By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
In the era of social media, information can be both fast and chaotic at the same time. Nikola Kalinic has experienced a heavy wave of misinformation and shares his experience on his latest EuroLeague blog post:
“I wanted to talk about social media and, as an example, I will use the fact that Nikola Kalinic, the Croatian football player, scored for Atletico Madrid this week. I don’t get confused with him that much lately, but I did this summer during the World Cup. At some point, he was ejected from the Croatian national team before the World Cup. Then Croatia went to the final and everybody started to curse me on Twitter thinking I was him. At first, I didn’t know what was happening, because I am not a big football fan. I thought, “Ok, maybe I said something wrong, but I don’t deserve all these bad words.” Then when I told them I was not that guy, then they called me a liar. Well, if you know who I am better than me…ok. It was crazy, and that makes me want to talk about social networks: they are getting out of people’s hands. It takes two clicks to see that there is another Nikola Kalinic who is a basketball player. The information is two clicks away, but it is easier to just comment without checking anything.
It is a bit sad to see that we have so much power in our hands. With a few clicks, you have access to all the knowledge in the world right there, in your mobile phone, in all history, and we are using it to check sports results and watch reality shows. I think about all those scientists who wished they had that much knowledge in their hands; they would have made even bigger discoveries. Can you imagine what Nikola Tesla or Albert Einstein would have done with all that easily-accessible knowledge? Instead, we use it to watch funny videos and take selfies.”