Open Court publishes on Tuesdays and Fridays, bringing you sports, life, and the stuff we need to talk about with author/journalist Joanne C. Gerstner. Subscribe here and get Open Court straight to your email! If you're part of our subscriber fam, feel free to share this email and get your friends involved. We welcome your comments too, please share at the end of this piece or @joannecgerstner.
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Some stuff before we get into today's Open Court...
• Yep, you indeed saw headlines saying people in Melbourne crazy celebrated Novak Djokovic getting out of immigration detention and winning his appeal before the court. The ish is not over yet, as an immigration minister can still rule to deport him out of Australia. And there are some apparent inconsistencies on his visa application. Djoker, for his part, is practicing on the Australian Open grounds. The new twist in this COVID reality show are the court docs revealing he had the virus on Dec. 16. He is not vaccinated. On Dec. 17, he publicly hung out with groups of kids, not wearing a mask (and ahem, clearly not isolating.) So stay tuned.
• Friday's Open Court will be the Aussie Open preview, because yes, I am a tennis head. The Oz is one of my favorite tourneys of the year, because it is warm and sunny...and I am cold and wishing I too could play tennis outside.
Today's Open Court is a happy thing. In addition to this space allowing me to write about the things I think we should be talking about, I also want to elevate other voices. One of my passions is helping mentor women in sports media, and today's Open Court is from Michigan State University senior Sara Tidwell. She is the MSU women's basketball beat writer with The State News, the independent student newspaper, and social media manager of MSU’s Association for Women in Sports Media chapter. She will be interning at the Cincinnati Enquirer after she graduates in May.
Sara is awesome. And I look forward to what she does in sports media.
Sara Tidwell is ready to go reporting. (Photo courtesy Sara Tidwell)
She has a front-row seat to see how fans treat athletes. The taunts, the screams, the insults, are all mixed in with cheers and love. It comes in-person, and 24/7 on social media. We seem to forget the power of our words. And no, being a jerk isn't part of "I was just making a joke" lore, being a super fan, or putting the impact of the statements on the intended victim as their fault.
We need to recognize and be better.
By Sara Tidwell
Taking the time to think before hitting send on a message or a comment is a common courtesy people today neither seem to have nor understand.
Instead, the consistent spew of hate out on topics or events that seep beyond the edges of their cookie cutter world has become the norm, an infamous pastime.
There is no remorse for the fact that the person on the receiving end of their fueled spite is just that: A person. Not the Tin-Man from Wizard of Oz, but another human being with a brain and a heart.
According to the Megan Meier Foundation (MMF), approximately 34% of middle and high school students report that they have been cyberbullied in their lifetime and approximately 59% agree that it is a major problem among those their age (11-18).
Over 60% of students who experience cyberbullying report that it has immensely impacted their ability to feel safe while learning and, during the height of the pandemic, MMF found that there was a 70% increase in hate speech during online chats.
While 81% of students reported that others cyberbully because it’s “funny,” nearly 30% of students reported that they end up wanting to seek revenge, which has been cited as leading toward cases of extreme retaliation.
Thankfully, there is a prize feature that the internet has gifted us: The block button. Over 70% of students reported that this is the most effective method of prevention from cyberbullying, but again, it only does so much against the ability to make multiple different accounts under different aliases.
A more recent case of cyberbullying that broke the camel’s back when surfacing the Internet was against Ohio State men’s basketball junior forward E.J. Liddell. Then No. 2-seeded Ohio State had just faced No. 15 Oral Roberts in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament on March 19. The Buckeyes lost, 75-72, in overtime. Not even a day later, Liddell was receiving frightening and threatening Instagram messages riddled with slurs from faceless users.
He posted screenshots to his Twitter account, receiving love and support from other basketball players and fans across the country.
“You so f------ terrible bruh I swear to god I’m a get a f------ hacker so I can find out exactly where you be at so I can smack the s--- out you personally I put that on my LIFE,” one string of messages read.
“You are such a f------ disgrace,” another string read. “Don’t ever show your face at Ohio state. We hate you. I hope you die I really do.”
In the screenshots, it’s evident that when one string seemed to stop, another one started. Timestamps dated back to March 15, where the latter user had been ridiculing him for Ohio State’s 91-88 overtime loss to Illinois in the Big Ten Tournament finals on March 14.
“You f----- loser. You should be embarrassed to even be on Instagram. Shut ur comments off hahahaha,” the earlier string read.
There’s evidence of it starting even well before that, though the messages are not visible in the screenshots.
Programs everywhere should take note of the way that Ohio State handled the incident. The Buckeyes immediately started an investigation into the two disgruntled “fans” and Athletic Director Gene Smith promised police involvement from the get-go, while Coach Chris Holtmann also issued a statement, ESPN reported.
While Liddell wasn’t fearful of the comments, he did want an explanation at the time.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2019 that suicide was the 10th leading cause of death among U.S. adults. That same year, there were 47,511 national suicides, accounting to 130.2 per day. Targets of cyberbullying were found to be at a greater risk than others of both self-harm and suicidal tendencies.
Experiences of cyberbullying are also associated with the development of low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, family problems, academic difficulties, delinquency and school violence. The CDC expressed that 1-in-5 youth in the U.S. experienced a serious mental health condition as a result of this topic in 2019, yet only 20% of them received the true help they needed to heal.
Despite the block button, there is only one other and main alternative that is strong enough to protect against being a target of cyberbullying: Positive peer interaction.
Athletes who face the tendencies of cyberbullying have it tough because they have to create and maintain their digital reputation. Who and what they represent when a part of a team is important, but so is their mental health.
The Cyberbullying Research Center found that learning from other’s stories and fostering a culture of wisdom and discretion in their social media posts and related interactions with their teammates, coaches and beyond allowed for easier access when looking to get assistance.
Athletes are human, not a slot in your weekend entertainment schedule, and it’s time we as a collective start treating them with respect.
What you say to someone over the internet may not stick around in your timeline. It may be a momentary outburst fueled by 15 minutes of rage after a tough three-point loss. You will forget and you will move on.
However, it will stick with the person on the receiving end. It will be embedded into their mind, whether they want it to be or not, and it will come around to haunt them every time there’s a moment of peace when they’re doing what they love. They won’t forget.
Like Thumper told Bambi, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”
What do you think? Do you think we, as fans, need to do more to curb the bullying? Or is it up to the teams to intervene? OR, is this just part of our culture/sports? Comment on OC or @joannecgerstner
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See you Friday.
