Blog Post #9 Social Media

 Today I will be talking about social media and its affects on our perspectives.

So, everyone that we know and mostly everyone in our world uses social media for everything from sports to politics. This use of social media can help us in many ways such as staying up to date on the current fashion trends, helping us stay entertained with fun videos, and even helping us with day-to-day situations through tutorials. That being said social media can also cause many people to unfortunately suffer at the end of social media. This includes spreading mis-information, cyber bullying, and even identity theft. So with that being said let's look at some ways that social media can hurt or help athletes across the globe.

An example of social media helping athletes is Ja Morant, where his highlight plays throughout college helped him develop a name for himself as a highlight reel machine and this helped attract the attention of NBA scouts. He wasn't in a flashy college like Duke or Kansas though, he attended Murray State which is a smaller D1 school. Despite he downside of his small college though, the help of social media eventually led to him being selected with the 2nd overall pick to the Memphis Grizzlies, this is where he still plays to this day and is now their star player and one of the most talented NBA players of our time with the highlight plays still occurring.

An example of social media hurting a players career is Russel Westbrook, with him going from one of the best basketball players in the world to him being labeled as one of the worst in less then 5 years. This occurred because during the 2022-2023 season when Russel Westbrook unfortunately was having a down year, this lead to him being in a shooting slump and missing a large margin of the shots that he took. This led to many people across multiple platforms of social media founding him the name "WestBrick" this is because a frequent term in basketball when a player misses a shot is "Bricking". This slander on social media led to his reputation as a player being destroyed and his legacy being tinted by social media and its harshness towards him. His last name was never the same to him even after the slander ended with him being scared to bring his children to his games, this is because he didn't want them to hear the harsh and hateful things that people may say about him and their last name.

This connects with my film because the main character Saquon wants to build an image of himself using social media and he wants to use social media in order to make it to a good college or even the NBA. But while he does want to create highlight plays in order to impress teams, he doesn't want to be selfish towards his teammates who all deserve the same shot that he has. This conflicts Saquon on rather he should try to create more highlight plays for himself so that he can succeed or if he should help his teammates and stay focused as a team player. This conflict leads to him becoming self consious to his mistakes and more anxious as to the decisions he is making.