I don’t know how I feel after reading this post, Sam. On the one hand, I’m in awe of your analysis of the meme-ification of the Olympics. None of that had occurred to me, and it all makes so much sense. Bravo on that count!
On the other hand, I’m also sad that this is what it’s become… Even though we paid for the Peacock app so we could watch in-depth coverage of the actual sports, it all still mostly comes packaged in short video clips that
(1) tell us the result in the title of the clip, as if no one would want to watch it play out and find out the result at the end,
(2) cut the video off abruptly when the athlete crosses the finish line, not allowing us to savor the winners reactions, they’re high-fiving of their fellow competitors, etc. It is no longer a celebration of all the years of training and hard-earned glory. It’s just a clip for a short attention span, and it’s over before you even began.
I think I’m going to go eat some ice cream now to drown my sorrow. I’m sure there is an Olympic-related meme for that.
Hey thanks, Evelyn. That's so kind and your comment is so thoughtful. I tried to withhold judgement of how media consumption has changed, but yeah, I think there's much to lament. The breakdown of more long-form relationships to information has makes us more vulnerable to deception and political demagoguery. And probably not good for the mind or health. The context is where the beauty lies.
But at the same time, I want to make room for difference, and change, and evolution. In the David Bowie interview from back in the 1990s that Terrell posted in a comment above, Bowie calls the internet, "an alien life form." People had similar anxieties about print culture. Maybe we're on the cusp of some new form that synthesizes a lot of the good of the internet! I'm hopeful. :)
I hear you and agree. I am not usually one to lament change; I think we just got grumpy when about being on the far side of the time difference and having all the match & race results spoiled haha!
Totally! Something that I'm ALWAYS grumpy about is that NBC makes the real-time schedules of the events deliberately difficult to find. They want you to watch their programming and edits, which is maddening when it's happening in real time earlier in the day.
Sam, I found your analysis really interesting and well written, but also, a bit alienating for me because I've pretty much opted out of Olympics-watching/following, even on social media. I tuned into a bit of the equestrian events, and that's it. I'm not sure why, I just don't feel drawn to follow the Olympics this time around. Maybe it's because I haven't gotten to know any of the athletes. At the Tokyo winter games, we knew one of the competitors (a friend of my son), and I got completely hooked following him and his competitors—literally jumping out of my seat or clapping my hands over my eyes because watching was so intense. This time around, I'd rather spend free time reading a book or following the suddenly exciting competition of the presidential race.
No shame there! I’ve skipped a lot—the entirety of swimming and gymnastics (even though I really like gymnastics). But have watched shooting events for some reason. More for time reasons. I will say, if you are inclined, a couple of the track events have been truly thrilling. But, as you say, it’s no where near as compelling as this summer of truly astonishing election happenings. What a ride!!
Totally! What has always been super interesting to me is his point about "the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything we can envisage at the moment... where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico, it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about... The idea that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation -- and what the piece of art is about is the gray space in the middle. That gray space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about."
That just rocked my world the first time I heard it, and I keep coming back to it to try to understand the revolution we're going through now -- which you, so perceptively, identify even in the running/Olympic world right now. It's happening in *everything*, you know?
Yeah! That interplay is so interesting. But maybe a counter point that I could have made, beyond just gesturing at Plato, is that this is also both new and not new. Obviously the speed of the playback between user/viewer and content is faster than ever. But a lot of internet culture reminds me of manuscript and early print culture, which was hyper-referential with glosses and subjective interpretation of texts of such volume that writers built entire textual worlds of commentary. And this could also be surprisingly democratic at times. Dang, that Bowie interview is going to linger with me.
I don’t know how I feel after reading this post, Sam. On the one hand, I’m in awe of your analysis of the meme-ification of the Olympics. None of that had occurred to me, and it all makes so much sense. Bravo on that count!
