The permeation of the Olympics into all facets of social media should surprise no one. Considering that my friends and I have all live-tweeted, most likely to the chagrin of our followers, every award show this season, this level of cultural obsession makes perfect sense. So much so that my mother keeps sending me links (Mom, I love them. Please continue doing so.) to every cool/funny/thoughtful article/Tumblr/tweet/video she sees relating to Sochi 2014.
Think about that: my 50-something-year-old mother, who sometimes needs to call me about working our cable box, actively consuming and dispersing social media surrounding the Winter Olympics. What does that say about Generation Y? We are the Kings and Queens of the Interweb. We create, process and respond to posts all day long. And that mentality has resulted in huge amounts of content surrounding the Olympics.
There has been some controversy about the use of Twitter — by journalists and athletes alike — with the hashtag #SochiProblems. While some of the posts are more lighthearted, obviously poking fun at the host country’s minor setbacks, others are much more scathing. The question is what the Russian government is going to make of these international criticisms. They draw attention to every imperfection and broadcast it with avail.
While Twitter and similar sites allow for wide dispersal of information, other websites have gone another route. The day after the opening ceremony, an article started popping up on my Facebook timeline. Friends were sharing it with captions of outrage. My curiosity was piqued and I finally read the article. The website publishing the article was one I was unfamiliar with, The Daily Currant. The article, “Man Responsible For Olympic Ring Mishap Found Dead In Sochi,” suggests that one of the technicians during the ceremony was killed with encouragement from the government for a lighting blunder. Thankfully, the article was a farce — much like The Onion, The Daily Currant is a satirical publication. That being said, how many people believed this article without fact or source checking?
These pieces demonstrate the potential backlash of increasing globalization. But not everything that has come out during the past two weeks has been negative. Some of the material created surrounding the Olympics has been hilarious, thought-provoking or generally silly.
One of the best mash-ups of popular culture and an Olympic sport came from the redubbing of an ice dancing routine. Twitter users started pointing out the obvious: pairs ice dancing could be made even better with one simple addition — Beyoncé. Luckily, BuzzFeed followed through and altered a winning performance by the University’s own Meryl Davis and Charlie White, taking out their music track and replacing it with “Drunk In Love,” a track off of Beyoncé’s most recent self-titled album. The results are pure magic. I am sure others would agree that there should be a new category in ice skating that only allows the use of Queen Bey’s music.
Another great combination of pop culture and Olympians comes in the form of a Tumblr. Shoshi Games 2014 is dedicated to photoshopping the face of Shoshanna Shapiro (of HBO’s popular show “Girls”) onto Olympians’ bodies. It may sound dumb, but for “Girls” and Olympics enthusiasts alike, the results are hilarious. Shoshi Games 2014 fulfills all of the longings I didn’t know existed until I saw the Tumblr.
In all honesty, one of my favorite uses of social media is the use of the mobile-app Tinder, and the Olympic athletes have admitted to it being used in the village. Take that in. Olympians are finding other Olympians through the same “dating” app that college kids use to find hook-ups on campus. In combination with the distribution of condoms in Olympic Village, I can only imagine what the direct messages are like. Supposedly the number of Tinder-users has skyrocketed in Sochi since the beginning of the games. Can you really blame people though? Tinder seems way more exciting when you could become a match with the likes of Shaun White or Matteo Guarise instead of simply the kid that lived down the hall from you freshman year.
The Olympics don’t end until the Feb. 23rd and surely more gems will come to fruition thanks to the Internet. Sochi 2014 definitely sets a precedent for the Olympic Games to come by way of online interaction across national boundaries.