Quarantine is really driving people to extremes in their boredom. Instead of dying his hair or learning to bake frog bread with a sourdough starter, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning decided to join Twitter. Sir, please don’t do this to yourself. You’ve managed to avoid social media this long, why break your record?
Unfortunately, I’m getting to him too late. Manning opened his account on Saturday, and his first tweet was a joke twist on a quote from Hoosiers.
He wrote, “To paraphrase Jimmy Chitwood, ‘I don’t know if it’ll make any change, but I figure it’s time for me to start playing social media.'”
To paraphrase Jimmy Chitwood, “I don’t know if it’ll make any change, but I figure it’s time for me to start playing social media.” pic.twitter.com/Af8IFMOiEQ
— Eli Manning (@EliManning) May 23, 2020
At least he’s on-brand.
There have been hints that the boom would fall for a while, starting with a screenshot of a text that seemed to be from Eli, saying he was “thinking about” joining, posted by fellow footballer Lawrence Tynes.
I had a really nice text exchange with a QB friend of mine telling him he needs to activate a Twitter account. Here is the reply, fingers crossed pic.twitter.com/vvH5hV2VPO
— (@lt4kicks) April 15, 2020
“Do it!” Tynes replied. “You would go to 1m instantly.”
As of Wednesday, Manning has just under 300k followers, so perhaps Tynes underestimated. And he has been tweeting quite a lot, mostly about sports and charity causes. He did have this seemingly joking exchange with rival Tom Brady, who welcomed him to the hellscape immediately:
Welcome @EliManning, In typical fashion, you never showed up until the 4th quarter anyway https://t.co/Wbun1VS2A0
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) May 23, 2020
Hope your golf game is as polished as your Twitter game. Don’t hit it in the lumberyard. https://t.co/SaPL34P2T2
— Eli Manning (@EliManning) May 23, 2020
Most people have been pretty friendly as Eli Manning joins the Twitter ranks, but a lot of them also poured out every gif and meme and roast they had in their back pocket for exactly this moment:
Fitting since he’s usually throwing it to the other team
— Cody Paul (@CeePaul03) May 23, 2020
— EthanNYG (@EthanBigBlue) May 23, 2020
Welcome! Gonna leave this here for you, E pic.twitter.com/FGymtG8kM5
— Clem (@TheClemReport) May 23, 2020
Setting him up already
— Kandid (@kxndid) May 23, 2020
— John Gebert (@JohnGebz) May 23, 2020
Yep. Welcome to Twitter hell
— Wu Tang Clap (@MonikerAbsentia) May 23, 2020
When I drew this I never expected the destination to be Twitter. Welcome to the Twitterverse Eli. pic.twitter.com/JNpGlbBGdj
— Athlete Logos (@athletelogos) May 23, 2020
Welcome to twitter Eli now you can troll @TomBrady whenever you want lol pic.twitter.com/ap1Q0oX6KN
— Ramon Castro The Digimon Emperor (@DigimonFan4Life) May 23, 2020
Is Manning overwhelmed by the attention and notifications of Twitter yet? Who knows. But I hope he was advised by his circle to have someone else running his account like 75 percent of the time. And that he escapes as soon as quarantine is over.