The Paris Olympics Is Embracing the Memes

If being glued to the Games in Paris was a skill, the people running the official Olympics social media accounts would have earned gold—and they want you to know it:

Their post, picturing Simone Biles’ multiple medals with the caption “Me if watching every second of the Olympics was an Olympic sport,” that was shared Monday on X and other platforms is just one of the many times the social media accounts of the Olympic Games and Paris 2024 have embraced or created memes—typically humorous or relatable images, videos, GIFs, and/or pieces of text that spread across the internet and which can often make reference to an existing trend.

The Paris Games have already gifted viewers with a treasure trove of indelible characters—from sharpshooting heartthrob Kim Yeji to Pommel Horse Guy Stephen Nedoroscik to cheese-sponsored gymnast Giorgia Villa to even the inanimate but highly acclaimed chocolate muffins of the Olympic Village.

While regular social media users can often be credited with organically latching onto quirky moments and sending them to virality, the official Olympics social media accounts, which are typically dedicated to posting highlights and event schedules and results, have joined in on the fun. 

When a photo that caught Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina mid-air quickly emerged as one of the most iconic photos of this summer’s Olympics, it was given an editing treatment that’s out of this world—literally. A series of posts by Paris 2024 photoshopped the surfer floating further and further into the sky until he was saying hello to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet in space.

After French swimmer Léon Marchand made history by winning gold in two separate events in the same evening, the official Paris 2024 account posted a photo of Marchand that sought to capture a collective sentiment of awe and disbelief surrounding the athlete’s seemingly inhuman feat.

A couple days later when Marchand added a fourth gold medal to his tally, the Paris 2024 account doubled down on the joke.

And when sharpshooters Kim Yeji of South Korea and Yusuf Dikeç of Türkiye, both of whom won silver medals in their respective events, won over the internet with their coolness and precision, the Olympics account joined in the fawning over them:

The Olympics also channeled rapper and Olympic commentator Snoop Dogg, who has gone viral for his reactions and general fun he appears to be having in Paris.

Perhaps the most popular meme, fittingly for the Paris Olympics, is a riff on the “hang it in the Louvre” expression often applied to photos of iconic moments. 

When someone joked that the portrait of Mona Lisa could be replaced with a photo of France’s Cassandre Beaugrand winning the Olympic triathlon, the people behind the Paris 2024 account delivered. “With pleasure!” they wrote, along with a photoshopped image of Beaugrand in the famed frame. 

French judoka Teddy Riner, who has won two gold medals in Paris, was also given the Louvre treatment. “At this level, it’s art,” Paris 2024 posted.

The memes that have peppered the feeds of the official Olympics accounts come as more companies, organizations, and even presidential campaigns lean into this new strategy of promotion, dubbed meme marketing, which some say can have a greater reach than traditional advertising—the more unhinged the better (though also riskier).

Others are also trying to ride the Olympics buzz. 

The U.S. broadcaster of the Games, NBC, has similarly posted a number of memes—from hanging a photo of Biles in the Louvre to making a Yu Gi Oh card and a superhero comic of Team USA’s anime fan Noah Lyles and Clark Kent-like Stephen Nedoroscik, respectively, to poking fun at the old and new faces of former swimmer and 23-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.

On Monday, when the official Olympics account hailed a viral photo of Biles and teammate Jordan Chiles bowing to Brazilian gold medalist Rebeca Andrade as “everything,” the official Louvre Museum account replied with a winky face emoji: “Maybe we should hang it in the Louvre…”