As part of the "Enhance Your Experience" series of posts sponsored by Samsung, we are writing about how technology impacts our fandom. For me, no technology has made me feel creepier or more psychotic than Twitter.
Twitter has revolutionized the way I follow Georgetown basketball. No longer is my fan experience confined to watching the games, reading various articles and blogs and talking with friends. With Twitter I am able to get unfiltered thoughts of the players in all their abbreviation-heavy glory.
After The Jump read about the ways Twitter has changed my fan experience.
Henry Sims, by any measurable statistic, has been a disappointment in his first two years at Georgetown. Similar to Vernon Macklin, another highly recruited high schooler, his game does not seem to suit Georgetown's style of play. In many senses, Sims has been a bigger disappointment because he has barely contributed, whereas Macklin could spell Roy Hibbert and do a serviceable job on the defensive end. Vernon Macklin drove me crazy as a fan. I couldn't understand why he wasn't better, or how he was so highly touted. Yet, I love Sims. Not for any reason other than I think he is hilarious on Twitter, which makes him inherently more likeable. I cheer for Sims, hope he succeeds this year, and treat him as if he were a family member. This is purely because he rips on the size of Jason Clark's laptop and calls himself regularman.
My favorite player on this year's team should be Austin Freeman. He is the best player in the Big East, valiantly battled diabetes, and is a co-captain. He has been a four year starter and a consummate student athlete. Yet, Julian Vaughn is the Hoya I like the most. Does it have anything to do with his on court performance? No. In fact, he sorta sucked from February on last year. But he interacts with Casual Hoya on Twitter, and that's just delightful.
I also like to play psychiatrist on varying players' personal lives strictly from their Tweets. Jessie Sapp and Chris Wright wished one another luck on Twitter recently. "I guess their *alleged* brawl and subsequent submarining of Sapp's senior season is a thing of the past, they both have matured so nicely," I think to myself. When any of the players Tweets something emotional about a girl, I wonder how it will affect their basketball games. "Uh oh, Austin and his girlfriend are fighting again, hope he uses this as motivation at practice." That is crazy talk, and it makes me feel very sad about the current state of my life.
I have completely forgotten about Markel Starks because of Twitter. He is a lightning fast point guard who will start for three years and probably be the first guard off the bench as the season progresses. All I can focus on is how hard Nate Lubick and Aaron Bowen are working, and how nice it is that they have assimilated smoothly with the older players. I assume this purely because I saw pictures on Twitter of Bowen in North Carolina with Chris Wright and Sims. I have no idea if Starks has been hanging out with other team members, because he has privacy settings on his Twitter. I can't believe I am actually writing this.
Lastly, Twitter is a really good way to get a feel for how the players are handling successes and failures in an unfiltered environment. I attributed our successes in the Big East Tournament to the #savagelife movement that they were all talking about during that week in March. To me, #savagelife meant that the players were hungry and playing with a chip on their shoulder. And of course, there is no better correlation to on-court success than trending topics on Twitter. When the players retired #savagelife and started #swaglife, I knew they were too cocky. For a team that didn't handle successes well, #swaglife was a kiss of death. Lo and behold, three days later we lost to Ohio in the most embarrassing loss of the JT3 era.
I need a life.