Clemson Football: ‘Thumb Gangsters’ upset Dabo Swinney called them out

Clemson football coach has a new name for the Twittersphere

The Clemson football program isn’t particularly popular with a portion of Twitter users that Dabo Swinney has now labeled as ‘Thumb Gangsters.’

If you’ve ever spent any amount of time on social media- in particularly Twitter- it doesn’t take long to learn just how toxic of an environment it truly has become.

You can tweet ‘the sky is blue’ and if that message gets spread around to enough people, you’ll soon be bombarded from other Twitter users who will argue anything and everything to prove your point incorrect, invalid or offending.

That’s been exactly what we’ve seen with Clemson football over the past year and longer by the Twittersphere

Dabo Swinney was asked about how he has helped Trevor Lawrence along the with criticism and here’s what he had to say:

"“He’s not trying to be right. He’s not trying to make other people wrong,” Swinney said via ClemsonSI. “He’s just trying to be who he is. If you don’t like that, that’s your opinion. That doesn’t make you bad. He’s authentic, he’s genuine, and no, he’s not afraid to disagree, even though it might make the thumb gangsters mad at him. He doesn’t care. He knows who he is, he’s grounded in that.”"

Now, as we’ve learned over the past year, there have been plenty of people (especially in the national media and from other fan bases) who are quick to critique and look for flaws in anything and everything that Dabo Swinney says.

And there are plenty more.

So, what’s the overall consensus from the Thumb Gangsters today? Well it’s basically this: “We’ve never criticized Trevor Lawrence in our lives! He is a great human being and Dabo is just out here making up stuff again for no reason. What a terrible person.” 

Well, it doesn’t take a professional investigator to find criticism of Trevor Lawrence on the internet or on social media. As a matter of fact, Tiger Illustrated’s Larry Williams found two whole pages of articles from google talking about how Lawrence had taken steps back in his game just a year ago.

Though one Twitter user- as seen above- said that everyone is CFB had praised Lawrence from the moment he had taken over the starting job, one can see that this isn’t the case by a long shot.

And then we also seem to forget about the thousands- yes thousands- of responses that Lawrence got from his Tweet this past August laying out the case to play a College Football season and the #WeWantToPlay movement.

This tweet above, for example, got nearly 2,000 replies in addition to 3,600 quote tweets. While many were positive of Lawrence, there were also thousands who were negative. There was a collective ‘bless your heart’ response from many in the media who didn’t take what he had to say seriously and instead, they continued to rely on their ‘unnamed sources.’

Even this season, Lawrence has had to deal with hundreds of user who tag him in tweets and call him overrated. Don’t believe me? Just do a basic Twitter search and you’ll find exactly what I’m talking about.

"“I just really tried to ignore it,” Lawrence said. “I’ve heard just about everything you can imagine, good and bad so both just as dangerous. Obviously, there’s some stuff you see but the biggest thing is I know who I am, and just stick to who I am, regardless of what some random person online says that really doesn’t really matter. So just keeping that perspective, it can be hard though for sure.”"

The overarching point? 

This really isn’t about Trevor Lawrence. There’s a contingent of people out there who are going to look to be offended and find fault in anything that Dabo Swinney says.

He doesn’t always say things the ‘right way’ but in this instance, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what Swinney may be referring to when he talks about these ‘Thumb Gangsters.’

It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Trevor Lawrence- one of the biggest names in all of sports- who is only 21 years old, might be struggling a little with the amount of interactions he sees each day on social media. Maybe, just maybe, some of those negative replies (even if they’re not coming from national media) have an impact on him as he is learning to grow up and handle being a public figure and a celebrity while all the while still only being three years removed from high school.

And maybe, just maybe, Dabo Swinney has had some words of wisdom to impart on his young Clemson football quarterback on how to handle those who have criticized him in the past and what almost assuredly will come in the future.

But, sure. Let’s just continue to think that Swinney ‘lives in a fantasy world’ and pretend we know everything through our anonymous twitter accounts.