A 38-year-old woman from Vilnius was surprised last week by a call from 15min, claiming that in her six years at the “Lithuanian Basketball” association, this was only the second inquiry from journalists.
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But the situation was unusual.
A one-and-a-half-year investigation by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) into the inappropriate behavior of the women’s national team coach Rimantas Grigas ended with massive sanctions – a five-year suspension, a fine of nearly 13 thousand euros, and mandatory preventive courses.
Alina Adomaitytė, who herself was a member of the Ethics, Discipline and Appeals Commission (EDAK), called the investigation “not serious” and was surprised by the decision of the wronged women not to turn to law enforcement.
During a long conversation, Alina Adomaitytė reacted passionately to 15min‘s question about the astonishing number of her followers on the social network “Instagram”.
“Do you want to be a journalist, like all journalists in Lithuania?” asked the vice president of “Lithuanian Basketball”.
With as many as 538 thousand followers, A. Adomaitytė is the most followed sports personality in Lithuania.
For comparison, Domantas Sabonis, a three-time NBA All-Star who plays for the Sacramento Kings, has 348 thousand followers, rising Chicago Bulls star Matas Buzelis has 317 thousand followers, Istanbul Fenerbahçe coach Šarūnas Jasikevičius has 298 thousand followers, and Jonas Valančiūnas, who joined Kaunas Žalgiris, has 272 thousand followers.
15min managed to find only two people from Lithuania who can boast larger “follower” numbers.
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These are designer Juozas Statkevičius, followed by nearly a million people, and model Neringa Križiūtė, who has almost six million “followers”.
Speaking about our country’s “opinion leaders,” Karolina Meschino’s account is closely followed by 489 thousand people, Mantas Stonkus – 344 thousand, Rolandas Mackevičius – 342 thousand, and Mantas Katleris – 322 thousand “followers”.
“I can give you one statistic – my interview clip was viewed 100 thousand times. You probably know that I travel around Africa, am in America, live in the Middle East, am in Saudi Arabia,” 15min quoted A. Adomaitytė. “I do not invest money in fake followers to eliminate them. I am not interested; I would rather invest that thousand euros in children. I don’t care about that. Let’s look at what is really important, what we can do in Lithuania, rather than investing in nonsense. Whether there are a hundred or ten thousand followers, it is the same to me, but it is important to me if my conversation was viewed 100 thousand times. That is important; a correct interview that people watch is important. Is the number of followers important to you? Is my follower count important to the Lithuanian basketball community? Is my follower count important to Lithuanian journalists? I don’t understand that, honestly, I don’t understand it. I am glad that 100 thousand people watched me. I don’t know who those followers are; I am not interested.”
Although A. Adomaitytė emphasizes the video clip that gathered 100 thousand views, her account contains many posts that have not even reached 100 “likes”.
The vice president of “Lithuanian Basketball” was asked by 15min why this “followers” question is so sensitive.
“There were other journalists who commented without even understanding what I do in life,” A. Adomaitytė told 15min. “No one asked me what I do, but they saw the followers. I think it is very important to understand what a person does in life, what help they provide to the country even without being in that country before doing anything with their personal profiles. I think these aspects are more important, so I reacted that way because there were already relevant comments about me.”
