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When are the Olympics over?

Seriously though, when?

 

Molly McHugh

Internet Culture

Posted on Feb 18, 2014   Updated on May 31, 2021, 6:02 pm CDT

It might be unpatriotic for me to ask this but… when the hell are the Olympics over?

Before you talk to me about some cute puppies a really good looking Olympic athlete saved or the dramatic goings-on of men’s ice skating, know that I am not even close to the only one asking this.


 

Yep, “when are the Olympics over” is an incredibly popular search term at the moment, and it continues to rise dramatically.


It brings to mind the days before the Super Bowl, when “what time is the Super Bowl” became an echo, nationally sounding across Google search bars everywhere. If you were very quiet and put your ear next to a computer, you could actually hear it whispering from our country’s collective omnibox.

That search, though, had a positivity to it: “What time is the Super Bowl… because I am excited to watch it!” was the likely and assumed end of that sentence. But this time, it’s probably more like: “When are the Olympics over… because damn it, ice dancing is stupid.”

“When are the Olympics over… because my roommate thinks caring about it makes him dictator of our TV.”

“When are the Olympics over… because I don’t enjoy watching something supporting a country that is so terrible to gay people.”

“When are the Olympics over… because these Bob Costas pink eye jokes are bleak.”  

“When are the Olympics over… because I’m Bob Costas, and this freaking sucks.”

“When are the Olympics over… because someone made Bode Miller cry and it’s making me feel things.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve tired of the patriotic sporting event though. If you look at Google Trends, it seems that over time, as the competition nears its end, we’ve gotten more and more sick of it. And as a result, we’ve turned to the all-powerful Google to ask the simple yet deflating question of when in God’s name the mother-effing Olympics will come to an end and free us from its reign over all forms of media. Who knows how high our fatigue will climb this go-around? Release us from your death grip!


 

By the way, they aren’t over until Feb. 23. 

Photo via Dave Catchpole/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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*First Published: Feb 18, 2014, 9:39 am CST