Australian Olympic swimming sensation Stephanie Rice is in a lot of hot water after making certain homophobic comments over her Twitter account. In a surprising outburst the athletic beauty let rip an insult in response to an Australian rugby win over South Africa; she tweeted ‘ suck on that you fa#g#ts’. She later deleted the offending tweet after coming to her senses but by that stage the damage was done. She is now battling to save her reputation and has already lost one advertising campaign. One or her gay friends has decided to stand by her; even though he admits that what she did was very offensive and thoughtless. In order to stem the anger from the gay community she gave a tearful news conference, but it will probably take more than this to satisfy everyone.
It really is quite astounding that somebody as famous as Stephanie Rice would risk her reputation by making this type of comment on Twitter. She claims that she was a bit naïve about the whole thing and got lost to her emotions but really – what did she suspect. This little outburst has cost her money because of the loss of an advertising contract, it is also sure to make her feel very embarrassed. You have to wonder if this will turn her off using Twitter altogether.
I think that Stephanie Rice has provided a good example for the rest of us. We may not be famous by what we say on places like Twitter or other social media could come back to bite us. It is so easy to forget that almost anybody could be reading our comments – do we really know who are followers are. A flippant mark we make as a joke could easily put us in a lot of hot water if we don’t think before we tweet.
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