On December 25, Beijing time, Lakers star James released a personal social media, posting a picture with three Spider-Men pointing to each other as backgrounds, representing "new crown", "flu" and "cold", with the text: Everyone help me. It seems that the difference between these diseases is not clear. But as soon as it was released, it was angrily criticized by many netizens and journalists in the United States, and everyone thought that James, as a public figure, was incredibly irresponsible and misleading to the public. Some netizens also posted a comparison chart of the number of people who died in the United States in the past two years because of the new crown, influenza, and colds, from this chart we can find that the new crown has caused 810,000 deaths in the United States, the flu has caused more than 370,000 deaths, and the fatality rate of colds is 0. Moreover, the seven family members of the famous star Downs died of new crown pneumonia, which caused him an indelible blow, so everyone believes that James' remarks as an adult and superstar are extremely irresponsible.
And the NBA's historical scoring champion, who has been retired for many years, "Tiangou" Abdul-Jabbar also released a long article criticizing James's remarks, he pointed out:
James has 106 million social media followers, and the content he posts naturally has a very high impact, and by posting ignorant memes, LeBron encourages hesitation to get vaccinated, which puts lives and livelihoods at risk. And Abdul-Jabbar cites a slew of numbers to illustrate that COVID-19 has affected African Americans more than other races, and that black communities need influencers to encourage people to get vaccinated, rather than the current banterous attitude.
And after today's victory over the Rockets, James responded to Abdul-Jabbar's criticism in an interview:
"No, I'm not going to respond to Abdul-Jabbar at all. If you read that post and you read the caption, you know I'm asking genuinely and sincerely, 'Help me.' 'Help me figure everything out, just as all of us are trying to figure out this outbreak.' We are all trying to figure out the new coronavirus and its new variant strains;
But in any case, as Abdul-Abdul-Jabbar said, James's influence is really too great, for this sensitive topic, it is better not to touch it in the future, after all, there are thousands of netizens, even if the social media is normal content, they will sometimes distort and even maliciously interpret. And some people who don't know why they will also misunderstand the meaning of certain words, and if they really cause some negative effects, they will not be worth the loss.
As there is an old Chinese saying: More words are lost. Especially for celebrities, even if the United States advocates freedom of speech, but James, as a black athlete with strong influence, if he intentionally or unintentionally releases some sensitive content, it is very likely that he will be shot by some politicians and hostile forces, which will have a negative impact on his public opinion environment, so Old Zhan, you must think twice about surfing the Internet in the future!