Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes landed in the firestorm of two controversies this week, and here's a list of his known activities over the past several days:
He served as the honorary captain for the inaugural HBCU Legacy Bowl on Saturday, and he sat courtside with his fiancee for a college basketball game at his alma mater earlier in the week.
Yet late Wednesday, Mahomes felt compelled to affirm that, yes, he does in fact love the woman he plans to marry. And then, on Friday, he dismissed a report suggesting he had told her (and his younger brother, Jackson) that they could no longer attend Chiefs games.
"Y'all just be making stuff up these days," Mahomes wrote on Twitter.
If it were me, I wouldn't have addressed the stories at all. I'd give them the time that kind of "journalism" deserves — none — but that's easy for me to say as I dive into a 900-word column about it all.
Except this column isn't really about Patrick Mahomes. Or his fiancee and high school sweetheart, Brittany Matthews.
It's about the rest of us.
After an interaction between the couple at the Texas Tech basketball game, a popular website questioned on Twitter whether Mahomes needed an intervention because of whom he has chosen to spend his life with. The site's tweet included links to stories on Mahomes and Matthews and generated nearly 60,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.
An intervention?
Who has the addiction here?
Later in the week, a "reporter" broke the news that Mahomes had sidelined both his brother and Matthews from attending Chiefs games, only to retract it all later, long after the move had been applauded by those who don't know any of the three.
This isn't a new topic but rather a favorite talking point of certain publications and social media dunces who are trying to accomplish, well, what exactly?
They clamor for Mahomes to pick someone other than the person he began dating as a high school sophomore. It should be a sweet story, really — this is their adventure together, and despite signing a contract that will pay him half a billion dollars, he's stayed with the woman who stayed with him.
Oh, but they don't like her personality, they will claim. She's too loud for the preference of those who cannot handle outspoken women. Too brash for some. Most appalling, not attractive enough for others — people have the courage to comment on her physical appearance while tucked behind the safety of an iPhone screen protector.
I could find the Tweets — dig up the receipts — but many of the best examples are too disgusting to even publish. I could make a plea for it to stop, but those willing to trash strangers on social media aren't the open-minded type.
If Mahomes and Matthews were not famous — if his occupation didn't place him in front of millions of people every Sunday in the fall — we'd call this what it is.
Bullying.
What, because he makes millions he deserves to endure weeks like this? Because he makes millions, she deserves it? This is part of the gig? We'd all take some constant badgering if it meant making $500 million, right?
There's nothing about their fortune that is unearned.
The nature of what they encounter on social media is precisely that.
She's not perfect. He's not, either. Neither am I, and neither are you. Yes, I know Matthews celebrated a Chiefs playoff win by spraying some champagne on fans below her. She's made social media posts that have irked some. I didn't care for the champagne spray. But mostly I just didn't care. My day carried on just the same. So did yours. And so did those of the people who got a little wet — because they weren't the ones complaining in the first place.
Some use that very example as a reason to not like Matthews. It's backward. She provided ammunition for a conclusion they reached long ago.
Their reminders that she brought this on herself are incessant, as though finding something annoying should prompt a lifetime of online harassment. That this happens to other athletes, other public figures, is not justification.
It's indicative of the larger toxicity of social media, of course, a culture that allows so many to say so much they wouldn't dare to say in person.
Years ago, after he played in the World Cup, then-Sporting Kansas City defender Matt Besler said he received death threats on social media. Former Royals pitcher Danny Duffy quit Twitter — twice — because of the loud and vocal minority, when the reason he had joined was to promote a charity fighting children's cancer, Noah's Bandage Project.
What are we doing here? I get that this is part of social media, but does it have to be? We've just accepted it as the broccoli you're required to digest with dinner?
I don't know Matthews personally. But that's the point. Neither do the overwhelmingly vast majority who continue to fill her timeline with intentional negativity.
This isn't a defense of one or two people as much as it is an appeal for something much more simple.
Human decency.
