Olympic Rings

Why do I spend hours every day with the olympic games rolling on the TV? Why do I google things like “how deep is the olympic swimming pool in London” and look at the satellite imagery of the olympic grounds in London? Why do I listen to the most critical people I’ve ever heard while watching people I don’t know jump and twist and flip in the gymnastics competitions? Why do I watch the DVR recordings when I already know the outcomes of the events?

Maybe I just long for distraction from daily life. Maybe its the consumerist culture that I find myself living in. Maybe it’s the excitement of the race for gold. Maybe it’s pride in my nation. Whatever it might be, I am realizing that I really don’t care all that much. Some of it is fun to watch, but it’s just background noise for the most part. I stay up later and my productivity drops. It’s almost like getting sucked into a mindless game on my computer, and then playing that game until I either fall asleep or realize that my alarm is supposed to wake me up soon.

Surfing the interwebs while watching TV is becoming more prominent in our culture. At least that’s how it appears to me. Did you know that the olympic rings represent the 5 continents of the world? One of the things I came across via Twitter caught my attention more than anything else in the static of social media, TV, and Google searches, so I thought I’d share it here:

Could you figure out what continent each color represented? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not what Wikipedia says. What was the most surprising statistic to you?

In case you couldn’t figure it out from the visual statistics, here’s the key: Oceania=blue, Africa=yellow, Europe=black, Asia=green, Americas=red