So, who’s likin’ dem Olympics?
I am an Olympic nut. Well, really, I get excited at the prospect of the Olympics, tentatively planning my future around being patriotic for two weeks. So far (and this is how it usually happens), my ideal Olympic viewing experience has been a watered-down version of that, with the exception of occasional excitement during close swimming races, new event discoveries (why didn’t I remember that Trampoline is an official Olympic sport?), and of course, gymnastics. Gymnastics is the figure skating of the summer games, and by golly, it’ll be one of my faves forever.
I was also reeeeeally excited to see how these Olympic games would be different from all those in past years, considering the fact that they’ve been dubbed by countless media outlets as “the most social games ever.” You all know that I’m a social media freak, so it should come as no surprise that I joined every athlete and official games page, poised just perfectly to keep up with the latest trending topics. That all worked just fine during the opening ceremony and whatnot, but, duh . . . I kind of forgot about the whole element of surprise and the five-hour time delay between U.S. eastern standard time and London-o’clock. NBC would, of course, wait until east coast prime time to broadcast the most popular events, and meanwhile, I would end up unintentionally reading tweets from Shawn Johnson about how well the ladies’ U.S. Olympic team was faring during the team medal finals. Goodbye, pounding heart. Without your gift of anxiety, the televised win would be nothing more than a re-enactment of what could have been an exciting competition.
And so, it came down to a difficult decision–continue to grumble every time a surprise victory was spoiled for me, or give up my precious social media outlets. I chose the latter. Well, sort of. I hid Olympic news from my Facebook news feed, then decided to only use Twitter between the hours of midnight and . . . whenever the events I cared about started in London the next morning. Very limited window, but for a true cause, we’ll say.
You may be asking why I didn’t try to watch the events live online. I did finally get around to that for the women’s all-around competition, once NBC’s flash-based platform decided to actually work (hint: use Chrome instead of Firefox). After that semi-exciting round of streamed tumbling, my parents dropped in for a surprise weekend visit, so the last several days have been run-around-town busy for me. Thus, there was a slight disconnect that made for delayed event-watching, but easier result-avoiding in other event finals.
And so, I’m back online today, but trying my best not to catch any sneak peeks of how the U.S. women fare in today’s events. Is it balance beam or floor exercise? Not exactly sure, but Google definitely isn’t safe at this point, either. In the meantime, I’ll continue to play the avoidance game, and wait for this evening when I can possibly jump back into networking mode. Until then, please–no spoilers. And if you wanna hide out from sports spoilers but just can’t put down your smart phone, I’ll be hunkered down in my viewer-friendly Facebook and Twitter worlds. Everyone’s welcome, and I promise–no spoilers before game time.
