– Derek Allen, Attorney –
It didn’t take long for the Sochi Olympics to produce its first meme. On Saturday night, my girlfriend and I were able to block out the ongoing drama that is Bob Costas’ eye for long enough to watch American figure skater Ashley Wagner put on a solid performance during the team competition. (We, like many others, are only able to tell a good performance by (1) whether the person falls down and (2) how many times commentator Scott Hamilton shriek-gasps after a jump.) She didn’t fall and Hamilton caught our cats’ attentions with his shriek-gasping, so most of us (including Ashley Wagner) expected a good score.
But the judges — who I assume base their scores on something other than a binary did-she-fall-factor and probably don’t even listen to Scott Hamilton’s broadcast — thought otherwise and gave her 63.10 somethings. (Points?
Units? Rubles? Broken doorknobs? Stray Dogs?) Obviously disappointed with being awarded 63 stray dogs and what has to be a messy one-tenth of a stray dog, Wagner made the face you see to the right, muttered to her coach that the score was “bullshit,” and made me rewind my DVR four separate times to see if she really just said “bullshit” knowing full well that she had a camera three feet from her face.
And just like that, Sochi had its first meme. From my fifteen minutes of internet research, it looks like CUNA’s twitter account had the best commercial use of Wagner’s reaction when it used her disbelief to take a pot shot at banks that nickel-and-dime us. Whether NBC, the Olympic Committee, Ashley Wagner, or Betsy Ross could stop CUNA from using the picture is anyone’s guess (actually, just my guess since I don’t know much about that area of the law — I imagine there are a few people in our intellectual property department who wouldn’t have to guess). I suspect this won’t be the last meme we see come out of Sochi, or the last time a business tries to take advantage of it.