On the other hand, I’m also sad that this is what it’s become… Even though we paid for the Peacock app so we could watch in-depth coverage of the actual sports, it all still mostly comes packaged in short video clips that
(1) tell us the result in the title of the clip, as if no one would want to watch it play out and find out the result at the end,
(2) cut the video off abruptly when the athlete crosses the finish line, not allowing us to savor the winners reactions, they’re high-fiving of their fellow competitors, etc. It is no longer a celebration of all the years of training and hard-earned glory. It’s just a clip for a short attention span, and it’s over before you even began.
I think I’m going to go eat some ice cream now to drown my sorrow. I’m sure there is an Olympic-related meme for that.
Hey thanks, Evelyn. That's so kind and your comment is so thoughtful. I tried to withhold judgement of how media consumption has changed, but yeah, I think there's much to lament. The breakdown of more long-form relationships to information has makes us more vulnerable to deception and political demagoguery. And probably not good for the mind or health. The context is where the beauty lies.
But at the same time, I want to make room for difference, and change, and evolution. In the David Bowie interview from back in the 1990s that Terrell posted in a comment above, Bowie calls the internet, "an alien life form." People had similar anxieties about print culture. Maybe we're on the cusp of some new form that synthesizes a lot of the good of the internet! I'm hopeful. :)
I hear you and agree. I am not usually one to lament change; I think we just got grumpy when about being on the far side of the time difference and having all the match & race results spoiled haha!
Totally! Something that I'm ALWAYS grumpy about is that NBC makes the real-time schedules of the events deliberately difficult to find. They want you to watch their programming and edits, which is maddening when it's happening in real time earlier in the day.
Sam, I found your analysis really interesting and well written, but also, a bit alienating for me because I've pretty much opted out of Olympics-watching/following, even on social media. I tuned into a bit of the equestrian events, and that's it. I'm not sure why, I just don't feel drawn to follow the Olympics this time around. Maybe it's because I haven't gotten to know any of the athletes. At the Tokyo winter games, we knew one of the competitors (a friend of my son), and I got completely hooked following him and his competitors—literally jumping out of my seat or clapping my hands over my eyes because watching was so intense. This time around, I'd rather spend free time reading a book or following the suddenly exciting competition of the presidential race.
No shame there! I’ve skipped a lot—the entirety of swimming and gymnastics (even though I really like gymnastics). But have watched shooting events for some reason. More for time reasons. I will say, if you are inclined, a couple of the track events have been truly thrilling. But, as you say, it’s no where near as compelling as this summer of truly astonishing election happenings. What a ride!!
A pleasantly Derrida-esque take on the Olympics (the mention of Plato notwithstanding).
Plato in the streets, Derrida in the sheets!
😆 Talk meaning-making to me.
Mimetic gumbo! Well phrased. 🤘
Woo! I am not sure why culinary metaphors kept coming to mind: viral goulash, digital soup, etc. 😝
With every year that passes, I realize more and more how right David Bowie was about the internet, all the way back in 1999: https://youtu.be/FiK7s_0tGsg?si=sZF7sm4o4yPw1VCv&t=639
My goodness. What an amazing brain Bowie had! “It’s an alien life form!” 🤯
Totally! What has always been super interesting to me is his point about "the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything we can envisage at the moment... where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico, it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about... The idea that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation -- and what the piece of art is about is the gray space in the middle. That gray space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about."
That just rocked my world the first time I heard it, and I keep coming back to it to try to understand the revolution we're going through now -- which you, so perceptively, identify even in the running/Olympic world right now. It's happening in *everything*, you know?
Yeah! That interplay is so interesting. But maybe a counter point that I could have made, beyond just gesturing at Plato, is that this is also both new and not new. Obviously the speed of the playback between user/viewer and content is faster than ever. But a lot of internet culture reminds me of manuscript and early print culture, which was hyper-referential with glosses and subjective interpretation of texts of such volume that writers built entire textual worlds of commentary. And this could also be surprisingly democratic at times. Dang, that Bowie interview is going to linger with me.