticket. Yep, Johnny was nailed for parking the wrong way on the street in front of his house and having overly tinted windows. If everyone had known this from the beginning, we would have responded with the far more appropriate "MANZEEL BREAKS LAWS AND DOESN'T RESPECT AUTHORITAH" outrage, instead of the “OMG MANZEEL IS A CANCER TO TEH TEAM” outrage. But you have to feel a little bad for Manziel; everything the kid does is scrutinized so closely, and people assume the most outlandish interpretation of everything he does unless otherwise noted. If Twitter had been around when I was in college, I would probably have been investigated by Homeland Security for my threats to “blow Ann Arbor off the face of the planet, you meter-hawking bastards.”

[After the jump, another recruit does a Treadwell.]

Let me guess: she left her briefcase at the airport?

Four-star receiver KD Cannon (to my knowledge, no relation to Nick Cannon. Or KD Lang) recently came into some money. We know this because he tweeted this picture:

If you’re feeling a little déjà vu, it’s probably because LaQuon Treadwell did something very similar in January. The biggest difference is that Treadwell flashed like $600, while Cannon seems to have about $4,000. We had a pretty substantial discussion in this thread, and I think we reached two conclusions about this kind of stuff:

You can’t assume that these kids did anything unsavory. There are some legitimate reasons a kid might have a bunch of cash, so accusing the kid of impropriety probably isn’t cool.
Sweet tapdancing hell that is a stupid thing to do. Your tweet is dumb and you should feel dumb. This should be a red flag for schools, not because of the money, but because of the thought process that says “yep, I should send this.”

I won't even tell you what they said San Diego was German for...

One of two things is true: either the San Diego Union-Tribune and ESPN have fallen prey to the same summer topiclessness that plagues our fair realm, or (b) no one from the San Diego Union-Tribune or ESPN had ever visited the Internet until last week, ESPN really ran with a story entitled, "Ryan Mathews of San Diego Chargers gets cruel messages on Twitter," in which they reported the shocking new development that a professional athlete received unflattering comments from individuals over social media. The example they gave?

"I've had people say they hope me and my mom get AIDS and die," Mathews told the newspaper, offering an example of the multitude of hateful messages he has received via Twitter.

I'm not condoning this behavior of course, but this isn't really ‘news,’ is it? There are portions of the internet in which "I hope your mom gets AIDS" is basically a greeting among friends.* It's like the internet version of a Japanese person answering the phone "moshi moshi." Hell, I’VE gotten worse stuff than that; people have requested that I perish, and at least Mathews’ trolls aren’t suggesting that he perish with something, shall we say, lodged forcefully in an orifice. Beyond that, going public with something like this is like having your mom tell the neighbor kids to stop being so mean to you. It's the Streisand Effect with a Quit-Hitting-Yourself Amplifier.

*NOTE: If you find yourself in one of these environments, and someone greets you with, “I hope your mom gets AIDS,” the proper response is “what, so you can try to create the master race again?” Or you can use a junior high school-level homophobic slur. If you do this properly, someone else will chime in with “^^^ LOL THIS ^^^,” indicating you have been accepted into the group.

Professor Joker Phillips, Ph.D.

Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications is offering a new master’s degree. They’re calling it a Master of Arts in Mass Communications - Social Media. That’s right; you can get an MA in Social Media. If you want to know exactly what that entails, they include this helpful graphic interpretation of “Social Media”:

You can learn such diverse topics as “online,” “Internet,” and “viral.” Whether that is actually true, or they just threw a bunch of words that sounded social media-ish together and called it good is unclear. However, I used my sources in the College of Journalism and Communications to get hold of the course list, and it is indeed comprehensive. Some highlights:

Biology 202: Cats and the Human Response
Flamebait 140: Referencing AIDS, Hitler, and Gay Slurs
English 305: Correcting Grammar with Incorrect Grammar
Law and Political Science 130: Misunderstanding the 1st Amendment
Trolling 101: Know Your Enemy, Know Yourself
Public Relations 202: Damage Control For When Your AIDS/Hitler/Gay Slur Reference Goes Viral (prereq: Flamebait 140)
Art 115: Photoshop Recruiting
Social Media 101: Online, Internet, Viral.

For those curious, the brochure can be found here. Rest assured that regular readership of this column will count towards your degree.

If you tweet the Konami Code, do you unlock secret recruits?

CoachingSearch.com ran a piece yesterday about coaches tweeting code words to confirm they had received a commitment without violating NCAA rules. A few examples included Mark Stoops:

Kevin Sumlin:

And Steve Sarkisian:

Other than the fact that Sark basically stole his catchphrase from Ryan Howard from the Office, I think this is a great idea. More coaches should do this. I’ve even got a few suggestions for other coaches who haven’t yet followed suit:

Brady Hoke: “Welllllllllllll…”
Mark Dantonio: “k”
Tim Beckman: “For real? Cool”
Bo Pelini: “NOT GOOD ENOUGH”
Nick Saban: “Warm up the Greyshirts!!!”
Les Miles: “I’m really excited about the thing what were we talking about again? Oh right we got a commitment but I can’t say that but you should know it.”

Florio. That is all.

This is a late update, so no snarky commentary, but Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio got in a Twitter fight yesterday. With a mascot. A sampling:

“@ProFootballTalk: @JaxsonDeVille Kitty has claws.” And other stuff! Difference between us: I can do your job No chance u can do mine
— Jaxson DeVille (@JaxsonDeVille) June 20, 2013

Aaaand...

@JaxsonDeVille . . . Props to you for finding a mild upgrade from your gig as Eric the Clown.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) June 20, 2013

Mark Twain advised people to never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel. He did NOT warn people not to argue with people who aren't real people but are instead fuzzy incarnations of sports fandom, because even in Twain's time, that would seem blitheringly obivous.