Destiny Salary and Social Media

Destiny Salary is considered as a social media user who is a sharer as she she shares personal content and information on all her platforms while she kept a Lady Vol image. Salary's social media page gives the perception that she is a D1 athlete who enjoys taking pictures and having fun. When looking at Salary's pages, you are guaranteed to have a smile on your face. According to Salary's phone battery usage, she spends 6 hours and 22 minutes with the screen on and an average of 1hr and 22mins with the screen off. Her social media apps have the highest percentage of usage. Although it appears Instagram is the most used app with 12%, Salary mentions that she enjoys Facebook more, which follows with behind with 9%.

When talking with Salary, she shared why Facebook is an app she continues to use and has the most enjoyment. Salary loves how app keeps her entertainment and helps her stay connected with family and friends. Salary compared Facebook to her own personal Newspaper.

When looking at Salary's social media, one could tell that she is an athlete, a sneaker head, and she keeps it clean where people wouldn’t find anything bad about her. Salary describes her social media to be full of action, adventurous, sports, and romantic “when I have my little boo to pop out with.”

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Salary's Second Thoughts Before Posting

Salary, similar to Green and Darby, hesitates with posting. Salary represents herself, as a D1 athlete, and the college that she attends. She strives to keep a clean profile of being respectful to the older people who view her account and as well as younger people who look up to her. Some things that Salary hesitates about are retweeting, reposting and memes because people tend to take some posts personally and on a friendship level. Salary doesn’t want her friends to feel the need to question her or themselves by taking offense to what she posts because some people always feel 'it's about them'.

Different from Green and Darby, Salary hesitates to post on Instagram because she feels it has the most active users and with the more people, she will have to focus maintaining a clean image. As Darby and Green both agree that Twitter is the hardest social media platform to post on, Salary likes to “let it fly” on that platform. She is more comfortable on Twitter to tweet and express how she feels and treats it as her journal.

Salary recognizes that being a D1 athlete holds her back things she wants to post. She feels that she is limited to what she can post because everything she posts ends up being shared, especially on a Lady Vol fan page. Salary highlights that her social media page would look the same if she wasn’t a Lady Vol. The only minor differences would be her singing songs more freely and reposting funny memes that might involve a few curse words and not feeling the need to cover it up.

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Salary and Social Media Challenges

Challenges Salary faces on social media include the need to hold back her opinions. If she was to see something that bothers her or doesn’t make sense, she would like to respond. However, she doesn’t. She wants to avoid getting caught up in a mess or argument. As a Lady Vol, she faced the challenges of making sure she has the right attire on, and having a clean caption to her pictures before posting.

Salary has both been affected by social media in a positive and negative way. Sometimes seeing memes on social media can bring her down and make her sad, or can make her laugh and make her day better. Social Media overall has helped her more in a good way, than bad.

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Salary Keeping a “Lady Vol Image”

As a former Lady Vol, keeping her "Lady Vol Image" "meant a lot to me knowing that there were people watching my social media and looking up to me."

Salary supporting her Teammate

Salary uses her social media platform to promote herself by showing off her outfits and shoes. As an athlete, Salary loves to promote other players that support her as well. She enjoyed promoting her Lady Vol image because “everyone loves the Lady Vols.” Salary also highlights social injustice by posting pictures of herself supporting the movement, whether it is George Floyd or any of the situations that are happening now. It is important for Salary to share different causes because “one more person posting it, can show somebody else and help them understand where we are coming from and give them a different outlook on things.” Overall, Salary tries to bring awareness to situations.

Differently than Green and Darby, Salary chose to interact with Lady Vols fans a couple times out of week, especially after the games to recap. She also liked talking to people on the outside about potential Lady Vols players. Salary enjoys using her Instagram to go live and interact with potential players and fans by responding to questions about how she got to this level, what her daily routine looks like, including practices and classes.

Salary and TikTok

Salary spend a lot of time making TikToks. She describes TikTok as addicting and fun to watch. She enjoys the informational tips and insights on things that she didn't know. TikTok is right up Salary’s ally, especially with the entertainment reels. Salary loves dancing and reenacting skits from movies and tv shows, while getting some of her other Lady Vols teammates involved. Salary highest viewed TokTok, involved current Lady Vols player Jordan Walker. Both players recreated a video, and made it basketball related. Salary and Walker quoted the TikTok “‘when the coach runs you and you prank call her.” Salary feels that the TikTok received a lot of likes and views because “a lot of athletes can relate". This was a funny revenge to play on your Coach after a hard practice. Salary mentions how being a Lady Vol helped increase the number of views because once again, everyone loves the Lady Vols and they pay attention to what we do.

Salary was able to keep an appropriate Lady Vol image. This was not a difficult tasks because she has always been told to watch what she puts out on social media by her Mom, High School Coach, Teachers and Counselors. They have emphasized that she should keep her social media image clean, especially was she seeks to obtain a professional career.

Depending on their University's athletic spotlight, do you think Players express themselves differently on social media?