Jeffree Star and his ‘NFL boo’ should reveal his identity or shut up
It would be so easy to take cheap photos of Jeffree Star, the self-absorbed, attention-seeking narcissist whose stunt this week with his millions of social media followers involved various messages with an alleged NFL player with which Star says he shares a bed.
But I will resist falling to its pitiful level and instead tackle the real issues at hand.
It’s easy to see why at Outsports we don’t publicly expose athletes against their will. The potential pitfalls of doing something like this can be heartbreaking for everyone involved.
To be sure, so far Star has not reported anyone.
Yet what he does may be even worse.
Outsports also tries not to feed off of the “witch hunts” that seem to be so popular with some people determined to create mystery around the subject of gay professional athletes, using it to support themselves.
The London tabloids do this regularly, promising that this one or that one will come out publicly in the Premier League… and they never do. Years ago, claims of four NFL players about to publicly date were based on next to nothing…and again, it never happened.
The problem with these “who dat” stories is people getting stuck in the middle of a guessing game, which has been exacerbated with the explosion of Twitter, where everyone has an opinion and the facts go wild.
When Star posts footage of his ‘6’6′ ‘NFL boo’ whose ‘team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl’, he intentionally creates a firestorm that he knows full well will engulf innocent people minding their own business. His supporters spend hours searching for every 6-foot-6 NFL player not playing this season for the Philadelphia Eagles or Kansas City Chiefs.
It’s been a big part of Twitter this week, thanks to Star and his mysterious NFL player.
By unleashing his minions, Star has already led an NFL player’s wife — named by some of Star’s minions as a possible bet to be the mystery man — to ultimately set his Instagram as private.
Yet the person I resent the most, and the people most hurt by this childish little game, is the gay NFL player in the closet trying to find support, now refreshing Twitter hoping and praying no one names him as one of the suspects.
Ryan O’Callaghan was a 6-foot-6 closed player in the NFL for six years – He fits the description of his NFL player star. How would he have felt to see this happen as he struggled with suicidal thoughts in the league?
“It would have been absolutely terrifying,” O’Callaghan told me.
While some straight NFL players like Taylor Lewan and their wives may have fun with this little game, for someone who is gay and hiding in the NFL, it can be, yes, “terrifying.”
People like Star and the “NFL boo” give them no consideration.
Calling someone “gay” is not degrading, because being gay is not degrading. It may be wrong, it may be distracting, but speculating “Is so-and-so gay” is probably the result of wishful thinking.
It’s not that. It’s about, with a broad brush, two people trying to generate a bizarre sense of accomplishment by drawing attention to themselves ahead of a Super Bowl neither of them will play in, as they “refresh” their social media feeds every 60 seconds. .
Whoever the other man is in Star’s images, you have to wonder about his character. While this may all be one big fun joke for him, this little game of “who it is” is selfish and cruel.
“Anyone Jeffree plays this little game has to be okay with that,” O’Callaghan said, while adding that he’s always happy to see any gay man in the NFL get to live his life the way he is. wish.
However…
“It’s a pretty immature game,” he said.
I’ve been asked several times over the past 48 hours about Star’s stunt and the identity of the mystery man. We at Outsports debated whether to say a word about this stupidity.
As more and more media reports about it and the views of these publications reach tens of millions, it seems logical now.
In the end, Star and his “boo” deserve a challenge: Stop the charade and give us the identity of this man. If this mysterious man is okay to play this little game, he should be okay to be absent.
He should turn around in the photos, give us his identity, and stop this nonsense.
And if they refuse to reveal his identity, I hope people will see all of this and realize that they were all played by a master manipulator bent on drawing attention to himself.
With all my respect.