If you’ve been on the Internet over the past week it was hard for you to miss the newest Olympic-related meme to emerge from London.
U.S. gymnast McKayla Maroney became the subject of that meme after her silver medal performance in the individual event final in women’s vault. Maroney, the defending world champion, was as much of a lock to win the event as anyone in any event in the Olympics.
And then she didn’t.
Maroney stuck her first vault for a score of 15.866 — almost half a point higher than anyone else would score in the competition. But the competition is the average of two vaults and as NBC analyst Elfi Schlegel said, “As long as she lands her second vault, she’s the winner.” She, uh, didn’t. Unless you count landing flat on your butt.
She still almost won thanks to her massive first score, but instead finished with silver. And thus, a meme was born.
Thanks to that picture from the medal stand on the top right up there, someone launched a tumblr account called “McAyla is not impressed,” inserting her photo into other famous photos. The title kind of explains it all. Here is one of my favorites, courtesy of said Tumblr site:
But the best part of the whole meme is that Maroney herself embraced it yesterday when she tweeted the following along with the accompanying photo:
The pool is closed..
#notimpressed instagr.am/p/OMsVFpKieZ/— McKayla Maroney (@McKaylaMaroney) August 11, 2012
I think teammate Kyla Ross, far left, might do a better Maroney than McKayla herself. (That’s Aly Raisman posing in the middle.) That tweet has already been retweeted 6,604 times and favorited 5,405 more times. You gotta love Maroney. And come on, with those looks and that attitude, she’s a TV star waiting to happen. It’s like she was created in a reality TV lab. I’d watch.
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