Not Everyone Is Cut out for the Olympics — This TikTok Trend Proves It Again and Again
Ask not what your TikTok trend can do for you, but what you can do for your TikTok trend.
Published Aug. 9 2024, 4:40 p.m. ET
Watching the Olympics can really mess with your mind in several ways. These elite athletes are so good at what they do, after training for years to get there, that they can often make it look easy. On the one hand, you clearly know that becoming an Olympian is an incredibly difficult task, and yet you find yourself making a playlist for your gymnastics routine.
Suddenly you're not just grabbing the mail, you're sprinting to the mailbox while timing yourself. Any fallen tree branch in the wild can become a fencing sword in the right light. If this is you, then the "not selected for the 2024 Olympics" TikTok trend is the one to try. Don't think of this as a failed dream but rather an avoided nightmare.
The "not selected for the 2024 Olympics" TikTok trend is harsh but fair.
This trend tends to go in one of two directions. The first always features the subject poorly participating in a sporting event that is actually part of the Summer Olympics. For example, our girl Teva McCrary posted a TikTok where she is running hurdles and gets caught in one of them. This results in a dramatic fall to the ground. The caption reads, "Unfortunately I was not selected for the 2024 Olympic track team."
But the TikToks that speak to us the most sort of look like a backyard version of the Olympics. It's kind of like when you didn't have a sled, so you fashioned one out of the lid of a garbage can. We like our TikTok trends to feel very DIY.
Lindsey Bristol's TikTok features a brief but glorious series of basket misses that do not include a basketball or an actual basket. Now that's ingenuity. The first is a person attempting to toss a box from a second-floor stairwell into a dumpster. They miss. In the next, they miss tossing some styrofoam, twice. Finally, a small piece of wire thrown towards a trashcan doesn't make it but is well-received by an adorable cat.
We don't want to suggest that we're not appreciative of the numerous bellyflops, the delightful falls, and countless balls to the face. That wasn't a euphemism. It's just that a TikTok trend of this caliber deserves to have more creativity behind it. First of all, do not try this at home. Secondly, where are all the people sliding down a staircase on top of a mattress? Has the memory foam industry ruined all of our fun?
