I think I started following him before he protected his tweets. And on tweeting in general, I have mixed feelings about following players. Any time one of them mentions going out, it’s all I can do not to respond, “Please be careful; have a designated driver; program cab company numbers in your phone; are you 21? hold your temper; the bratwurst isn’t worth it.” I used to get a little nervous when someone tweeted about being bored in class, but there likely were a few occasions cough-federal income tax-cough when I might have done the same.

Look, i love Clay and i don’t think he meant any harm, but you need to understand Kyle that last a season many of our athletes on twitter took a lot of rude & downright stupid comments after every bad performance, and not just in lost games. It was embarrassing to say the least. Grown men & women calling out teenagers bc they didn’t play the game the way you liked. As if any of the ones dishing out the criticism were ever good enough to have played D1 ball themselves to know of which they speak…

Everyone has the right to their opinion, fair enough, but you don’t have the right to call out a kid on twitter (of all places) just bc your a fan or even a season ticket holder. Seriously.

And Kyle, there’s a reason why Brandon won’t let you follow him on twitter. Here’s his latest tweet to you & Clay:

“@thinkingbulldog- put my video tweet on his blog? Hah. Ok. Thank you to all the fans who can converse w/ me without criticism.”

Love your blog & your perspective, but please think about what Brandon just said. Think about what you’re doing by encouraging comments that call out players to their faces like this. Last year was last year, let it go. Lets all be mature adults, and respect & encourage players. Get behind them & wish them well. That’s our job. Telling them how to play better & what you expect of them on twitter isn’t. And as Brandon just proved, to them those comments just aren’t welcome. Lets respect that please.

I want to be very clear: I am in no way critical of Brandon Boykin. His Twitter feed is protected, and, although I sent a request to be allowed to read his Twitter feed, I have not received the approval to do so. (I read nothing into that fact; it simply is a statement of where matters stand.)

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have posted what ThinkingBulldog re-Twittered. (I refuse to use “tweet” as a verb when not referring to conversations involving birds.) To the extent that I thought about it at all (which wasn’t much), I guess I figured that, if it had been re-Twittered, it was public domain and fair game; looking back on it, I probably shouldn’t have repeated a protected Twitter update in a public forum. That was my mistake, which I regret.

I didn’t misunderstand Boykin to be emphasizing video montages at the expense of pregame preparations, and I don’t think I’ve been critical of Boykin as a player. I was simply agreeing with what I took to be ThinkingBulldog’s point. I have not seen the Twitter update allyugadawgs quoted (“@thinkingbulldog- put my video tweet on his blog? Hah. Ok. Thank you to all the fans who can converse w/ me without criticism”), but, if she has quoted it accurately (and I have no reason to doubt that she has), I find it hard to believe that it was not directed at me, which I find troubling, because I believe it means he misunderstood my point.

All of this is to say, NCT, you are right that electronic media are especially susceptible to misinterpretation. I try to be responsive to reasonable constructive criticisms, and allyugadawgs’s earlier comment (which I linked to above) caused me to re-examine my relationship with Twitter. Since then, I have tried to be more active on Twitter: I post comments there that are not directly related to postings here at the weblog; I follow several other people’s Twitter feeds; I sometimes select nuggets of interest from Twitter and post them here as fanshots.

This is, however, the second time this summer that I have linked to and responded to what someone has written on Twitter, only to have it become a much larger deal than I ever imagined when it offended several people I did not intend to offend. I am inclined to believe that my initial inclination regarding Twitter (viz., that it is not a medium conducive to my manner of communicating) was correct. I need to re-evaluate whether I need to be as “engaged” on Twitter as I am, and whether it is beneficial for me to quote here anything I read there.

There was a posting I wrote late last week, which I intended to put up this afternoon. In light of recent events, I doubt whether that posting would be well received, so I will hold off until tomorrow. Please feel free to carry on in the meantime. Thanks again.