Doesn't everyone want to be loved?

How much would you need to be paid in order to let millions of people make fun of you, whenever they want to?

I saw that Evan Fournier tweet and had two thoughts: 1) man he looks bad and 2) boy that wouldn’t be fun to be in the public eye, getting roasted by every choob who carries around a little mini-computer that tracks their every movement.

I looked closer and realized the pic was from a video game. And apparently, Fournier has an issue with how he looks in video games on the regular. (Try looking weird in real life, bro).

See that? That’s not cool! Here I am talking about how unpleasant it would be to get mocked by random crackerjacks, and… My hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Maybe that’s why I can respect a guy like Kawhi so much. Kawhi doesn’t care about what people think. Kawhi drove some old 1997 Tahoe and used coupons even after signing a multi-million dollar deal, do you think he’s losing sleep over what @DonkeyBallz69 has to say after a tough game? No way.

Does Kawhi even have a Twitter account? If he does but only has, like, one funny tweet, I’m going to be so pissed. That was my idea… Oh my goodness. It’s almost as good as I dreamed.

If we took a poll to determine the most sensitive NBA player, we ALL know the runaway winner.

For Kevin Durant, he can’t win. I can’t imagine it’s enjoyable to Andy Dufresne his way through that vile and shit-smelling foulness that is Twitter. But if he engages with fans, especially if he’s talking some trash, it’s always interpreted as some insecure move by a man desperate to be loved and appreciated.

Doesn’t everyone want to be loved and appreciated? What’s wrong with that? It’s part of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs!

By and large, I would bet that KD has grown pretty numb to the criticism. He’s at least developed some means of dealing with all this noise. But the noise has been pretty damn sick. I mean, look at this. Maybe pointing out the absurdity in public strips these words of some of their power. Maybe clapping back at fools does the same thing.

I get that the anonymity of being online provides some distance that emboldens people to say things they would (hopefully) never say in the real world. But is it that unusual to feel a bit sad if thousands of people were regularly calling you weak and impugning your character?

One way of looking at criticism amidst the modern media landscape is, “well, that’s the tradeoff for making millions of dollars.” To some degree, that is (and has been) true. Life in the public eye has always carried a certain cost. There is a price to pay for fame, and maybe Durant is sensitive. Maybe being wired like Kawhi — at least for peace of mind — is a better option.

The NBA social media landscape doesn’t seem awesome (it doesn’t seem so great in the regular world either).

So what’s the modern player to do? Hell, what do any of us do? Social media isn’t going anywhere, it’s up to us to decide how to engage with it. Maybe a few brave souls follow Steve Kerr and JJ Redick into the wild and burn the whole enterprise.

Listen to Redick talk about it:

"It's a dark place," he says of social media. "It's not a healthy place. It's not real. It's not a healthy place for ego"—he pauses slightly—"if we're talking about some Freudian shit. It's just this cycle of anger and validation and tribalism. It's scary, man."

The irony of someone trying to start a media company warning people about the media isn’t lost on me. Just you wait and see what other hypocrisies I shall unveil.

You won’t be surprised that I find the nuclear option (delete it all, move to the woods) to be very viable. When it comes to social media, you can find a lot of wisdom from some pretty simple advice — don’t come in here.

Yes, I know there’s no movie if she doesn’t go in there…

Go ahead and @ me. See if I reply.