The age of ridicule

 There's a different one every day now, or maybe every hour. To be honest it's hard to keep up.

You know what I'm talking about: Memes featuring that Australian break dancer who was so bad at the Paris Olympics the clever set on the interwhatsis started photoshopping her into every familiar scenario under the sun.

Here she is taking Uma Thurman's place opposite John Travolta in the iconic "Pulp Fiction" dance scene. Here she is as the tyrannosaurus rex terrorizing Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern in "Jurassic Park." Here she is as William Zabka (Johnny) facing off against Ralph Macchio (Daniel) in "The Karate Kid."

Blink once, and she's the street-lit silhouette in "The Exorcist" movie poster. Blink again, and she's onstage with Napoleon Dynamite, dancing with Elaine from "Seinfeld", on and on and on.

A week after the Olympic torch was extinguished, and still the performer known as B-Girl Raygun remains the Queen of Memes. It's a backhanded tribute to her spectacular awfulness at the Games, where she lost all three of her round-robin matches without scoring a single point. Zeroes across the board.

However.

However, Raygun has a real name: Rachael Gunn. She's 36 years old and a college professor with a PhD in cultural studies. And if the memes have made her a celebrity in the most 2024 of ways, other online reaction has not been nearly so lighthearted.

Gunn, in fact, says some of it has been "devastating." The Australian Olympic Committee was even compelled to speak out about a petition on Change.org demanding an investigation of how Gunn was chosen, and an apology from both Gunn and Australian chief de mission Anna Meares for alleged "unethical conduct" in Gunn's selection.

Naturally, the petition was anonymous. Naturally, the "unethical conduct" charge was made without a scrap of supporting detail or evidence.

"It is disgraceful that these falsehoods concocted by an anonymous person can be published in this way," Australian Olympic Committee CEO Matt Carroll said in a statement. "It amounts to bullying and harassment and is defamatory."

To which the Blob would add: And isn't bullying and harassing and defaming just how the world works these days?

Look, there has always been a hefty portion of nastiness in human beings, we know this, but our veneer of civilization has kept an equally hefty portion of it out of the public purview. You might spout all sorts of ugly in private about certain individuals, but you'd never say it to their faces. It wasn't considered proper -- and also, it carried with it the distinct possibility you'd eat a knuckle hoagie or two. 

Social media, of course, has removed that threat. It's the firewall behind which cowards and shite-talkers can safely take cover while firing slings and arrows at the target du jour. A force field for asshats, you might call it -- and what you also might call the Age of Ridicule is the result.

Because of it, or so it seems, we've become a meaner and coarser and less compassionate species, here in 2024. And as proof, I take you back to 1988, when a young man from Cheltenham, England, became the Raygun of the Calgary Winter Olympics.

His name was Michael Edwards, but he became known, like Rachael Gunn and "Raygun", as "Eddie the Eagle." Eddie the Eagle was Great Britain's best ski jumper, which merely meant he was the world's worst. In the Calgary games he bombed every bit as spectacularly as Raygun 36 years later, finishing dead last in both the 70- and 90-meter events.

The difference was, he became beloved for it. A celebrity, even.

His cheerful demeanor and winning personality made him a hit on the talk shows, and in 2016, they made a movie about him. And at the closing ceremonies in Calgary, the president of the organizing committee, Frank King, even gave him a shout-out.

"You have broken world records and you have established personal bests," King said, addressing the assembled athletes. 

And then: "Some of you have even soared like an eagle."

Know what's most significant about all that, looking back from this darker time?

No one ever circulated a petition demanding to know how Eddie the Eagle made the Olympic team, or accused Great Britain's Olympic committee of "unethical conduct" in his selection.

Amazing, right?