The Rebels players’ and the Rebels team accounts on Twitter are fantastic. Especially in a sport-saturated media market such as Melbourne, distributing content and interacting with fans (and potential fans) via Twitter and Facebook would be central to their fan-base growth and brand-recognition.
Why I love the Rebels
James O’Connor and Kurtley Beale’s Australia Day shout-out
Their ongoing lookalike posts (see last Rebels post for more)
Laurie Weeks showing that Kimami Sitauti is capable of simultaneously exhibiting both traditionally masculine and feminine traits, and in doing so supporting Sandra Bem’s Gender Schema Theory (1981) where femininity and masculinity are seen as independent personality dimensions, rather than on the single continuum. In other words, it’s possible to exhibit a high degree of masculine traits (dominance/agression, self-reliance/personal control) and simultaneously a high degree of feminine traits (e.g. interpersonal sensitivity and warmth).
That Laurie was able to demonstrate his knowledge and understanding of Bem’s work through a single photo is truly laudable.
Hashtag Caution
If I could ask one thing of our modern rugby players it would be to check your hashtags carefully. James O’Connor sometimes uses a T instead of an R in his hashtags (see left). And I can understand why: especially on iPhone keyboards they are really close together and it’s an easy mistake to make.
Although this is usually a minor inconvenience, sometimes it changes the tone of a photo from an awesome, and very cute sponsor-mention tweet with adorable kids, into something unintentionally sinister (see right).
So the lesson, my wonderful players, is to please double-check your hashtagging, especially when sponsors and kids are involved.
Investigative journalism
Just while we’re on James, so many readers have asked the question ‘What is going on with his hair?’ Well, Social Pagers, I’ve done a fair bit of research on this question to answer this question and, thanks to this interview with Fox Sports, I think I’ve found it.
That’s right, his hair is a metaphor for his rugby. The hairstyle he wears during training is a pony tail, and his braids come out when his fancy footwork, lateral stepping and direction changes are more important than straight-line speed — known in the business as ‘dressage’.
You. Are. Welcome.
Romancing the Rebels
A quick straw poll tells me that 99 out of 100 players use their time on the massage or physio tables to tweet, text, Instagram and Facebook. But the Social Pages’ resident Cultural Expert, Lachlan Mitchell (@FakeLachlanMitc), is the 1 in 100 who chooses to spend this time reading a book. Now for some people, that he is capable of reading a book with more than 140 characters, without pictures, is enough to see him as the thinking woman’s dreamboat rugby player.
And those people may have imagined elaborate scenarios where they read books together with their legs intertwined, at a delightful little B&B with a quaint little fireplace while storms raged outside and the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung on the doorknob. And in those stories they could read for hours until he casts his book aside, looks across amorously and says… ‘Cat...’ Anyway, it’s what some people could be thinking when they look at this picture.
But I think Lachlan’s fan-base (as with all the other gents in question) may be on the way up with this photo….
Geez it takes an incredibly secure man to pose for a photo in freezing waters wearing DTs with his package out of the water.
Sick tan lines boys!
Probably my favourite photo of the week, though, is the B-side:
