I haven’t really paid much of an interest in the olympics at any point in my life, although it is entirely unavoidable now. Its ubiquity on social media through trending articles, pieces of footage and people’s discussion extends its spectacle into the social sphere to the point where you really can’t have one without the other. I found myself explaining a series of olympic-themed memes to my girlfriend, my explanations bolstered by a substantial amount of information regarding the events that each of the memes were drawn from – knowing as much as I did, I may as well have just watched the olympics.

This is the first time that’s happened to me – that is, becoming at all informed about the olympics. My identity has become so intertwined with its online counterpart that any event that takes the virtual world by storm becomes a part of my vocabulary by default. I contribute to the global conversation without even meaning to do so, caught in a web of memes with no hope of escaping it.