How Twitter Ends Our Hero Worship

We get a lot of press releases that don't apply to us/are completely self-serving, but one today caught my eye. Not because of the subject matter, but because of what it says about how we regard our athletes in 2009.

The franchisee of a chain pizza restaurant in St. Catharines, Ontario, has started an online campaign to get Shaquille O'Neal to visit his restaurant. That's it; pretty simple, right? They've started a Facebook group and a Twitter campaign to enlist as many people as possible in the hopes that O'Neal will catch wind and decide to pay a visit to Boston Pizza at the Pen Centre mall. They'll buy him a meal, and 10 percent of the day's sales go to a local children's rehabilitation center (absolutely a good cause). Here's the press release.

Presumably any appearance by O'Neal would be hyped up, and the increased sales that day would more than cover the 10 percent donation, making the restaurant the clear winners (with the charity coming second). But what's in it for Shaq? It's more than an hour's drive to the nearest NBA city, making this no easy appearance. But knowing how he loves goofy stunts like this, I wouldn't put it past him.

But here's my question for the folks at Boston Pizza: who do you think you are?

I don't mean that in any disparaging way. On the contrary, I'm impressed. O'Neal has made himself so accessible via technology that we feel justified in reaching out directly to him. Type a few words into Twitter, attach the right hashtag, and Shaquille O'Neal — Shaq, one of the biggest stars on the planet! — will read what you have to say. That still blows my mind.

There was an era when athletes were just people, when you could drink with them in a hotel bar, or send your kid to their front door to ask for an autograph. Then television came along and suddenly the were larger than life, and we as common fans had no hope of interacting with them other than cheering for or booing them from our seats.

Ironically it's technology that's bringing us full circle. Communications are a two-way street now; you could scream at your TV before, but the players inside couldn't hear you. But they're always checking their Twitter.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing. (Though, of course, it's neither. It's just what it is.) Fans have always felt like we're owed something by athletes. They represent us, we pay their salary, etc. But now we can actually ask things of them. A Canadian pizza joint is asking a superstar basketball player to travel to their restaurant, and expects at least a decent chance of success. Says the restaurant's owner:

In the past, people never had the mediums to reach out to these celebrities to ask them to do something. As active social media users ourselves, it seemed like a great idea to reach out to Shaq in this manner."

But here's one of the bad parts about this new paradigm; we forget the old ways. It's nonsense that people never had ways to reach out to celebrities. A quick phone call to O'Neal's agent, inviting him to make a charity appearance, is something that's always been available. And arguably it would have been more effective here, because someone who's as accessible as O'Neal is bombarded with messages throughout the day. There's no guarantee he'll ever hear about Boston Pizza via Twitter, if it's lost in the shuffle of thousands of other Tweets. A call to his agent, which would have been the only way to do this thirty years ago, would have at least guaranteed them an audience.

It's clear that Twitter is permanently changing our relationships with our athletes, but it's happening faster than we can create societal norms for it. Can I invite Shaq to my birthday party? Do I have the right to badmouth him if he refuses? Does he have more of an obligation to answer me than another player who's not as involved on Twitter?

And, more pressing to a dwindling but vocal minority: with this access, where does that leave the press?

BPPenCentre [Twitter] Get Shaq to visit the Boston Pizza Pen Centre [Facebook]