When Charles Barkley Jokingly Blamed Jimmy Kimmel For “Breaking His Spirit” With Mean Tweets

‘Mean Tweets’ used to be one of the most popular segments on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The concept was simple: Kimmel’s team would find mean tweets about celebrities and then make them read those out to the audience. As a frequent guest on the show, Charles Barkley also had to read some mean tweets about him.

Chuck is a funny person with a great sense of humor. He can take a joke on himself. However, during his February 2018 appearance, Sir Charles told the host that he broke his spirit by making him read mean tweets.

The NBA legend wasn’t on any social media platforms at the time. In fact, he used to think that social media was for the “losers.” If he were on the internet from the beginning, maybe Chuck would’ve known how the social media world operates and then the mean tweets wouldn’t have bothered him as much.

Immediately after meeting Kimmel on the show, he said, “You broke my spirits today though. You know I do no social media because I think people who do that are losers. And I had to go upstairs and read mean tweets.” Chuck admitted that the tweets were funny, but regardless, it came as a surprise to him that people could write such things on the internet.

In his assessment, only two types of people spew venom on social media. “Some loser who’s at work, who should be working and he’s worried about me. And some lose who’s sitting in his mother’s garage or basement, worried about me,” he concluded. Over the years, his take on social media has changed significantly.

Barkley joined social media last year

After years of equating social media to “losers,” Sir Charles finally caved in and joined Instagram last year. He made his first post on February 10^th, 2024 in collaboration with his vodka brand, Redmont Vodka. Since then, Chuck has made 77 posts and boasts a following of over 500k.

He also tried the Instagram Live feature for the first time in March last year on Inside the NBA. However, he had no idea how that worked and they could’ve made an episode out of teaching him how to navigate through IG Live.

With Shaquille O’Neal telling him, “But before you go live, you gotta hit the up button and the down button and hold the power button,” it was likely that he wouldn’t learn the ropes. After the initial struggles, Barkley managed to go live on Instagram. But he quickly turned it off after testing it out.