Ok, seeing as the Olympics are now over, I figured I may as well post this rant (or mini-rant) while it's still halfway relevant. (Sidenote: I also despise forgetting things. I had a thought for another post in my head for days, but it's gone now. Sucks to be you, I guess, as you won't get to read it!)
This first occurred to me a couple of months back, and stayed with me through the Olympics. I'm not an Olympics fan-or any kind of sport fan-so you know that this must piss me off something shocking. It was probably 3 in the morning, some very late hour on a weekend. I was at a friend's house, and we were crashing after a party. Before we did, we decided to stay up and watch Black Caviar racing at....Ascot, I think it was. Her first race in the UK, very big deal. In the leadup to this event, the media was pretty much frothing at the mouth over the awesomeness of this undefeated horse. That's all well and good; it's not as if I have problems with an amazingly fast horse. I'd rather have that on the news than Julia Gillard slow-talking at me, but that's a whole other issue. My problem arose after this race at Ascot. Black Caviar won the race, as everybody knew she would, but not by the distance that the world was apparently expecting. The media seemed to have an issue with this, or, alternatively, it was a slow news day. I don't know which. I was watching/reading the news the next day, and everybody was up in arms about Black Caviar's "failure". There was talk of her retiring, and all sorts of other crap, simply because a race was too close. I think I spent the next few days facepalming at the absurdity of this reaction. "What the fuck are you talking about, guys? She won! With what looked like remarkable ease, I might add. You don't, say, fire an employee because they don't fill their quota once in their career. Just let it go and try and find something a bit more credible to talk about." I guess they did find something more credible to talk about, but not what I was expecting. As soon as the horse arrived back in Australia, everybody was back to talking about how wonderful and undefeated she is.
This, sadly, is not the only example of such fickle reactions in the media. The same thing happened during the Olympics, most notably during the swimming. I have no idea what event or events this concerned; all I know is that a lot of the hype surrounded "The Missile". Prior to his events, everybody, including himself, was losing their shit hyping him up to the country and the rest of the world. Surprisingly, he failed to obtain a single gold medal. As soon as this happened, everybody jumped on the "momentary lapse = eternal failure" bandwagon. Every news item seemed to relate to his most recent loss, and whose fault it was, and how he could improve himself. I'm like "Uh...guys? He's in his 20s, is damn fast and managed to get a silver at the Olympics. So he had an off competition. Everybody does. So maybe go fuck yourselves, and while you're at it, support the athletes. Again, I'm not a sports fan, but they'll do, and have done, a damn sight more than you ever have or ever will." A couple of days ago, I saw an ad on my Facebook feed (from Samsung-a sponsor, but still) encouraging me to support whatshisfacemissile (if he's reading this, my apologies) and congratulate him on his success or whatever. Once again, facepalming ensued. Ensued, and hasn't faded since.
Fuck, it feels good to have vented that at last! Also, I just remembered what my other rant was about, so off I go to write a note for myself.
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