#Quinning

The Olympic commentary continues. My post last week discussed the social media outburst that occurred with Olympic host, Bob Costas' eye infection.

Source

This week it seems that a new trend is popping up, #Quinning. For those of you only following the games and not the drama behind the scenes, Olympic Bobsled competitor Johnny Quinn (alumnus of my college the University of North Texas), has run into some trouble in Sochi.

Aside from getting stuck in a hotel elevator, Quinn also got locked in his hotel bathroom. According to Johnny Quinn's Twitter he was taking a shower when the door got stuck, just another one of those Sochi Problems. But not to worry, Quinn used his bobsled muscles and busted through the door to get out. The end result? A pretty broken door. Quinn tweeted the picture sharing how he was stuck inside and just needed to get out. Without any other option, he did what any Olympian would do. 

People saw the Tweet, thought it was hilarious so, low and behold it became the start of another new hash tag trend #Quinning.

Quinning refers to the act of breaking open an object or thing to the point of looking destroyed as per the picture. Social media users began Tweeting their photos of things they have opened in a ravenous manner, often resembling Johnny Quinn's door.

Even memes about Johnny Quinn have been circulating the Internet. 

As a student of the University of North Texas and a native to McKinney, Texas, where Johnny Quinn is from, I am proud to support this #Quinning trend. The University of North Texas even showed its support of Quinn through social media by tweeting pictures of students breaking through a door set up in the middle of campus.  I even took a picture of myself #Quinning, tweeted it at Johnny Quinn and just a few minutes later, he favorited the Tweet.

The university even used this hash tag trend as a way to promote itself and gain some notoriety. Local news stations heard about #Quinning on the campus and even came to cover the trend by the end of the day.

While Johnny Quinn is a good athlete he wasn’t one that the media chose to shove down people’s throats as representing America, like they did with figure skater Gracie Gold. But this hash tag trend not only put Quinn on the forefront of everyone’s mind to root for, but also gave him some social standing and notoriety within the media’s eyes.

In the midst of an exciting and competitive Winter Olympics, it seems that social media has taken the mishaps in Sochi and made those the headlines and the stories worth following during the Olympics.  Let’s see what trend pops up next…

Until next time,

Nikki Darling