Stealing tweets is not good, folks. It doesn’t matter who you are, or if you don’t know the original source, it’s not a good practice. Always attribute, and if you don’t know, it’s better to just stay away.
For us in the digital media realm, that’s much more common knowledge. For Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside, he’s much less inclined to care, and that showed on Saturday, when he apparently stole the tweet of SB Nation writer Zito Madu.
Here was Zito’s original tweet:
https://twitter.com/_Zeets/status/764489151198683136
Obviously at some point, this viral (and very good) tweet made it across Whiteside’s timeline, and he took it, just adding #UsainBolt at the end:
https://twitter.com/youngwhiteside/status/764493542798532608
It doesn’t take long to get exposed though, especially when you have the following of an NBA player. It got it’s way back to Zito, who appropriately called out Whiteside:
https://twitter.com/_Zeets/status/764495915507867648
Ooooh, I thought Whiteside was known for blocks and not steals. pic.twitter.com/I1waYxfddM
— Josh Eberley 🇨🇦 (@JoshEberley) August 13, 2016
Many people were in Whiteside’s mentions calling him out for stealing the tweet, and apparently he took offense to some more than others:
https://twitter.com/rawan/status/764501668692127744
Don’t steal tweets people. It’s not cool, and it’s not worth it.
[@_Zeets]
