Is social media killing athletes?

[cantunamunch]

Are you guys speaking in some kind of code?

Be very very glad you don't know the code firsthand. If skiing was like cycling there would be a website /media platform where straightliners could see their name in lights for a month - no matter who they endangered.

 

[Philpug]

Click bait articles are killing the internet.

 

[fatbob]

You wouldn't believe the top 10 reasons click bait articles are killing the internet.{image} Pic of cleavage displaying young lady (/image)

FIFY

 

[François Pugh]

I would be willing to bet that someone reading your story is now Jonesing to find your chute and conquer it. The fact that you skied it, and someone else got badly injured, only ups the challenge. Considering that ipatroller probably makes it a double dog dare.

Social media is a powerful tool when it gets the word out to so many. That one guy you told, has now turned into hundreds/thousands.

Ah, but now that I am better informed of the dangers, I'm not letting my enthusiasm for high speed high risk skiing lend itself to baiting others into a particular trap; I did not say where this particular "challenge" was.

 

[dbostedo]

FIFY

I think you left something out of that :

You wouldn't believe the top 10 reasons click bait articles are killing the internet using this one simple trick.{image} Pic of cleavage displaying young lady that has nothing to do with the article(/image)

 

[Primoz]

They are also serious adrenaline junkies.

I'm sure you are right, but I would still say, this what I have quoted is huge part of all this. I can see even for myself, and I would say at 40, I'm a little bit smarter when it comes to this sort of things, then I was when I was 20. Sure it's kind of hard to avoid Instagram, Facebook etc. nowadays, and I actually agree that this thing is getting a bit too much into everything. Even for myself, I can see I almost always take photo or two whatever I do, and I know myself, I will never go back through these photos 3 years later, so it's purely because of social media, but thing is, I never go skiing some extreme stuff because of these photos. I do it because I'm most likely adrenaline junkie too. Maybe not so extreme as some, but still.
Honestly, I actually think every single time, I would take my real photo stuff with me, yet I never do, because if I go and shoot cool photos, I don't really ski. It's just too much planning, too much stopping, too little real skiing, and as I ski for fun (and adrenaline ), I rather ski then have cool photos But I actually understand all this too, as believe it or not, with that little thing I do on social media, I actually manage to get some free gear. It really shocked me on first place, as I know how much I had to work when still racing to get some sponsorship, and now, you put few photos on Instagram, and you can actually get free stuff. But it's also true. Free gear is one thing, real money is completely other thing, and that's much harder to get, then some free gear.
Now to original question... does social media kill athletes.... I don't think so. Real ones, do it because of themself and their adrenaline rush. It's same in every sport. Does Marcel Hirscher still need to race? No, he has more then enough money to live without racing, yet he still races. Does Jaromir Jagr still need to play ice hockey to survive? For sure not. He can enjoy his life doing nothing, yet he still wants to play NHL... at age of 45. It's not because of money but because of rush. So top athletes jump high cliffs because of adrenaline and not because of money. But on the other side, does kids without any clue and knowledge go ski big faces just to post photo on instagram and hope for some exposure? For sure! Will this kill them? For quite lot of them yes it will. So on the end social media does kill people.

 

[SSSdave]

By encouraging hucking and dropping dangerous rocky slopes, it results in a significant demographic that also wants to ski such slopes. And yeah that results in more that end up injured including a few that get killed. But so what? To this person the question's unstated agenda is an excuse to visit nannystatism. Let people do what they want to do. Sure warn them but let's not start a discussion with an agenda of should some media be reigned in.

This person? Don't huck, no dangerous lines anymore, and all those ski movies all huckfest and long steep straightlines only bore me anymore. Rather watch turning.

 

[Goose]

Not to say these things of stupidity didn't exist before but due to social media they are something much more now shared and therefore much more now done by far too many. before modern social media you simply never or barely ever heard of or seen this stupidity. At least stupid in my eyes anyway. But even besides these things (and you may not even think they are stupid) there is so much bad decision making due to awareness of too many things most people wouldn't ever considered years ago.

 

[crgildart]

The mass, global proliferation of stupidity via social media outlets crosses way more venues than just sports and stunts. It's all dangerous, but I guess we should be free to destroy ourselves because freedom to do so supersedes collateral damage..

 

[squill]

Be very very glad you don't know the code firsthand. If skiing was like cycling there would be a website /media platform where straightliners could see their name in lights for a month - no matter who they endangered.

There is an ap called SNOWCRU, which is basically snow version of Strava.

When I was working with BRAND-X, I was tasked to manage our "presence" with paid athletes and ambassadors. Long story short, there was no measurable ROI by having a team. A few were paid up to $10k a season...most got $2k, ambassadors got gear. All in all, it maybe was a $50k a year with all gear including, which was about 1/3 of the annual advertising budget. The only real metric we could ever measure was their number of followers. Some had over 50,000 but—and a BIG BUT—on average only about 1 to 2% of followers like/comment on "authentic/aspirational content", much less with paid posts, so this "sphere of influence" is severely skewed and convoluted.

