Olympic Committee Rules for Social Media: Common Sense; or Signs of a Vast Conspiracy of Space Aliens?

"Olympic Bosses Set Guidelines for Tweeting Athletes"
Erik Malinowski, Playbook, Wired (June 27, 2011)

"The International Olympic Committee has released guidelines on how athletes at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London may engage in social media, an effort clearly designed to avoid the sort of confusion that occurred nearly 18 months ago in Vancouver.

" 'The IOC actively encourages and supports athletes … to take part in "social media" and to post, blog and tweet their experiences,' the guidelines state (.pdf). 'Broadly speaking, the IOC wants people to share their experiences through social media. As a general rule, the IOC encourages all social media and blogging activity at the Olympic Games as long as it is not for commercial and/or advertising purposes.'..."

So far, so good. It's nice to think that the International Olympic Committee can learn. And apply what's been learned.

"...Well, if anything, it should certainly curtail the type of promo-only tweeting we often see from Olympic athletes. But beyond scaling back on this sort of commercialism that could distract from the competitions, IOC officials undoubtedly expect this move to cut down on some of the questions that arose during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia...."

The Lemming suspects that part of the trouble is that the big shots who get to be on international committees are around the Lemming's age. Nothing wrong with that, by itself. But the Lemming stayed in touch with what 'the help' were doing: quite often by being 'the help,' and that's another topic.

That meant that the Lemming knew how to use a typewriter - a vital skill for 'clerical' types, not so much for success-track executives. Manual typewriters: the Lemming's that old. Being able to type maybe 50 words a minute ('good enough,' barely) gave the Lemming a head start when the Disk Operating System, and computers with stunningly huge internal memory¹ came along.

The Lemming's rambled on about this before:

• "Why Your Boss Doesn't Understand the Information Age"
  Starting a Small Business Without Losing Your Mind (August 9, 2010)

"Olympism?!"

"...IOC honchos are expecting the athletes (as always) to best on their best Twitter behavior.

" 'Postings, blogs and tweets should at all times conform to the Olympic spirit and fundamental principles of Olympism as contained in the Olympic Charter, be dignified and in good taste, and not contain vulgar or obscene words or images,' the rules stipulate...."

The Lemming was not aware that "Olympism" was a word. In context, it's pretty clearly a noun, probably meaning something like 'of or pertaining to the Olympics.' And if it wasn't a word before, it is now. Languages - living ones - change, grow, develop. Someone really should let the folks running France know that. And that's definitely another topic. (Another War-on-Terror Blog (June 6, 2011))

The Olympics, Vast Secret Conspiracies, and the Lemming

Back to that article. Last time. Promise.

"...Additionally, no website URLs will be allowed to contain the words 'Olympic' or 'Olympics' in the primary domain, unless they have been pre-approved by the IOC. And, as before, fans and athletes will not be allowed to post audio or video of any events to Twitter, Facebook or personal blogs...."

The IOC controls what folks can name their domains?! Okay - maybe that's part of what's been getting sorted out, as intellectual property laws and customs are catching up with today's information technology. Well, moving in the right direction. Maybe.

It occurs to the Lemming that the 'no Olympic/Olympics' in domain names may be sort of rough on folks who want to start something online about ancient Greece, or Mount [redacted], or Greco-Roman mythology.

Well, as we say here in Minnesota - it could be worse.

Or - - - maybe Wired let a little-known aspect of the Vast Global Worldwide Conspiracy of International Oligarchic Control ("IOC" doesn't stand for International Olympic Committee, although dupes of the lizard-men think that's so - - -

IOC STANDS FOR INTERNATIONAL OLIGARCHIC CONTROL - WHO ARE

THE REAL RULERS OF EARTH!!!!!!!

They're the ones who killed John Lennon, and put the face on Mars, and faked the moon landing to cover up the real reason that Kennedy was killed: which was so Elvis could elope with Marilyn Monroe, who had been hiding in plain sight disguised as Jackie Kennedy - who couldn't have married Onassis, since he's one of the shape-shifting space-alien lizard-men who really run the world.

You See??!!! IT ALL FITS TOGETHER!!!!!!!!

Maybe the Lemming shouldn't joke about that - somebody might believe it.

Or the lizard-men might be upset.

Or something.

Related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: 2010 Commonwealth Games and Bad Publicity"
  (September 26, 2010)
• "Chinese Olympics: A Bit on the Control Freak Side?"
  (August 4, 2008)
• "Watching the Olympics Online: Some Advice"
  (February 22, 2010)
• "Athletes, Social Media, Rules and the 2010 Olympics"
  (February 6, 2010
• "China Olympics and Algae: Bad News, Good News, Bad News"
  (July 3, 2008)

Not-so-related posts:

• "How to Not Sound Crazy - or - THE PARANOIDS ARE AFTER ME!!!"
  (June 12, 2011)
• "Nuclear Weapons, Space Aliens, Conspiracy Theories, and Getting a Grip"
  (September 24, 2010)
• "Why is it So Hard to Find a Comprehensive History of Blotting Paper?"
  (March 2, 2010)
• "Haiti's Earthquake Caused by - You Guessed it - Yankee Imperialists"
  (January 21, 2010)
• "Beware the Lizard People! (I'm Not Making This Up)"
  (January 21, 2009)

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¹ The early hard drives paled in comparison to the later titans - which sometimes could store as much as 30 megabytes of data!