THESE OLYMPIC SNAPCHATS ARE MORE LIT THAN THE TORCH

By Coblin Wrexham-Pugh

These Olympic athletes aren’t just the best in the world at gymnastics, horse dancing, and trying to drown people in water polo; if anything, the last week in Rio has taught us that some of them are the GOAT of athlete snapchatting. And while the backwards IOC does not yet give you a medal for fire instagrams or on point torch selfies (We can do this! DM me, Thomas Bach), don’t think I’m not going on Spotify and firing up the Romanian anthem whenever Ilie Căpreanu Vines himself surprising his teammates with a trademark out of nowhere thumbs up. That’s not just a gold medal, that’s worthy of painting yourself gold and hoping it doesn’t suffocate you like in that James Bond movie.

Go ahead and watch the TV broadcast, but the real games are going down on social media and not to brag, but my mainest dudes on our Olympics Slack have started calling me the Bob Costas of Instagram. I’m not saying you should skip watching the archery finals, but I’m totally saying that you should skip the archery finals. Who cares about whether they hit that target with the arrow when the Finnish archery team is walking around Rio in basketball uniforms pretending their game is going to start in five minutes and they need to find Drew Gooden? I’m sitting here reacting to their feed like the Maxell tape guy.

If it weren’t for Snapchat, how would I know about the intricately-choreographed No Lie lip sync routine from the Canadian Rugby Sevens squad or Latvian air rifle Olympian Henriks Ulmanis’s viral “I give the mean look” interview about his epic staredown against his Chilean rival Juan Sepulveda. More importantly, how would I know have a doppelganger in Rio that I saw for a split second going nuts at a 4x100 fly heat that I saw on my Sina Weibo app?

The resemblance is uncanny. I immediately took a screenshot and made the guy my avatar on my top seven social networks. I started a group text chain where I let everyone know about my dope Olympic painter’s cap and sent fake updates about my Rio reporting. They all played along, even my buddy Windsor Kaufman-Goutt (@theKAUGOAT) who’s there and managed to track the guy down, took some selfies with him, and told me about how much I was crushing the media party scene with him that night. And also some really personal stuff that I hadn’t actually told him about, which is kind of creepy although it’s possible I may have sleep-blogged it to him while I was doing all that research for that What if the Olympics Were Like Game of Thrones piece?

After awhile, it started to get a little weird. Pictures of my alternate Rio-me started filling up all my feeds. When three more of my crew refused to hang because they said I was in Rio, I had to upload a Notes screenshot to twitter titled “lol guys maybe it’s time to chill with the whole Olympics thing?” but I only got bot-favs and a strongly-worded warning about Olympics copyright infringement.

Yesterday, the platform published a post under my byline from Rio that I didn’t write. “The Instagram Olympics are a Perfect 100 Emoji by Coblin Wrexham-Pugh.” I’m not going to lie, it was a pretty dope post, especially that video of the Swedish Greco-Roman wrestling squad going HAM on that buffet. But it wasn’t me. I G-Chatted my editor “as Gucci said, I’m confused,” and she wrote back “hahaha where’s my 500 words on those equestrian jumping yik yaks.” I spent all morning looking, but there’s no emoji for, like, getting replaced by a pod person (maybe there should be, hit me up iOS).

My twitter account has been suspended. They told me that I have to make it clear that I’m a parody of the real Coblin Wrexham-Pugh. The doppelganger has his own account @CoblinfaReal with twice as many followers. He’s verified. I desperately Snapchatted for anyone who can help me prove that I’m me and not some ghostly specter, but I’m snapping out to an empty void. I didn’t agree to these terms of service.

NOTE: Our legal department has asked to clarify that this is not the real Coblin Wrexham-Pugh. Enjoy the real Coblin’s dispatches from Rio on our site and follow him @CoblinfaReal on twitter and snapchat.