Just moments after the American wrestler Sarah Hildebrandt won a gold medal at the Paris Games, she let the whole world know what she was thinking:“Oh my gosh I just won the FREAKING OLYMPICS hahahahah DUUUUDE,” she wrote on social media from the event venue.
But at the Olympics, it’s part of a new twist — and one of the keys to returning to the sense of a shared national experience that defined the Games of yesteryear.
For the last decade or more, it has seemed like the Olympics have struggled to capture relevance the way they did a generation ago.
Blame was assigned to a fracturing media landscape and a long string of asterisks (pandemic restrictions in Tokyo, time zone issues in Beijing, a Zika outbreak in Rio de Janeiro, geopolitical tensions in Sochi).
But the reason may have been simpler: The Olympics has largely been missing from social media.
Persons:
Sarah Hildebrandt, DUUUUDE, ”
Organizations:
Paris Games
Locations:
American, Tokyo, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Sochi