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Memes that Brazilians are sharing about the Olympics
By Juliano Andrade Spyer, on 16 August 2016
One of the stars of the Olympic games in Rio has been the crowd itself. The liveliness of the crowd has attracted the attention of the foreign press (NYTimes, BBC), and particularly of athletes and their coaches. My personal favourite case has been how football fans yelled in chorus “zika” every time the US goalkeeper touched the ball during matches (learn why).
A lot could be said about Brazil and Brazilians based on these reactions so the point of the post is to show what low income Brazilians are sharing on social media in relation to the Olympics. This type of reaction can be considered as a form of long distance virtual cheering (or booing).
I will add the images below with translations and brief comments.
Sex is perhaps the subject I have written more often about in this blog so I guess it is not a coincidence that the image below is the meme I received more times from informants. The text at the bottom says: “Never complain again of when your sandals break.” (I added a patch to make it “decent” for all possible audiences, but I am sure the idea is clear.)
Violence and crime are also dealt with through humour. Above the title says: “ornamental assault”.
Above: “The violence is so great in Brazil that our first medal was on shooting.”
There are some criticism about the idealization of the country. Above, the Brazilian replies: “You should come live here, then.”
There is humour about Brazilians, as in the banner above made to persuade Brazilian players to give their best: “Play like we drink.” The slogan at the top says: “The best about Brazil are the Brazilians.”
And at last but not at least, there is football. Some commentators say that the problem with the Brazilian crowd is that they behave as football fans in every sport modality. And I guess if Brazil only won a gold medal in (men’s) football, every other outcome would seem OK. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen, as the meme above shows, referring to star player Neymar: “Football lesson”.
