social media

Social craze: The internet bites back at Luis Suarez

10 years ago
by SianElvin

Luis Suarez has been banned from any kind of football-related activity for four months after biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini during Tuesday’s World Cup match between Uruguay and Italy

Luis Suarez has been banned from any kind of football-related activity for four months after biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini during Tuesday’s World Cup match between Uruguay and Italy.

Of course, social media immediately jumped on the incident and took full advantage of another infamous Suarez bite. The 27-year-old Liverpool forward was banned for ten games in April 2013 after biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic, and was found guilty of scarring the collarbone of Otman Bakkal when playing for AFC Ajax in the Netherlands. He is now not allowed to train with his team or enter a football stadium until the end of October.

The statistics

The BBC Trending team crunched some numbers and found out how many times the following hashtags and phrases were used in the 24 hours following the incident:

Suarez and #Suarez – 3.1 million

#BanSuarez – 55,000

#bansuarezforlife – 25,000

#bite – 6,500

#suarezbite – 5,000

Mike Tyson – 25,000

The false accusation

It turns out that Suarez’s Twitter handle is not in fact @Suarez. Upon receiving a torrent of messages and abuse after the incident, Diego from Buenos Aires felt the need to correct his mistaken identity (using a very amusing reference to chorizo):

The real Twitter handle for Suarez is @luis16suarez.

The marketing

Although most of Twitter was either ridiculing or criticising the bite incident, some food brands took advantage of the situation and tried to sell their product by suggesting that the player was just hungry:

Now there are some perfect examples of social media marketing if I ever saw them. Take note, business students.

The jokes

The Mike Tyson jibe was definitely the biggest joke made in reference to the Suarez incident. It was all kicked off by Evander Holyfield, a retired heavyweight boxer. He once had part of his ear bitten off by opponent Mike Tyson during a fight in 1997, and could not resist making a cheeky reference:

This triggered a number of memes:

A dig at England in there somewhere was inevitable:

Other people gave us some useful facts:

And naturally, some started to get smart with Photoshop:

However, the prize for the best use of Photoshop definitely goes to this picture:

In spite of the hilarious reaction this incident triggered on social media, it still needs to be said that it is disgusting how a football player has chosen to act in this way, especially on multiple occasions. The World Cup is not only a competition viewed by millions, but also has a huge influence on young children. Those calling for a lifetime ban for Suarez are correct; four months is simply not long enough to set a good example to other players.

But in all honesty, I’m just jealous of this guy who certainly benefited from the bite rather more than poor Chiellini:

What was your favourite social media reaction to the Suarez World Cup bite? Let us know in the comments below!

Photo: Global Panorama / Flickr

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