Watching social media amplify one sports fan’s misery

As the name of this blog implies, I’m a huge Oregon Duck football fan. Huge. So last night I was geared up, ready to watch my beloved team kick off the season with a dominating performance against a ranked opponent on national television.

If you’re unfamiliar with how that turned out, wander over to ESPN. Or CNNSI. Or *any* sports news source you can find in the US. It was an ugly game, and it ended on a deplorable note.

What made it tougher as a fan, especially one who feels “plugged in” to various social media tools, to endure is the speed, ubiquity, and proliferation of reactions to the Ducks’ little debacle.

• Twitter: “Oregon” became the #1 trending topic on Twitter shortly after our starting running back decided to play the role of UFC prize fighter instead of football player.
• Twitter Part 2: ESPN posted (can’t find the link now) a “fan reactions on how Blount should be punished” query to its Twitter followers, and shared the reactions attached to the primary postgame story.
• Newsvine: MSNBC immediately posted a fan poll via Newsvine on “How should Oregon running back be punished?” As of the morning after the game, there were over 6,000 votes (60%+ calling for him to get kicked off the team, in case you are curious).
• YouTube: Hundreds of video caps of the soon-to-be-infamous moment are already floating around. Though, with impressive speed, ESPN has wielded some copyright fu on these and they are disappearing fast.
• Blogs: Google Blogsearch reveals 12,000+ blog posts for “blount punches” – already.
• Facebook: I watched several dozen posts fly around both during the game, and especially immediately afterwards, just from among my small circle of friends. Wall posts were made, videos linked, comments thrown about. And of course, every fan of rival teams gloated (deservedly) anytime they stumbled across a Duck fan. I’d also like to point out the awesome irony of this fan page, created long before “the incident” and selling Blount fan t-shirts with the slogan “You can’t hit this.”

I won’t even go into the amount of texting and emailing that happened among friends. In part this is all a kind of mass catharsis – we’re all sharing in our grief, amazement, and embarrassment with fellow fans and the rest of the sports world in realtime on a vast scale.

But it also makes me want to shut off the iPhone, close down Twitter, ignore my browser, to let it all die down lest I get reminded every few seconds about last nights game.

Social media. Double edged sword. Go Ducks.

Related posts:

1. Yet again, social media is not about any tool or platform
2. Abandon all thoughts of gaining tons of fans and followers
3. Facebook Makes Us All Social Media Novices Yet Again