Twenty years ago, water cooler talk at the office on a Monday after weekend games was the norm. Sure, there was trash talk, but it wasn’t to the level it is today. Unlike the civilized trash talk of my team is better than your team, social media has taken it to new heights. Certainly, there were limits as to how far trash talk could go at work and school, or disciplinary action would be the consequences. But social media has no limits.

With Facebook, TikTok, and now X (formerly known as Twitter), social media can definitely be a festival of hate among sports fans. There isn’t a day that passes where fans of other teams will insult, speak vile things, use profanity-filled posts, or any other type of savage means to thrust the spewing onto other fans.

Now, there is a new type of fan that wasn’t seen before when social media didn’t exist. That is the fan that everyone loves to hate because of their own arrogance, believing their false information is correct. That is the fan that comes across as hating his own team that they claim to be a fan of.

Instead of cheering for the players of the team, despite how good the player may be, they intentionally look for excuses to mock and ridicule the player to other fans in the fanbase. Yes, that person did exist before when social media wasn’t around. But that was the person who was just criticizing bad players, not elite ones.

The Miami Dolphins fanbase on social media is wild. They are a fun group of people. You have fans from all walks of life. And for the most part, fans are defending their quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa. Although these days, it appears he does a good job of doing that himself.

What makes the trash talking different on social media is that fans now have the option to hide behind anonymity. Fans can create nicknames and fake names and have fake pictures of themselves in their profiles.  The anonymity allows the trash-talking to be taken to an extreme level.

Sometimes, the trash-talking on social media gets to be too much and crosses the line. That is when the block button comes in handy, although X has now talked about eliminating it. It’s become ironic when people post when others block them, claiming the blockers are soft. The irony is that if the ones posting pictures of being blocked by someone weren’t offended, or should we say soft themselves, then they wouldn’t see the need to let the world know someone blocked them.

Social media is a tough place to live in today among sports fans. If you’re easily offended, you’ll have difficulty navigating your feelings when you share opinions that others disagree with. It can be fun. But it also can be messy. If you choose to be a sports fan on social media and participate with your opinions, be prepared to be part of the festivities of carnage.

I suggest always trying to be as nice as possible to others. Realize that there are high school teenagers on social media as well, so there is no need to try to attack or insult others about a football game when you disagree with them.

Finally, I will leave you with this. Early on in my sports writing career, sports analyst Tim Brando gave me the best advice about responding to those hiding behind anonymous names when they attack you on social media. That was to ignore them and continue to enjoy life, basically.