On February 25, Schilling took to Twitter to announce that his daughter would be attending Salve Regina; below is the text of that tweet:
"Congrats to Gabby Schilling who will pitch for the Salve Regina Seahawks next year!!"
The responses that not only he got, but also messages sent to his daughter's Twitter were shocking. Various people threatened to physically and sexually assault his daughter and many others favorited these tweets. Schilling quickly began responding to these tweets, while also doing a little research into the identities of the people behind those Twitter accounts. Very quickly he had their names, addresses, occupations, schools, and telephone numbers... a good lesson that there is no such thing as "private" when it comes to social media. Schilling has been in contact with the employers, coaches, and schools of some of these people and they are now facing the consequences of their tweets.
It seems that in the online, digital world, people are very willing to say things, threaten, and harass others, saying things that they most likely would not in person. Celebrity personalities deal with these types of things all the time (See Jimmy Kimmel's "Celebrity Mean Tweets). However sometimes normal people fall victim to these types of things.
In 2013 when the Red Sox were in the World Series, the team had a contest in which they asked fans on Twitter why they deserve to go to Game 1. Your post needed 20 retweets to qualify, then the Red Sox would choose the winner. Kelly was pregnant at the time and she tweeted that we would name the baby "Fenway" if they gave us the tickets. We got the tickets, but not before there were vulgar tweets sent Kelly's way from people who were angry they had not won.
What are your thoughts concerning this issue... either in general terms or the Schilling situation specifically.