A bit of a hassle.
Imagine being a sports star, you’re just there to be shot at on social media.
Whether it be a footballer missing a last minute free, a golfer missing a short putt or a jockey making a mistake on the final hurdle.
Ruby Walsh has experienced his fair share of abuse on social media and has opted to take a prolonged (possibly permanent) break from Twitter.
The veteran jockey was speaking on the latest episode of SportsJOE Live in Galway and wasn’t short of stuff to say when it came to the topic of social media.
“Twitter never appealed to me and it became part of a contract with Racing UK that I had to be on Twitter and then it became part of an advertising contract with Paddy Power,” the 38-year-old said.
“It didn’t appeal to me in the beginning and then what happened to me was that I’m sitting at home on the couch and I’m reading Twitter all day and all night and Gillian is giving out shite to me because I’m looking at Twitter, I’m not talking to her.
“I’m looking at Twitter as if it really happens what’s going on in the world but I’m that interested in Twitter.
“Maybe I’m an addictive kind of person so I began looking at Twitter and I’d be driving down the road and looking at Twitter and Twitter was taking over and then, of course, you’re getting all of this abuse and I kind of said to myself, I got on to the plane in Dublin Airport going to Cheltenham this year and I was sitting on the plane thinking ‘Has Twitter made my life better or worse?’ and the truth was it hadn’t done anything for my life.
“It hadn’t made it better it hadn’t made it worse. It didn’t really matter whether I was on it or whether I wasn’t, it didn’t matter. So I just deleted the app on the Sunday I went to Cheltenham and I never reinstated the app and is my life better after deleting the app? It’s definitely less hassle.” he concluded.
