NFL player T.J. Lang wrote two tweets on Monday night after his Green Bay Packers lost under dubious circumstances to the Seattle Seahawks and the messages instantly went viral.
How viral? This viral: As of Wednesday morning one tweet had garnered in excess of 68,000 retweets and 17,000 favorites. More than 55,000 of those retweets came in the first 45 minutes after he shared the message. A second tweet he posted shortly after now has more than 95,000 retweets and 27,000 favorites.
Lang’s profane and, ahem, rather direct tweets may lead to a substantial fine by the NFL’s corporate enforcers, but he’ll still have something to show for them beyond just cred on the street and in the locker room â€" namely, more than 90,000 new Twitter followers.
Tuesday night, Lang took a few seconds to give his new audience a digital nod with a message most of us follower-hoarding Twitter users can only dream of writing one day:
S/O to my 90k new followers.
â€" TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 26, 2012
At the start of Monday night’s game, Lang had just more than 20,000 followers. At time of writing, he had 116,000. If you’ve been living under a rock â€" or just taking extreme lengths to avoid pro football’s larger-than-ever penetration of the national conversation â€" here’s what happened in between:
The Packers lost the game after last-second Hail Mary pass by Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was ruled a touchdown by one referee and judged an interception by another. Replays showed the interception call should have stood, but the pass was called a touchdown and Seattle won amid much controversy.
Immediately, fans, media and other NFL players on Twitter decided the play to be a moment of historic ignominy and a tipping point in the NFL’s ongoing labor dispute with its regular officials’ union. Under-qualified replacement officials culled from the boondocks of organized football have overseen the NFL preseason and first three weeks of the regular season.
Just minutes after the game ended, Lang wrote his viral tweet. This is it:
Got fucked by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl
â€" TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 25, 2012
Forty minutes later, Lang fired off this tweet:
Fuck it NFL.. Fine me and use the money to pay the regular refs.
â€" TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 25, 2012
The next day, Lang returned to Twitter to say he stood by his original messages, but had just one point of contrition. “Only thing I regret from my tweets are the F bombs,†he wrote. “Sorry bout that.â€
Despite Lang’s lukewarm apology, there’s a lesson here for athletes on Twitter: Raw honesty pays off in social media. To be sure, keeping it too real can go wrong, but candid thoughts and access to athletes’ minds and experiences during transcendent moments are what makes Twitter a treat for sports fans in the first place. And Lang’s not the only one to astronomically add followers by taking off all filters; NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski gained more than 100,000 in less than two hours when he live-tweeted photos from the Daytona 500 after an explosion and fire on the racetrack.
Were Lang’s tweets awesome to you, or should he have exercised a little more self-restraint? Give us your take in the comments.
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