I was sitting at a banquet for one of my summer jobs, paying very little attention to the speaker trying to tell the high school honors students whom I was employed to mentor about how they would grow up to make something of themselves when, for the first time in my life, I made something of myself.
Well, my Twitter self, that is.
Hello, my name is Corey Blaine, I use Twitter and up until July 15, I had aimlessly tweeted at friends, family and the occasional athlete or celebrity.
In tweeting at the athletes and celebrities I follow, my only hope was a casual response, something to tell me that they had glanced at what I had to say and maybe even thought about it for a split second. In the case of that fateful day at 12:27 p.m., Sarah Hall — an impressive runner who happens to be married to the fastest American marathoner — not only tweeted back at me, but threw me a retweet bone as well. In that instant, my Twitter existence went from laughable and only for my personal enjoyment to somehow validated. I immediately sent out a text to my twin brother (a kid in Cincinnati who incessantly tweets Reds players to no avail) to let him know of the joy of my newfound Twitter fame. I had made it, and I wanted everyone to know.
Later on that day, one of my runner friends sent me a text about the retweet, to which I graciously expressed my excitement while trying to sound like it had happened before. However, all of that passed within the day. My Twitter fame had come and gone, and I only gained one follower in the process.
We don’t tweet athletes because we think we’ll get fame out of it. We only hope that somewhere in their mansion, they’re on their phone reading through tweets and seeing what we had to say. For me, it wasn’t about becoming best friends with Sarah Hall, it was just the fact that out in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., the lovely Mrs. Hall read what I had to say and responded. For those few seconds, she was a person that wanted to interact with me, not just one of the fastest American women in the mile this year. It’s why my brother Caleb will always tweet at Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips, because we want to think of these athletes as people, too.
Twitter has brought us the added level of realism to our favorite athletes that we never knew could exist before. The era of fan mail has thankfully ended and been replaced by 140 characters of encouragement, jokes or questions. All we ask in return is that these superstars making millions of dollars take the time to read our 140-character offering and maybe respond every once in a while.
If not, that’s OK. I’ll just keep right on tweeting at my favorite athletes, Caleb will keep tweeting at the Reds and if anyone ever does ever respond, we’ll feel special for that day. Sarah Hall’s quick retweet was able to teach me that sometimes a quick mention is all we need to keep the belief alive that our favorite athletes really are people too.
Corey Blaine is a junior in the McDonough School of Business. The Bleacher Seats appears every Friday.
