The Dark Side of Likes: Is Golf Social Media too Negative?
(Photo credit: Associated Press, 2024)
Lexi Thompson’s retirement announcement earlier this week came as a surprise to many.
The LPGA TOUR superstar will be calling it a career at the end of this season, and what a career it has been. The 29-year old turned pro at the age of 15 while making her first major appearance in 2007 at the age of 12. She has collected a mountain of trophies and accolades in that span, including her first professional win at the age of 16 in 2011 and her first major at the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship. By any measure, Lexi had a career worthy of the Hall of Fame all before the age of 30.
Lexi chose to formally announce her retirement on social media via her Instagram account. In the video announcement, she thanks fans for welcoming her onto the scene at “such a young age” and for supporting her throughout her playing career. However, with a touch of irony, she also specifically references how “social media never sleeps” in regard to the online negativity — and harassment — she also experienced from so many.
Grayson Murray’s sudden death following the second round of the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge shook the PGA TOUR to its core last week. His family’s official statement disclosed the cause of death to be suicide, confirming an assumption held by many fans as they mourned his loss.
Murray was very open about his past struggles with addiction and mental health, often speaking about both at tournament sites and following his recent victory at the Sony Open in January of this year. He was on the path to recovery, which is a path more bumpy than smooth for so many brave enough to walk down it. Even still, Murray’s outspoken nature on social and political issues — coupled with poor choices made on social media — likely caused him more grief and ridicule than he would have preferred.
Just as Lexi Thompson stated that social media never sleeps, it also never forgets for cases like Grayson Murray. It becomes almost impossible for a public figure — particularly an outspoken professional athlete — to have any sort of online presence without receiving a litany of negative tweets, posts, and comments. “It comes with the territory” is the common brush-off refrain used by a public who will never experience anything near the fame and spotlight of these players.
While true to a degree, just because a person chooses a career in the spotlight doesn’t cause their human nature to disappear. Their emotions, fears, anxieties, and reactions to negativity are no different than those you or I would exhibit if the situation was reversed. Even worse is the current zeitgeist of social media in which negativity and engagement go hand-in-hand, being incentivized as a metric as opposed to prevented as a threat.
If we are all honest with ourselves, a startling revelation emerges: we’ve all contributed to the threat at some point.
The cases of Lexi and Grayson are but two recent examples of how much impact social media can have on an individual. While one overtly cited its impact on their career, the other will never have the opportunity to call out something we all saw in broad daylight. It would be inappropriate to suggest that social media negativity was the main contributor in either case, just as it would be naive to assume the opposite.
The Powers that Be in social media are noticing, too. X.com, formerly known as Twitter, recently announced that golf-related content on its platform yielded 17.2 billion impressions over 40+ million users. The home of “Golf Twitter” has become appointment viewing during tournaments, serving as a complement to the action we watch on TV. It’s also devolved into one of the most negative communities in sports.
Whether it be how a player is performing, or what they are wearing, or what they have said, or a decision they made, or even the number of commercials shown during a telecast, the aura of Golf Twitter is anything but positive. True, there are smatterings of positivity and support for the game’s biggest moments; however these are the minority of interactions we all see (and engage with) during the golf season.
To be clear, this is not me simply being pessimistic. The community’s largest accounts commonly rely on snark, sarcasm, and sometimes downright harassment in attempts at humor and retweets. It is a practice that is rewarded with follows, likes, and revenue sharing programs (if you’re a subscriber). While the intent is to reward any engagement for the platform’s largest accounts, users have discovered what works best to boost their numbers. There’s a reason why tabolid magazines spend so much on their covers and headlines.
Negativity online isn’t reserved to the world of golf, of course. Recent studies have shown that 44% of social media users report having experienced online harassment or abuse. Over 37% of adults have reported being exposed to false or misleading information. As the age of users get younger, the percentage of young adults who feel sad or depressed increases. When a user already struggles with mental health, 62% report being negatively impacted further as a result of social media interactions. Suicidal ideation increased 25% between the years of 2009 to 2017. In a way, social media would be great if it wasn’t for all the people using it.
A tool is only as useful (or not) as the people using it for a purpose. Social media is a necessary tool for public figures to have in their repertoire. Professional athletes rely on social media primarily as a tool to market their individual brands to the masses. Fans (or “haters”) will respond in kind, letting those athletes know exactly what they think. The athlete (or their PR team) can choose to respond or not. It seems simple on paper, but when an athlete chooses to dip their toes into the social media waters for the first time, things get messy.
Look no further than the much anticipated return of Anthony Kim to pro golf and, in turn, social media. Kim’s early X.com posts were lighthearted and engaging, innocently sharing updates on his return to pro golf. He introduced his fans to his new family, his road on recovery, and more. Then he started interacting with the replies and negativity quickly crept in. The honeymoon stage ended in a flash as Kim and Golf Channel lightning rod Brandel Chamblee fell in line with what has become all too familiar in Golf Twitter’s sandbox.
So what’s the solution?
The “easy” answer is for everyone to think twice before they post. It’s also the least helpful and most unlikely solution. I propose the first step is to uniformly agree that social media as a marketing tool can be very useful while being devastatingly dangerous as a public forum or town square. This is different from censorship. Instead, it would be an admittance that 90% of the content found on social is useless banter that runs of the risk of doing more harm than good. We, as a collective, are the problem.
We are the only ones who can shift the atmosphere, even if it means neglecting some fantasy of online popularity or acceptance.
