Tiktok Olympics
No One Asked But Here's My Strategy For How to Make More People Care About The Olympics
I love the Olympics. I think they’re very fun and I love watching them. I know they’re evil and if you take the time to look at any issue remotely associated with the Olympics you will find undue human suffering associated with them. I wanted to take the time today to address a problem I believe I can fix. As an aquarius and an ENTP, I spend a lot of time trying to think of fixes for societal problems no one asked me to fix. I think I could have done vaccine distribution better if someone had asked me what I thought about it. I think we could fix the Uber shortage that no one wants to talk about by defunding the police and making cops the new ubers. They already have the cars and public safety will increase if rideshare is made a public utility and subsidized as such. But this isn’t about that. The problem I’m trying to address is why didn’t we have more stars from this year’s Olympics?
When Ilona Maher popped up on my For You page, I followed her immediately. We knew each other in high school and I always thought she was really cool and fun. I didn’t realize that while I thought I was getting the inside scoop from an old acquaintance, the rest of the world was tuning in and getting a front row seat to the Olympics. Everyone was seeing what our little city had always seen. A funny, endearing athlete but most importantly, a star. Instead of just getting a behind the scenes look, Ilona gave us a show. She was using the Olympics as a backdrop and was creating her own star. She had personality and she shined on camera. We were all taken with her and eventually traditional media and NBC sports followed suit and gave her the attention she deserved.
Ilona is part of a new crop of Olympians, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. The self made, almost democratically elected Olympian star. If your sport is not one of the favorites, it can be hard to get traditional media to pay attention to you. No one who does market research for a living would tell you that two of the most magnetic and popular olympians this year would be from Women’s Rugby 7s and Men’s Volleyball. Through Tiktok we were able to see into their worlds and learn more about their sports. Not only did they stand out and get added to the roster of Americans to root for but in a year lacking star power they added their names and sports to our collective consciousness.
Tiktok Olympians filled a niche that we didn’t know we needed. Only in the middle of competition this year did I have the thought “Wait, who are we rooting for?”. Going into these Olympics we knew Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky but who else? Could anyone off the top of their heads name another Olympian who wasn’t famous already from their sport going to the Tokyo? NBC didn’t give us anyone to throw our weight behind. We had Sha’carri in the beginning but for unfair and fucked up reasons she was not allowed to compete. We had our old standbys and the new girl didn’t work out so they didn’t bother to give us anyone else.
For the past couple olympics they have built up the power of the gymnastics TEAM. The fab five in London and the fierce five after them in Rio. They sold us, and we believed, the narrative that all of these girls are friends and all equally good at gymnastics. There was the power of the team. This year the press could not be bothered to rally around the other girls. Why even try when Simone is the best to ever do it? Well, as we’re seeing now that’s a lot of pressure to put on one girl and when she fairly, and understandably, can’t live up to our expectations, we’re in a mad dash to create the new Simone during competition. Suni Lee was always there and maybe it would be easier to get people to care about her if we emphasized the necessity of the team. Simone may be an incredible athlete who is changing the way the sport functions but that doesn’t mean the other girls aren’t important. They're the four other best gymnasts in the United States. It wouldn’t be a waste of time to learn their names and watch them compete. These are the teammates Simone relies on for help and who compete with her. After all, part of Olympic gymnastics is team based and she can’t win a team event by herself.
While watching the All Around Qualifiers last week, there was a lot of coverage of course about Simone and her skill but the other girls got nary a mention. In fact while watching, we learned more about the Netherlands team than the American team. We missed one of the American’s routines so we could see the Netherlands girls! While Suni was doing the uneven bars they mentioned that she had a hard road to the Olympics but did not go into it. Now they can’t tell us enough about Suni. I’m interested! I want to know more but I should have known more in mid July when we were ramping up to Tokyo. This summer should have been devoted to those girls and making sure we knew their names. A narrative already existed about the gymnastics team, we could plug the new girls into the old narrative and we would have eaten it up just like last time, and the time before.
In the old days, our media decided which American Olympians were stars. They did their research and picked the most talented or the hottest. We took what they gave us and didn’t question it. Now though each athlete has individual profiles across every social media platform and we can decide for ourselves who the stars are. The thing is we don’t necessarily want to. There is a happy medium between everyone being drawn to Ilona’s natural charisma and investing in her and her sport and Simone being plastered on every tv in the nation in order to get us to watch. Traditional media can use the existing tools athletes have to promote themselves and meet them in the middle. All of Team USA can be unleashed on us via Instagram with the NBC money to promote them and we can decide for ourselves who the stars are. There can be an ebb and flow as we get closer to the actual events. The news cycle can shift their focus should something happen. We don’t have to hope and pray that the few stars we’ve decided on deliver on the promises that were made about them.
It is so frustrating to live in a world where they can make anyone a star and they choose not to. I know that the world we live in now is evil and all the things I am asking for are probably not a net positive. The Olympics themselves decimate communities and plunge cities into debt. But I’m not asking for anything that doesn’t already exist. The apparatus to make the Olympic viewing experience better and more exciting does exist, use it. We have the tools at our disposal. I am not asking for us to reinvent the wheel. I’m asking why do we keep the expensive press machine in the garage if we’re not going to use it.
Social media makes it easier than ever to identify star power. If you shine on Tiktok, you will shine in interviews. An endorsement deal is soon to follow. Gone are the days of searching through the athletes and trying to find or invent the most interesting narrative. The work is half done for you. I could see traditional media shying away from these people because it’s so much easier to create your own narrative when the camera and press releases are in your hands but the vetting process is also half done for them. If NBC needs help deciding who to make a star all they need is their Tiktok and to slur search their Twitter. I have a hard time believing that the American star machine can’t do the same bare minimum research as Bachelor Nation every time a new cast is announced. It will be harder to demonize people after they fail us but it will also be easier to avoid making those people stars in the first place.
To some extent my argument is one of inevitability. People at the height of their athletic ability are usually young and for our society that means better at using their phone. Sky Brown, the 13 year old skateboarder from Great Britain is a harbinger of things to come. In ten years most Olympians will be from the Sky Brown generation. They will be able to make a platform for themselves before traditional media has a chance to cover them. If everyone is smart, traditional media will get in on the ground floor and work with these people. It's so much easier to use existing fame to boost your network than to cultivate an interest in someone and build fame around them. We can also use new media to promote olympians. I’m sure Charlie D’amelio would love to dance with Sky Brown. Use the world of Tiktok to build your stars. A common way to build an audience is to do collabs. We build awareness and knowledge of olympians in a young audience by meeting them where they are,
This democratic star-making is also better for the athletes. There are so many olympians who for a quick two weeks are America's sweethearts, bombarded with attention and love and then as soon as they return from the games are quickly forgotten about. The endorsements dry up and there’s nothing to show for their name recognition. In our new influencer economy, they can make that fame stretch a little further. Imagine how differently so many Olympic stories could end, if once the games were over, there was at the very least a sugarbear hair sponsored post in their future. Now that’s not necessarily a bright future or exemplary of a good society that we would like to live in but it’s better than the alternative. There’s no reason we shouldn’t use the tools at our disposal to put a bandaid on a fucked up society at large.
Usually we would have to wait two years to see how this pans out next time, but now we have about six months until the Winter Olympics. What better time than the present to try out the machine. Give us a new crop of favorites. Show us their Tiktoks now and build an audience. If by chance the girl reading this right now is an olympic hopeful, start tiktoking. Don’t wait for the press to take notice of you! Become your own star!