 

[LKLA]

Serena Williams has demanded an apology from her up-and-coming American tennis counterpart Tennys Sandgren for calling her 'disgusting' on Twitter.

Sandgren, an ardent Trump supporter from Tennessee, 'cleaned' his Twitter account on Tuesday after his Twitter account revealed messages hinting at support for the alt-right movement and the suggestion Pizzagate was real.

The world ranked No. 97 cleared his social media during the Australian Open. However, one tweet in particular caught the attention of Serena, that was shared during one of her matches in 2015.

Sandgren shared a video of Serena yelling at Roberta Vinci at the 2015 US Open with the word 'disgusting.'

As he started his quarter final match on Tuesday, Serena tweeted a subtle dig with 'Turns channel'.

 

[at_nyc]

Most work in other jobs, when they can, in the summer. But they sure don't make much money, at all. .

That's nothing new, nothing unique. Except perhaps the risk they're taking. But they've been taking those risks before social media exist.

Make no mistakes, while the act the cliff jumping maybe athleticism, the pay back is based on their entertainment value.

I live in a city that attracts a large number of entertainers, musicians, actors, comedians... Few of them make much money in their entertainment "profession". But all of them harbor dreams of becoming the next Julia Andrews, Jassica Lange, Domingo, Pravaratti... Most of them make their living doing something else, devoting their spare time/cash to their love, which is entertainment!

It's not that different. And it's been going on long before there's such thing as social media.

 

[scott43]

I don't buy the whole money thing. I wanted to be a bicycle mechanic when I was 18..you know what? Not a lot of money in that. 18..you can shoot people dead and get shot at if you join the army. You can make decisions on your life. I decided to take engineering.. They can choose to do something else.

 

[karlo]

I think it is a matter of culture, not mediums. Just look at the YouTube videos that are posted by Westerners. Straightlining steep mountainsides and jumping huge cliffs are glorified. Japanese videos, on the other hand, and I don't mean videos made by Westerners in Japan, place technical abilities above all.

There's an industry component too. It's not how to ski safely. It's what gear to have to address, and maybe even promote, unsafe activities - helmets, airbags, spine protectors. At some point, something feels off.

 

[François Pugh]

The media is an exaggeration, or a caricature if you will, of the culture. Immersion in the media tends to foster acceptance of it and a movement towards it, as it no longer seems extreme. Just my hypothesis. Hard to prove.

 

[Kaballund]

It all depends on how often you use social media. If you miss a workout because you're on Instagram, it's bad for the athlete.

 

[Unpiste]

The big difference between the kind of social media I think we’re talking about here and even other social media (like SkiTalk), let alone traditional media, is the algorithmic feed. Traditional media has certainly always incentivized engagement, but decisions about what content to produce and promote are still made by people who will probably have some sense of whether that content misrepresents risks or encourages dangerous behavior.

What’s entirely new to the major social media sites is automated, algorithmic promotion of content based on engagement metrics with no direct human involvement. Hopefully it’s pretty clear by now how that can become a problem. Even now, we’re regularly seeing sites scrambling to remove objectionable content only after that content has been widely promoted, where a human should have recognized the problem in an instant.

 

[JCF]

The big difference between the kind of social media I think we’re talking about here and even other social media (like SkiTalk), let alone traditional media, is the algorithmic feed. Traditional media has certainly always incentivized engagement, but decisions about what content to produce and promote are still made by people who will probably have some sense of whether that content misrepresents risks or encourages dangerous behavior.

What’s entirely new to the major social media sites is automated, algorithmic promotion of content based on engagement metrics with no direct human involvement. Hopefully it’s pretty clear by now how that can become a problem. Even now, we’re regularly seeing sites scrambling to remove objectionable content only after that content has been widely promoted, where a human should have recognized the problem in an instant.

This ...

The rest is human nature

 

[James]

Humans don’t fare well watching the things other humans want to post.

Facebook to pay $52m to moderators over PTSD - BBC News

The class-action lawsuit covers moderators working in four US states from 2015 until now.

www.bbc.com

Moderator Sues TikTok for Failing to Protect Her Mental Health

A former content moderator for TikTok is suing the social media giant for reportedly failing to take measures to protect her mental health after watching countless hours of traumatic videos.

gizmodo.com

 

[cantunamunch]

What’s entirely new to the major social media sites is automated, algorithmic promotion of content based on engagement metrics with no direct human involvement. Hopefully it’s pretty clear by now how that can become a problem. Even now, we’re regularly seeing sites scrambling to remove objectionable content only after that content has been widely promoted, where a human should have recognized the problem in an instant.

Sure it's relatively new and obviously has the power to blow up in our faces - but it's really an amplifier.

The inauthenticity of Clout Culture doesn't need automated algorithms to sustain and feed off itself.