For years I’ve been watching the Olympic games. Winter, summer, skating, swimming… Something about being able to turn on the TV and watch humans push their bodies to miraculous limits is deeply compelling every four years. And the Games seem to be the only tradition our planet's inhabitants partake in together, century after century.
And yet, this year is different from any year before it. Now, thanks to social media, for the first time the athletes have a voice. And we have a voice, too.
Last Friday the Twitter blog reported
that there were “more tweets in a single day [in London] than in the entire Beijing Olympics.” Hungry for Twitpics and up-to-the-minute news, I immediately followed @LoloJones and @NBCOlympics and sent out a tweet of my own, because that’s what you do when you’re excited these days.
I thought: With so much going on at once (in a different time zone), the Olympics have the ability to give viewers some FOMO (fear of missing out), but Twitter will bring everyone together in one beautiful international conversation.
How could I have been so deluded? The one beautiful international conversation quickly became what all conversations on the Internet become: taken over by silly posters and, worse, trolls.
It started with Mr. Bean being the topic most tweeted during the Olympic Ceremonies. (What happened to excitement for a country’s flag?) Then, instead of tweeting pictures from around the Olympic Village, Athletes tweeted what looked like the same picture, over and over, of themselves posing with a gorilla statue
in the courtyard of their living quarters.
Negative postings also escalated, with cruel comments
from athletes and snipes by observers. One Olympic spectator was arrested in his home
for threatening diver Tom Daley via Twitter. And perhaps the famous PR teams for athletes have not integrated social media into their practicum, because athletes such as soccer player Hope Solo have been angrily tweeting about NBC commentators not knowing how the “game is played.”
Brian Messop from Wired criticized the Olympic Committee for not recognizing that such misuse of social networks could happen.
We were also recently reminded that social media don't exactly conform to the rules of free speech, when journalist Guy Adams had his Twitter account suspended for criticizing NBC.
But could the IOC have predicted the Twitter-circus resulting from NBC’s partnership with Twitter?
Twitter has revealed that there’s a point when drama is unearthed and we are shown that our beloved athletes, journalists, and television networks are made up of humans who have clawed their way to the top. Perserverence, shmerseverence -- some people must be stepped on to get that gold.
Maybe also, everyone is just so sick of participating in a huge event each day they are getting a little cranky. And where is the best place to be cranky? Twitter.
Still, I like seeing Lolo Jones
milking her time in the spotlight to gain a following that will get her jobs and keep her relevant long after the games are over. I like that Jordyn Wieber received an outpouring of support from Twitter after her devastating loss on Sunday. Even Justin Bieber tweeted at her!
I have no idea what the Olympics were like before television, but I do remember what they were like before social media, and I must say they are just as magical and exciting as they ever were. Twitter is just another event to watch.
"Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F******
...Hence the depressingly large number of people who think that being a Troll is funny, and that the Internet is the perfect place to spew all the bigoted, provocative, or otherwise hateful bile they would never say in real life."
It's really nothing new. Even changing the subject to adorable baby animals is no guarentee someone won't troll.
Some things have to change, but unless it becomes the norm to completely disclose one's identity online, I don't think universal GIFT will.
Kim, the original Olympians wrestled NAKED. I'm not quite sure that your version of 'best' and mine coincide completely, but I salute your ability to express it. : )
these two words have engulfed all the excitement of this 'MEGA EVENT'
the charms of this event has been polluted by unnecessary tweets,posting of results before its airing and even threatening of the atheletes through social media.
After witnessing all this filth , i have come up with the idea that olympics, before television and social media, would have been much stupendous and surprising ..!!
No surprise the Greeks gave us the games. Just a few centuries later, the same culture gave us tragedy (and comedy). I think you're quite right, Duke, that the Games (and sport generally) are sublimated war, just as tragedy is sublimated political and domestic conflict.
The key to tragedy, as Aristotle observed, is catharsis. It's evident to me that catharsis is the main motivation, too, for our fascination with sporting contests. If the ancient Greeks had had Twitter, I'm sure they'd have been tweeting during the chariot races, and during the Oresteia too.
The only thing restraining people somewhat from tweeting during plays these days is a recent tradition of decorum in the theater. Catharsis is much valued by humans, and apparently they like talking about it too.
Can you imagine if people tweeted this way about actual war and expressed such opinions? Maybe twitter really was made for the olympics, because it's assigning so much meaning to opinions that aren't really going to change anything.
I never cease to be amazed at the amount of silly available at any given moment when discussing the Olympics. Bear in mind what they originally were: a substitute for actual warfare. Rather than line up two warring city-states' armies and have at it, the Greeks came up with the idea of pitting armies against each other in various displays of physical intimidation. Archery, hammer throw, shot-put -- heck, most of the traditional track-and-field sports are just stylized violence. What is a javelin, after all, except a cultured spear? Okay, I've got to admit that badminton and beach volleyball are hardly reasons to come home with your shield, rather than on it, but the equestrian events are just a cavalry charge away from mayhem. Why, then, would we take anything these sporty-type people say with less than a shaker full of salt? Some accidental predilection for sweating hardly constitutes a recommendation for mental acuity -- in most cases, the precise opposite is proven on a daily basis. And that, ladies and germs, is the reason there are so many trolls and twits tweeting -- when stupid rears its ugly head, more will inevitably follow. Like breeds like. If you enjoy watching the Games, please partake with our blessings, but please don't subject the rest of us to what passes for your thought processes, That goes double for Mr. Bieber, and his ilk.
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