Mike Tyson Confronts Cyberbullying and Warns Potential Keyboard Warriors
Mike Tyson earned his nickname “the baddest man on the planet” for his vicious style in the ring. Outside of it, he’s been known to take out his aggression on those who tend to disagree with him. In his post-fight career the former boxing champ has transformed into a social media champ with more than 30 million followers on his social media channels. Tyson recently shared his thoughts on those people who find a little too much courage sitting in anonymity and typing on a keyboard and offered a warning.
Mike Tyson joined social media early
Mike Tyson was an early adopter of social media. In 2012, he was interviewed about the growing use of the different technologies and said he liked it because it was something new and he “liked to be ahead of the pack with the new. If you don’t embrace it, you fall behind, so I always like to try to new networks.”
Tyson said that social media has completely changed the way athletes interact with fans, and he appreciates that. “If you’re an athlete it used to be just the press conference after the game or after the fight, and that was where you said your piece,” Tyson told Mashable. “Now it’s 24/7. For where I’m at now in my life now, social media is great. I have a lot of positive things to share.”
The always candid Tyson admitted social media is a good thing now, but it would have been problematic had it existed when he was still fighting. “It’s probably good social media didn’t exist when I was fighting — you wouldn’t have wanted to read my tweets when I was fighting. I wouldn’t have had anything positive to put out there.”
Tyson is a champ on social media
Before the advent of social media, it was hard to fully understand the scope of Mike Tyson or any other celebrity’s worldwide reach except through news footage of the person in places around the world. More than 15 years after retiring, Mike Tyson is still one of the most recognizable athletes on the planet and his social media accounts confirm that.
Tyson has a staggering number of followers on the various social media channels. On YouTube and his “Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson” podcast, he has 1.34 million subscribers. Shockingly, that’s the lowest following he has on any platform. On Twitter, that number increases to an impressive 5.5 million followers.
Mike Tyson takes it to another level on Instagram, where he regularly shares photos with his more than 12.1 million followers. Tyson’s biggest audience, however, is on Facebook, where he has a whopping 15.6 million fans and he regularly shares his positive thoughts and some of his famous quotes.
Mike Tyson has a warning for keyboard warriors
But as anyone who has spent any length of time on social media soon discovers, it can be a veritable cesspool filled with comments from people who have no fear of consequence for anything reprehensible or offensive that they might post. It’s a group many derisively refer to as keyboard warriors.
With such a large presence on social media, it’s not surprising Mike Tyson has his fair share of keyboard warriors. Tyson, who once provided the quotable quote, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” recently shared a derivative of that same quote to his Facebook page addressing those who might have keyboard courage.
“Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it,” Tyson wrote.
Mike Tyson has never been one short for words. And in this day and age when everybody has something to say, his message connects just like one of his famous uppercuts.
