Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

Are they terrible?

I was tuned into mens figure skating last night in time to see an incredible flawless performance from a young 19 year old man from Japan.

Some time later they were doing snowboarding slope style which was really fun to watch.

There might be less energy with less people in the crowd due to the pandemic, but the performances from the athletes are nonetheless fantastic.

Maybe I'm having a different experience as I'm in Canada and its broadcast differently. The CBC is essentially playing all olympics all the time, of course at various prime times compiling the gold medal finals (especially if a Canadian is in any sorts of contention).

CBC's streaming service Gem will be streaming everything, so with that in mind, if you're a fan of something niche (ie. in a canadian context: not-hockey, not-curling) you have more ability than ever before to watch an entire event.

Olympics are like nationalism on steroids. How can that be interesting?

It's also a tragedy. Tens of thousands of talented people who dedicate their lives to an event. Then they return from the Olympics to... get a job as a Wallmart greeter? It's a global waste of human potential

So.. erm...

It can be tricky looking back to younger years and wondering "what changed." Sometimes it's you that changed.

Consider that Nazi Germany hosted an olympics. During the cold war, the olympics was a very lively proxy for soviet-nato competition... with a lot of nationalist propaganda.

Does no one care, or no one in your immediate circle? Did it become more of a propaganda op, or do you just see it more like that today than as a child. I think the olympics are still quite big, generally.

Sometimes it's us that changed.

I agree that you can learn more facts about place than you can by visiting for a few days, I think this is kind of misleading. I've mostly interacted with the world through the internet and have a decent sense for other cultures, world leaders, political systems, leading exports, types of food, etc but the <20 days I've spent abroad really feel like much richer experiences and were very eye opening. I think globalism and the internet make us think the world is a little smaller than it is.

They also added too many sports recently in both summer and winter Games in order to drive tv viewing numbers up. That's diluted the quality, think the skateboard competition in the last summer games.