Jon Lester offers social-media advice after ‘too many young guys getting burned’

Social media is an unforgiven space. So in light of recent events, Cubs veteran pitcher Jon Lester on Monday offered some social media advice on Twitter.

Lester encouraged Twitter users to clean their accounts from anything they wouldn’t want the public to find.

“Please spend the 5 minutes it takes to scrub your account of anything you wouldn’t want plastered next to your face on the front page of a newspaper,” Lester wrote. “Better yet, don’t say stupid things in the first place. Too many young guys getting burned.”

“Listen I’m far from the sharpest tool in the shed and there’s certainly no halo above my head (pardon the rhyme),” Lester continued, “but I know some of these guys are great dudes who just had lapses in judgement (sic).”

Lester’s thread of tweets came after Trea Turner, Sean Newcomb and Josh Hader were exposed as to having a murky social media history.

All three recently received backlash for offensive tweets that were dug up from their past. They all apologized for the tweets, which have since been deleted.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Earlier this year, quarterback Josh Allen had racist tweets from 2012 and 2013 go viral just hours before the NFL draft. Likewise, Villanova’s Donte Divincenzo deleted his Twitter account after embarrassing posts surfaced while he was playing in the championship game of March Madness.

Lester received some backlash from Twitter users for not explicitly denouncing racism and homophobia.

Lester replied: “My comment wasn’t specific to what any of the recent players said. I’m speaking generally, you hear it all the time about how people didn’t get a job, or didn’t get into a school because of what was found on their social media. It could be as simple as a picture at a party.”