I just stumbled upon this article about the Olympic games, it left me speechless : http://owni.eu/2012/08/02/the-2012-olympics-©-a-cyberpunk-dystopia/
I knew that dubious practices like these were all around the Games, but I never imagined they'd be this bad. And yet, it is a logical consequence of the individual being utterly insignificant (megacorporations, consumers and law enforcement alike).
Some of this made the news here and it is a pretty daft thing. You've got two sides of the Olympics in my mind: The sports and the sponsors. On the sports you have the games themselves, the matches, the contests, the medal awards, the cheering of crowds, the competitiveness of athletes, the enjoyment and pride of your country. On the sponsor side, you've got you money centered rules, the bigotry policies that infringe the rights of already established brands and forcing them to change, the misallocation of tickets and selling of tickets that are overpriced and overly complicated, the advertisement of big brands, of big athletes, and the mistreatment of residence in the area. The advertisement of unhealthy products like Coke and McDonalds as the main advertisement of your campaign tells me that this side of the Olympics is uncaring and ignorant, money grabbing till the end. I care for the Sports sides only, not the Sponsor side. If we harken back to Britain's second olymlics there was no advertising at all, and no star treatment of athletes, they had to get to the stadium, by themselves on local buses when they had to compete. That is the true games, a man making his way to compete against the rest of the world's best athletes.
