Viral Moments of the 2024 Olympics
Though the 2024 Olympics have come and gone, the school didn’t get to discuss them much together because they took place over the summer. Now that the Olympics are over, some viral pop culture moments have happened that we can reflect on more now that the school year has started.
These are the moments that created the most conversation before, during, and after the Olympic Games. Each event has many details, and these brief summaries will give you a general idea of the situation in each case.
Long before the 2024 Olympics started, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, made a lofty promise to the people of France and future athletes. In 2015, the city of Paris promised to have the Seine River cleaned and decontaminated enough by the time they host the Olympics so swimming events could take place there.
Hidalgo is known for being very environmentally conscious, reforming Paris to accommodate more bikes to discourage car use, greatly improving the city’s air quality during her time in office. The Seine River, however, has been known for its atrocious pollution for centuries. Sewage, trash, and city runoff have been accumulating in this river for lifetimes. Well before the Olympics, in 1923, swimming in the Seine was banned. Hidalgo promised that she would swim in the Seine on June 23, 2024, as proof that it would be safe for the athletes. President Emmanuel Macron joined in, saying that he would take a dip in the river as well.
Seve Morris, head of the French department said, “It's when Macron, the president, said he would swim to show how clean it was. Then people started to say, ‘let's all flush at the same time’. French people hate their presidents. It's always been like that, but with Macron they really don’t like him.”
This goal of cleaning the Seine seemed ridiculous to some. Seve said, “It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, I think in the first place it shouldn't be that dirty.” Some people went viral online for coming up with an especially creative mode of retaliation. Some Parisians claimed that on the day Macron goes swimming, they would toss their feces into the Seine. The rest of France wanted to join in, so people online created a website to calculate when to throw the feces into the river based on their location so that it would float by Macron and Hidalgo at the exact time they’d go for a dip.
It is not known if these citizens were successful in having the mayor swim in waste, and Hidalgo’s swim date ended up getting postponed, happening on July 17 instead due to the decontamination being unfinished at the time. Macron has yet to swim in the Seine, nor given a date when he would. Water testing revealed that the E.coli levels were still slightly above safe levels and only tested safe on two occasions, during the men’s and women’s triathlon. During all the other days and their events the E.coli bacteria levels were high. Some athletes became ill after their events were held in the river; however, the cause is not confirmed to be linked to the Seine’s water.
Seve did say that the Olympics were a great time to be in Paris otherwise. Hidalgo made it a main goal to have as little pollution as possible for the games and it seems like that was a success. “A friend of mine who is from Paris said it was the best time in Paris he's ever had. He said everything was super clean. There were no cars, so you could walk everywhere,” said Seve.
Another moment that caused a lot of online discourse was the controversy surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who was the target of hate comments and transphobia, saying that trans women shouldn’t compete in women's sports. The kicker here is that Khelif was born biologically female. During her bout with Italian boxer Angela Carini, Carini tapped out after 46 seconds, saying she “had to preserve my life” and that she had “never felt a punch like this.”
This quote prompted many people on X to assume Khelif is a transgender woman and many hateful posts were posted there, including one by Elon Musk. Musk retweeted a transphobic post that was seen by more than 200 million people, most of whom likely didn’t know the context. Even writer J.K. Rowling, who has made it very clear that she does not support trans people through her history of comments on Twitter, tweeted her opinion: “Explain why you’re ok with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment,” and “This is men revealing their power to women,” about a situation where no men were involved whatsoever.
Junior Tristan Chan, an exchange student from Australia, said, “They [Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling] should take down their posts.”
Cindy Yuan, also a junior, said, “I think misinformation can ruin someone's life, and you can't really do anything about it.” Khelif is trying, though; she has filed a cyberbullying case against J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk and an investigation has started.
On a lighter note, the men’s pole vaulting event gained a lot of attention because of Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, who reached a height of 6.25 meters during his event, scoring gold for his country and setting a new world record. He went viral online because after this feat he immediately ran jumping and celebrating toward the crowd to hug his girlfriend.
Perhaps the most famous moment of the 2024 Olympics was the performance by Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn, stage name Raygun. Breakdancing is judged in a bout, a sort of dance-off between the two competitors, and each bout has two rounds. There are 9 judges on the panel, so in a bout there are 18 points available, and Raygun got none. In all three of her bouts she did not win a single point against her competitors; each bout ended 18 to 0.
Gunn is actually a lecturer at Macquarie University Faculty of Arts, and has a PhD with the thesis, “Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl's Experience of B-boying, Explored." These seem to be the qualifications to have her represent Australia in the Olympic Games. Her performance included moves in which she rolled around on the ground and kangaroo hopped. This sparked countless people on multiple platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, etc. to make fun of Gunn. Even Australian citizens voiced their disappointment, including Tristan, who said, “A lot of people say she's a disgrace to the country… she's been made a meme in Australia.” Of course, when in the public eye, backlash is expected, but some took it too far, posting hate comments and even death threats towards Gunn. The Australian government has sided with Gunn, and any full-length recording of the performance has now been scrubbed clean from the internet. The Olympic committee most likely wanted Raygun and themselves to save a little face, but that is speculation.
