No one can dispute the massive talents of Texans defensive end J.J. Watt, a three-time NFL defensive player of the year in only five seasons. He’s the best defensive player in football, and the Texans and their fans should be thrilled to have him.
Watt also has an inspiring story, from being under-recruited out of high school to being moved to tight end by Central Michigan to walking on at Wisconsin to delivering pizzas to make ends meet to becoming a first-round pick to becoming a guy who seems destined to land in the Hall of Fame. It’s an American tale that should be told, and celebrated.
But those talents and that story don’t provide Watt with a lifetime exemption from criticism for matters unrelated to football. He presently deserves some criticism for his inconsistent attitude toward social media -- and for his reaction to the criticism he has received.
“I think we have social media and people want to see access, they want to know what you’re doing, they want day-to-day, what’s going on in his life?” Watt told reporters on Wednesday. “Then every single thing you do becomes a story, whether it’s a tweet, whether it’s an Instagram post, whether it’s a snapchat, every single thing becomes a story so I think if people don’t want to see what I’m doing they should probably stop following me.”
Watt apparently doesn’t realize the fairly obvious connection between his acknowledgement that “people want to see access, they want to know what you’re doing” and his frustration that people react when they get the access they want. People don’t want to know what a star football player is doing so they can not react to it. Moreover, his social-media activity “becomes a story” for the same reason that “people want to see access.” Media companies (like this one) know that the fans are interested in the things a guy like Watt says and does, so those things he says and does get repeated and discussed.
Watt presumably understands how the process of reacting to social media works, given that he once had a strong reaction to the decision of Titans quarterback Zach Mettenberger to post selfies on Twitter. If Watt didn’t want to see what Mettenberger was doing, Watt should have simply stopped following him.
It’s possible that Watt realizes the connection, but that he’s not willing either to accept it or to proceed with his social media activity in a way that shows he understands that everything he posts becomes a story. It’s the public-figure equivalent of the Miranda warnings; anything you say can and will be used against you. Whether Watt likes it or not, that’s just how it is.
Watt also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between “doing good things” and using social media as a way to tell the world, “Look at all the good things I do!” The former is fine; the latter invites suspicion that the person doing good things is doing them for the attention and praise and brand-building that comes with it.
“I think one of the problems with all the social media we have nowadays is it becomes a cynical world,” Watt also said Wednesday. But the world has always been cynical, and a certain amount of it is good. Otherwise, we’re all just a bunch of sheep, accepting everything at face value and never exposing the frauds that a sheep-only world would cause to proliferate.
Speaking of that specific barnyard animal, Watt once said this on (where else?) Twitter: “A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of a sheep.” Apparently, Watt has had a change of heart. Because all of a sudden he seems to be worried about what the sheep are saying about the things the lion is saying and doing.
Still, Watt insisting that decisions like posting proof he made it to work on the day of severe flooding that claimed multiple lives in Houston or to continuously suggest he may not play football much longer is a non-story doesn’t make it a non-story. If anything, his position that these stories are non-stories make them even bigger stories, since there’s now a constant chance that they’ll be followed by a reaction from Watt that makes the supposed non-story even more of a non-non-story.
The easy solution for Watt would be to embrace a lower profile, posting fewer things on Twitter, doing fewer radio interviews, and inviting fewer journalists to visit him at his palatially rustic log cabin in Wisconsin. Of course, if he now chooses to do only the bare minimum, people will criticize him for that.
The truth is that a guy of Watt’s profile will be criticized by someone for anything that he says, doesn’t say, does, and/or doesn’t do. It’s part of the price of fortune and fame. The sooner he realizes that, the sooner he’ll begin to figure out how to strike the balance between being perceived as a guy who does good things for the right reasons and being viewed as a guy who simply craves attention and praise.
