Select Kentucky ‘fans’ were incredibly awful to Octavius Ellis on twitter during and following Saturday’s game. I didn’t touch on it because I was not going to make myself read the hatred and ignorance of people who claim to be fans. Real fans don’t go on twitter and rip on players. Let’s rewind that a step back, people with maturity and common decency don’t go on twitter and needlessly insult people. It’s one of the worst things about twitter and the internet in general. It gives a platform to the people who don’t need one. How it makes anyone feel better to sit behind their keyboard and send out ugly, hateful tweets to people they don’t know is something I can’t even comprehend.
I put fans in quotes in the first paragraph because the actual Kentucky fans out there don’t spew hateful bullshit. Actual fans of a team have some pride in themselves and pride in the university. More pride than it takes to insult college athletes on twitter. There is a distinction to make.
Octavius Ellis was an easy target. He is the UC player most prone to getting heated. He delivered a flagrant two foul against Purdue to get kicked out of that game. He was the one mixing it up with Kentucky’s big men. There’s actually a post on Bleacher Report about Ellis’ physicality and some of the fouls he was a part of. Not liking how someone is playing is one thing. Mentioning them on twitter and saying they play dirty is bad enough. Taking it as far to hurling racial slurs at someone because they did something in a basketball game that you didn’t like is mind blowing to me. I don’t understand it all.
Ashley Judd is Kentucky’s highest profile fan. She’s at all the games, she’s a die hard, she’s a lifer, she’s always there. She received a slew of hateful comments from Arkansas ‘fans’ leveling out death threats and saying horrible, misogynistic things to her because she said the team played dirty. She’s standing up for herself and others, having written an essay that some of you may have read and by attempting to press charges against some of the jerks.
Mo Egger wrote about some of the Ellis abuse and mentioned Judd. She responded with this post on her Facebook page:
As the conversation about online gender violence and bullying becomes increasingly irrepressible, important content is becoming more visible. Stay tuned both to Twitter and this FB for important articles and personal testimonies, and most crucially, actions you can take.
For example, Mo Egger of ESPN 1530 writes a shocking piece that includes unconscionable examples of abuse and heckling directed at University of Cincinnati basketball player Octavius Ellis. It is a unique kind of devious emotional violence that mocks or minimizes child abuse and family tragedy.
Just as many Arkansas fans apologized to me for what a few of their fan base directed at me, with the whole of my soul, on my knees, I apologize to Octavius and his entire family for remarks made by some fans of my team.
I also remind us, as I did Arkansas fans, that although this behavior is lamentably located within a sport and a time year that is supposed to give us something dizzyingly fun to share, the rage is a phenomenon that seizes our entire culture and society. Just as my orginal tweet was merely a delivery system ready abusers seized upon, so is Ellis’ family narrative and some of his behavior those close to him describe as “admittedly exasperating.”
In the hatred directed at me, my being a survivor of sexual abuse and rape was also distorted and leveraged at me in bizarre ways. With pernicious creativity, some managed to yoke my being a rape survivor, my age, and marital status to their slurs.
This happens. It should not.
What are you going to do about it?
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