The Power of Athletes

What is it about athletes that make people worship them so much? Or even actors or musicians for that matter. Is it because we are jealous of their fortune and fame? Do we envy them and wish to be in their place? If in the same room is Derek Jeter and the world's greatest chemist, I would bet, especially in America, that most people in that room would try to talk to Jeter. Simply because America as a whole values his particular skill set more than that of the chemist. Right or wrong, that is simply the case.

I feel that this obsession can be tied into something we discussed in class, social capital. Athletes nowadays have so much social influence it is unbelievable. Millions of millions of people follow their favorite athletes on Twitter, like them on Facebook, watch their YouTube videos. Athletes are now being paid to endorse products in their Tweets. Michael Vick, Eagles QB, has tweeted promoting McDonalds Monopoly game. Newspapers are paying athletes to tweet about their articles so their millions of followers will then in turn read the paper. And with all the social influence, social capital, these athletes have, people DO read articles simply because they posted them on the timeline, or mentioned them in Twitter.

Whether or not this is a good thing is yet to be seen. It is always dangerous for people to have such large social capital for no reason other than being great at a certain sport. There are times where this can be a bad thing. An example I talked about in a previous post is when Rashard Mendenhall tweeted about Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. He questioned who was actually behind those attacks and spoke down about the Americans who were celebrating Bin Laden's death. Millions of people read that outrageous tweet just because he is an NFL running back, despite the fact that he is obviously out of touch with reality and a bad American.

We just live in a culture right now where athletes possess an incredible amount of social capital. Is it a good thing? Who really knows, the only thing that we do know is that with the increasing presence of social media in our everyday lives, that social capital will only continue to grow.