Influencer abuse
Paige Spranac, photo from Wikipedia.
Okay. Follow me on this one.
Back in August, Barstool Sports and Bob Does Sports—apparently two popular internet sports channels—gathered together 48 social media golf celebrities to play for one million dollars.
One golfer overslept his tee-time early in the tournament and basically cost his team the tournament.
During the final round, there was another incident where a player hit his ball into the tall grass. His teammate and captain, while inspecting the lie, also pressed down some of the grass.
This helped the player hit the ball out of the grass cleanly—more cleanly than he otherwise would have, asserted the other team, and confronted the team captain with accusations of cheating.
That captain—Paige Spiranac—says she didn’t realize that wasn’t allowed. “I thought you could do that. I didn’t realize you couldn’t do that. I didn’t move the ball,” she said, clearly troubled by the accusations of cheating.
The event was broadcast earlier this month, and, while the player who slept through his tee-time was mocked and ridiculed online, Spiranac, a female, instantly began to receive not mockery, but death threats.
Earlier this month, Spiranac took to social media, sharing a post that read as follows:
Since then, says Spiranac, she’s received over 10,000 messages in a similar vein. “I’m talking tens of thousands of death threats, people telling me to kill myself, the most vile, horrendous stuff you could ever say to an individual – to the point where we were discussing me having to potentially get a restraining order.
“It’s serious stuff. It’s not easy, and it hasn’t been easy, and I know people were wondering why I haven’t posted, or why I haven’t talked about it. I just needed to remove myself for my mental health. One thing that I really struggle with is wanting to be liked and accepted, and I don’t want anyone to dislike me, and I always try to do everything I can to have people like me.
“And so it’s just hard for me as a person with how I process things. And then obviously this situation has not been easy either, but luckily, I have a good support system and family around, and I just try to stay distracted.”
And in the end? It didn’t matter. Spiranac’s team lost the hole. If her bending the rules by bending some grass had any impact, it wasn’t enough.
Yet, literally thousands of people felt the need to express their upsetness at this betrayal of all things good and holy by telling her to go kill herself, or worse, threatening to it themselves.
Over on golf digest, she is quoted as saying this is the worst hate she’s received.
Not “this is a first”, but that this is the worst hate she’s received. Like she gets this all. the. time. Why? She doesn’t address that, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s because she’s a)reasonably successful and b)female.
I can’t wrap my mind around “you did something I didn’t like, BUT DIDN’T AFFECT ME IN THE SLIGHTEST, so I’m going to tell you to die!”
Even the people she was playing against, when they confronted her about her actions, just told her that was a violation of the rules. They didn’t—and this is important to note—didn’t swear at her. Didn’t threaten her, and most certainly didn’t attack her with their clubs. Why not? Because THAT’S NOT THE WAY WE TREAT OTHER PEOPLE!
And yet, it’s so common, that most of the time the women who are at the receiving end of this just ignore it as part of the job.
Once again, this. should. not. be. Death threats for an action that she apologized for and ultimately was meaningless in the whole scope of the universe? C’mon, people. Do better.