Over the weekend, Micah Parsons, one of the best football players in the NFL tweeted this.
You could say “Micah Parsons isn’t qualified to make this statement.” Certainly, judging by the hate that spewed forth for tweeting his opinion (one many share), you would think that was the “consensus” and the athlete should just do athlete things. But that’s where this gets interesting.
As a result of the best money fleecing trap ever devised (other than FTX, of course), virtually all NFL and NBA players go to college to generate money for the NCAA. It’s practically speaking the only path to the pros and in exchange for a degree, schools are able to use the future stars of the big leagues as attractions for pennies on the dollar. So Micah, unlike Greta Thunberg, actually has some academic street cred. He went to Penn State, graduated in 3 years with a degree in criminology WHILE training, traveling and playing football at the highest level in the country. So really? Isn’t he qualified? Isn’t everyone qualified? The problem is not “who is qualified,” it’s that the platform is available to all and everyone has something to say, athletes and janitors alike. And for social media companies, hate makes great theatre.
Alas, Micah is a professional athlete and the court of public opinion matters to his next contract, his endorsement deals and his ability to get in the hall of fame. Not surprisingly shortly after, Micah felt compelled to tweet this.
Apologizing for opinions? And moreover, apologizing for a random thought tweeted in less than 280 characters, tapped out in 15 seconds? Well, that’s what we have come to and the stakes couldn’t be higher. I don’t remember Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan EVER weighing in on issues of the day. All of them did media training for their TV and newsprint interviews that would be focused exclusively on the sport, the team, the game. Lesson 1: don’t say anything controversial. Did they have opinions? Of course they did! They just didn’t have a phone and a platform to share it with instant access to the world. Justin Thomas lost Polo for cursing at himself in front of a mic (calling yourself a “faggot” might be offensive to some but he didn’t call THEM one). In a more extreme example, Ye …. Well… he lost Adidas and a whole lot more because his mental breakdown was broadcast for the world to see. I digress, but these are problems of our own making and our kids will have to navigate the word we created despite us not preparing them for it. Even as much as I love him, Elon isn’t helping.
This is the state of the world for kids these days. How are they to behave when they see their hero’s (and anti-hero’s) sharing opinions on every topic, day after day?And kids see it. Hours upon hours can be spent scrolling and watching and reading and games playing without leaving your house. This habit was further enforced through the lockdowns, cancellation of youth sports and modified online learning that the majority of the kids in the country had to deal with for the last 3 years.
What we are left with are kids with high anxiety, low in person social skills, celebration for things that get 1000s of likes for posts (like coming out as transgender, for instance) and punishment for saying something obviously said off the cuff, that lives forever (ask Yoel Roth how he’s enjoying being judged for things he said in 2011… recorded for history to see).
When I was a kid, I accidentally hit a friend in the face with a golf club, fell out of trees, talked on the phone with girls for hours, played with the tomboys because they were the best of both worlds, and had a lot of time to grow up a long way away from photographic evidence. I streaked through a hotel lobby in Egypt, was on the cover of a swish magazine with only a cowboy hat, and got suspended by the USOC at the Pan American Games for not taking the dress code for the closing ceremonies seriously and got confined to my room and missed it (hilariously, a guy that wasn’t even in the games used someone else’s pass and walked on the field….). The point being, I did a lot of dumb things but none of them hurt my career because nobody knew about them. If I grew up today, I’m not sure that would be true.
The lesson? If you don’t correctly balance your risk-reward, you may not be happy with the outcome. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom of consequences and as Elon is discovering, his holy war on the woke mind has made a lot of his previous fans through his Tesla ethos become incredible haters, and that’s a tough way to run a business.
Elon is taking on the mob, at scale, with hundreds of billions of dollars at risk. Money he can afford to lose in his crusade. For our kids, they can’t afford a misstep at this stage of their life and that’s the saddest part. Perhaps the best outcome would be to take away their phones and their apps and send them out in the world to grow and explore and to learn and make mistakes without the eyes of the world waiting to catch them. Do you want to tell them, or shall I?
From a pragmatism standpoint though, perhaps the best we can do is to have a little grace and forgiveness when someone says something you don’t agree with that they thought about for 15 seconds and recorded for history to judge. Wouldn’t that be a change for the better?
It does appear Young Micah got stepped on from a great height by a big shoe. There is too big a price to pay for a slip these days. Particularly for the young. Like you, I am fortunate that when i grew up society had no memory and you could walk away from your misdeeds or misspeaks from years past.
J'accuse of the 21st Century. One never has to justify one's stance as long as they can fault the other.