UnicoMarketing: Twitter Madness on the Field

Monday, 29 July 2013

Twitter Madness on the Field

What would you do if you received a thousand retweets for one of your tweets on Twitter? Would you run on a baseball field and wave to the crowds? Would you run naked in a stadium or poke a ravenous tiger with a stick? Some people would give a resounding “YES!!!” just to get a good laugh, while the rest of us might think long and hard about the consequences that we might be faced with afterwards. Putting our prefrontal lobes to good use!

But on Tuesday night, a Long island teen, Dylan McCue-Masone, did not use his brain like most of us would. He let Twitter influence him to run wild and commit a dim witted act on national TV at a baseball game, but not any baseball game, this was the All Star Game! Dylan ran across Citi field during the All Star game to second base!!! Why? All because he promised his peers that if they retweeted his tweet 1000 times, he would run across Citi field, and he did just that.

Now what might have been some good teenage fun is now backfiring tenfold. Unfortunately, Dylan may now be faced with some hefty fines and maybe even some jail time, all because of Twitter! Yes Twitter drove him mad! And according to Sports Illustrated, he now faces charges of 3^rd degree criminal trespassing along with various others. Some might argue that the punishment is harsh while others argue it’s not enough. I tend to believe the act was harmless and got a couple good laughs, but I can understand why officials are cautious and feel the need to make Dylan a poster boy, to keep other ‘hooligans’ from committing similar so-called crimes. There is also the safety/protection of the crowds and players as well, in some respects it’s an embarrassment for Citi field’s security.

All in all, I think this is a great reminder of how Twitter can influence our daily lives and how it can drive us to either accomplish great things or very foolish things. It’s just another example of how social media has evolved and how social media agencies have enabled us to become more entrenched with one another, and don’t get me wrong, this is a great thing but sometimes people take it to an extreme and need to take a step back for a second. Like Dylan.

After this event, Twitter and other social media sites have definitely gotten riled up after Dylan’s performance, mostly a lot of laughs but it does make you wonder, should people be taking classes in how to manage their social media sites. Has it become necessary as one dumb act is committed after another, or is it just a few overly committed people pleasers, trying to just get people to laugh and get some attention? It will just have to be debated by the social media gurus.