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Nick Riewoldt of St Kilda looks on with disappointment. Slattery Images
So social media has humbled more Australian athletes. This time it’s St Kilda Saints trio Nick Dal Santo, Nick Riewoldt and Zac Dawson who were caught with their pants down; exposed for the world to see on Facebook, Twitter and undoubtedly hundreds of emails.
Seemingly the victims of a former “friend”, allegedly the same lady who made a complaint against two St Kilda players after claiming she became pregnant by a player she met during a school visit, the lewd photos swept Twitter and Facebook, leaving nothing to the imagination.
The photos were eventually taken offline and the lady’s Facebook account deleted by court order. But the damage was done. Such is the instantaneous nature of the Internet and social media that the photos spread like wildfire, and undoubtedly still linger in some dark corners of the web.
Undoubtedly embarrassed and ashamed by the photos, the players do, ultimately, have only themselves to blame. Having seen the photos, they seemed more than obliging to whoever was taking the photos, despite the full view they offered.
So ignoring the breach of privacy by whoever put those photos online, the players should surely know that as public personas, such photos could be used in some type of witch-hunt or revenge – fuelled through social media and jumped on by an Australian media who increasingly relies on such tabloid scandal to drive its own business.
Their failure to grasp this notion, and putting themselves in those positions with cameras present, is quite astonishing. Like former Canberra Raiders player Joel Monaghan and the poor canine he sullied, the presence of cameras recording such a lewd act should immediately set alarm bells ringing – even if their moral code and basic decency doesn’t.
What’s ironic here is how quickly athletes have embraced social media, yet so many of them fail to grasp its immediacy and reach.
Only recently we had Shane Warne openly flirting with model/actress Liz Hurley on Twitter for all their followers to see, only to be caught in the act and suffering the inevitable consequences of exposing their personal lives to the world. Having exposed so much of their private lives for everyone to see, can they genuinely be shocked when the media catches them out?
With their Twitter and Facebook fan pages updated directly from their phones, computers and iPads, a line of communication has been opened to fans which is, in most cases, completely uncensored by their minders, managers, agents and public relation representatives.
Social media has become their preferred method to interact with their fans by sharing their views (and photos) on whatever they feel like. Yet this exposes their personalities, for better or worse, in a manner unaccustomed to fans, who only see the refined “performer” on television.
You wouldn’t hear Stephanie Rice’s anti-gay slur in a press conference, that’s for certain.
So fans can see into athletes’ lives through the small window called social media; how they interact with people, the amount of time they have free away from their work and how they fill it, and their interests (through who the athlete follow and what they tweet about). Sometimes that window shows a very superficial and one-dimensional picture.
Blame it on Generation Y and their reliance on social media for human interaction, but so much of my generations’ lives are dependant on communication through a keyboard, sadly, and athletes are no different. This leads to stunted emotional growth, with selfish and attention seeking traits fostering in lives devoid of real human contact and superficial relationships.
The exposed Dal Santo openly spoke about how footballers and his generation use Facebook as a dating tool on Channel 9’s “The Footy Show” earlier this year, much to the bemusement of the “old school” Sam Newman. Some athletes even tweet from home on their iPhones and Blackberrys with the location settings on, so followers (and potential squeezes) can see where they are based.
If athletes choose to court such attention that is their business, but they must surely realise they are opening themselves up to public humiliation.
Sports stars’ behaviour will once again come into focus as this latest scandal plays out, with more photos involving more players set to hit the Internet, according to the publisher of the photos that did the rounds yesterday.
But the key point here is that leagues and clubs cannot act as full-time guardians for the thousands of professional athletes with so much free time, disposable income, and the overwhelming temptation to take advantage of their lot in life. And this combination is the reason why they appear to lead lives of superficiality and excess. Who wouldn’t in those circumstances?
What they do in the privacy of their own lives is their own choice.
As long as they are not breaking any laws then they are well within their rights to live as they wish (although you would hope they live to some form of moral code). But unless they do so with some discretion, they will continue to be exposed in such a manner – with only themselves to blame for failing to grasp this concept and living through their digital/computerised obsession.
Time to grow up and leave the lewd acts for behind closed doors, with cameras, Twitter and Facebook turned off.