Skip to main content

Will the real Aliya Mustafina please step forward?

By
Not a fake profile ... Aliya's unofficial fanpage has over 50,000 followers

Have you seen the film Spartacus, the bit where the Romans try to get Spartacus to give himself up, but fail because there are so many people who claim to be him?

The gymnastics online community is getting a little bit like that ... I did some counting this morning on Facebook, having come across yet another online profile of a gymnast that claimed to be 'real' yet obviously wasn't :-)

22 online profiles of Aliya Mustafina
29 of Viktoria Komova

Some of these are athlete pages that present news of the gymnast's progress, but many are simply fake identities that make use of personal photographs found elsewhere on the internet to develop whole new narratives of the gymnast's life.  I love my regular Gin O'Clock updates of HRH the Queen's daily life as much as the next person, but these profiles try to pretend to be the real Aliya or Vika, without the embellishment of humour or even a courtesy acknowledgement of the sources used.  I don't think any harm is meant ... but I would feel violated if somebody else grabbed my private pictures and began to pretend they were an online version of me ...

Interestingly, though I thought there might be similar counts for other gymnasts, the vast majority of the 'fakes' seems to be on these two.  Perhaps the English language speaking gymnasts have more opportunity to keep their identities private. I also think that these two - highly professional sports stars - deserve more official help in sensitively policing and promoting their online social media presence.
Labels:

Comments

  1. lilianamichelena2 June 2013 at 17:14

    It actually surprises me that the RGF hasn't done anything yet (especially after what happened with their ex-official websites last year). They need to have an american style social media approach (sharing a lot, media-trained everything); I understand both girls love their privacy and that's cool. But it's PR, and even if they feel like both of them deserve to be protected and they are not going to manage their official social accounts, they should, at least hire a CM.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lilianamichelena4 June 2013 at 05:55

      Whoops, I meant they DON'T need and american style social media approach.

      Delete
  2. cpt.Hook3 June 2013 at 17:50

    I hope Russians will never adopt American social media approach. To watch American interviews is the most boring and useless thing ever. If you saw one, you saw them all. "it was great, it was fun, blah blah blah "

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown4 June 2013 at 04:07

    Well not all of them are fake, the ones that have the name of the gymnast and then the words online were "official" the creator had direct contact with the gymnasts, I know because pavlova has a profile on a certain page, and she and him talked a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown19 June 2013 at 16:35

    I agree completely, but you will find a lot of these so-called fake as friends in other profiles that claim to be real

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous30 July 2013 at 22:19

    As the person who started years ago the unofficial Aliya fb page, I must point out that we neeever ever pretended to be her, we even suggested fans not to add the fake Aliyas and despite of the fact that I speak russian, I prefer to leave the real Aliya alone instead of trying to befriend her and try to look oh-so-cool-and-important in the eyes of the gymnastics online community. As a matter of fact, me and Vitor don't want Aliya fans to add us on facebook so we rarely reveal our identity!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Queen Elizabeth31 July 2013 at 08:00

    I hope the article doesn't read as though I am attacking fan pages some of which of course can be informative and entertaining.

    All I am really saying is that given the number of fake identities on Facebook you would think somebody - most obviously the Federation, but I may be mistaken - would take up some positive PR and identity protection on behalf of these young girls.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nelli Kim - 'Russian gymnastics has closed in on itself' - Lupita translates

By
Lupita has translated this ITAR-TASS interview with Nelli Kim.  It's controversial, to say the least. Ed's note : much of the initial response to this interview - both here and in the wider gymternet -  has focussed on the detail of Kim's words and especially her comments about Viktoria Komova, and smiling.  But I think these have to be taken in context, and not too literally. Don't forget that just a day ago Andrei Rodionenko complained bitterly about the judging in Antwerp, calling Kim's behaviour 'aggressive'. Kim is responding to this here, and to the wider current context of Russian gymnastics.  What she is essentially saying to the Russian coach is 'get your own house in order, produce confident, disciplined, well trained gymnasts - stop complaining, do your job, and I will do mine.'   She goes about saying this in a somewhat long winded way and says some things along the way that seem contradictory, unfair, inappropriate even for th...
30 comments
Read more

Fact or fiction? The press, gymnastics and pregnancy doping

By
It was a Sunday morning.  I was drinking my coffee and contemplating the day ahead - a workout at the gym, shopping for groceries, an evening reading a book, or catching up on last night's episodes of crime thriller The Bridge .  How nice it was not to have to think about work for a day. Then I saw it - a story about the history of doping in The Observer .  Interesting reading. Of course, cheating is as old as the hills.  It is, unfortunately, human nature for some people to try to gain easy advantage in any kind of competition.  That is why we have laws, rules, ethical guidelines.  People who cheat should face justice and shouldn't complain when they are found out. But the story about pregnancy doping bothered me.  Hadn't that been found to be fictional?  The author began with Olga Kovalenko's allegations made in 1994 - but the rumours had started way back in 1991 with the documentary series More Than A Game .  The practice...
3 comments
Read more

National team coaches 2024, the Russian Federation - a full list

By
In January each year the Russian Gymnastics Federation publishes its list of coaches and gymnasts who have made the training teams for their country.  You will find below a transliteration of the list of national team coaches, 70 of them in total.  The oldest member of the team is Valentina Rodionenko, 88, the youngest Ivan Galonenko, 24 - he is a bars coach, to the junior women's team.   The senior coaches to the senior teams would all have qualified as coaches during the Soviet era.  Many of them work out of Moscow, Vladimir and Rostov, former Soviet strongholds of gymnastics.  The doctors are all attached to Yaroslavl.  St Petersburg has two coaches listed, but there are no St Petersburg gymnasts on the senior national teams at present.  There are no coaches from Russia's Far East.  This region has been highlighted as a geographical area President Putin is targetting for sports development and investment over the coming years.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more