USA Today Sports
The world of social media is filled with good and bad. The good, comes in form of information sharing and entertainment. The bad, highlights just how stupid and insensitive some people really are. Being on Twitter is a double-edged sword for professional athletes. When things are going well, I’m sure their timelines are filled with praise. When things go bad, look out for a big batch of Haterade. One athlete who can attest to this is Colin Kaepernick.
The San Francisco 49ers quarterback got nothing but love a season ago, but his 2013 campaign hasn’t gotten off to the greatest of starts. He tossed for over 400 yards and three touchdowns in week one, but has followed it up with two lack luster performances that have greatly contributed to two losses. Of course, you can’t hang it all on Kaepernick, but there’s no denying that he hasn’t looked right over the last two weeks.
As a result, the haters are out on Twitter. But instead of firing back like many athletes mistakenly do, the QB has taken a different approach – favoriting hate tweets. One could assume, for motivation.
Here’s an example of one the QB favorited:
@Kaepernick7 = one year wonder, the truth hurts bro..
— Michael Yohannes (@mikeyohannes95) September 24, 2013
That was actually one of the more light-hearted ones I saw, as some of them are just nasty and laced with profanity.
Related: Jim Harbaugh Facing First Major Adversity in San Francisco
I’ve seen this tactic utilized before and I think it’s a good call by Kaepernick to use this strategy, instead of making himself look like a fool by spouting off. The 49ers’ fans that are already jumping off his bandwagon are rushing to judgement. This guy doesn’t even have a full season of starts under his belt yet. He’s still learning and at the same time, the 49ers are down a lot of pass-catchers from 2012. As they get healthy, I expect Kaepernick to come around.
As the same time, those that were saying he would become an all time great, may have jumped the gun a bit. We’ll just have to wait and see how he responds to the first adversity of his career.
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