Translated material
Woe from the Internet, or Destructive Frankness
Is Twitter dangerous for your career? Yes!
Social media frankness is a disaster.
Just a few days ago we discussed the Olympic “sociomedia scandal”: jumper Voula Papachristou was expelled from the Greek team just a day before the opening of the Olympic Games for a remark on Twitter about emigrants, which was considered racist.
And now another scandal, episode 2: defender of the Swiss Olympic football team Michel Morganella was expelled from the team due to racist remarks (about players of the South Korean national team) on Twitter. Moreover, in both cases it is not clear why they were actually “removed”? For racist beliefs? But weren't these beliefs already known when selecting for the team? Because beliefs were expressed openly? What if the “persons involved” remained silent for several weeks or spoke out, as is customary on the Internet, anonymously, hiding behind other nicknames? Would everything go unpunished? But their beliefs wouldn't change, right?
Here they are, the double standards of Western morality: promote whatever you want, but only “covertly”, at least with white virtual threads. Moreover, in both cases, the “punitive” initiative was shown by the national committees/teams themselves, like the famous non-commissioned officer widow who flogged herself. Is political correctness developing into political masochism?
It remains to be repeated: this is the destructive power of the Internet, especially social media. If earlier folk wisdom said: “A word is not a sparrow, it will fly out…” - but now, in the age of the Internet, it is subject to upgrade: “Just one tweet will deprive you of an Olympic medal.”
And for non-athletes, one careless tweet can ruin their career. Remember domestic precedents? Here Governor Zelenin ultimately paid for his excessive disloyal frankness on Twitter (remember the worm in the salad ?). And a simple flight attendant Ek. Solovyova was fired from Aeroflot because she expressed a negative opinion about the crashed Superjet-100 plane on her Twitter.
Do you have any other examples of this kind?