This post is part of a series written by zcomm interns. Be sure to check back each week for their take on the latest in the public relations industry. This week, Hailey discusses the 2012 closing ceremonies and the Spice Girls performance.
The 2012 Olympics generated more than 150 million tweets during the 16-day event, but the most talked about moment had nothing to do with athletics. The Spice Girls generated a whopping 160 thousand tweets per minute during the closing ceremonies, breaking the Games’ previous TPM record of 80 thousand after Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won the 200m race.
Although 160 thousand seems like a large number, it’s nowhere close to what Blue Ivy Carter generated when Beyonce Knowles showed off her baby bump at MTV’s Music Awards in August of 2011. Before even leaving the womb, Blue managed to generate 9 thousand tweets per SECOND. If you do the math, that would be about 540 thousand tweets per minute, more than three times what the Spice Girls’ performance accumulated.
If we had the technology in the 90s that we have today, I bet the Spice Girls would be right up there with Beyonce. I have a hard time imagining what my childhood would have been like had I grown up with the easy access to the internet, but I’m pretty sure I would have singlehandedly given the Hanson Brothers the TPM record.
As a 90s child, I like the way we obsessed over celebrities better. We didn’t express our love for them on Facebook or Twitter. We wrote it in our Barbie journals or our marble composition books. We didn’t stalk our pop star idols online. We read about them in BOP or Tigerbeat. We didn’t take videos of ourselves singing and dancing to our favorite songs. We just charged our parents and neighbors to watch us do it live.
The Spice Girls may not have generated nearly as many tweets as Beyonce and then unborn baby Blue, but they created some of the best childhood memories for us 90s kids. Most of their 160 thousand tweets during the Olympics closing ceremonies came from us 20-year-olds who spent our summers dressing as Baby, Sporty, Posh, Scary, and Ginger, and choreographing dances to every song on the Spiceworld album. I shudder at the thought of children dressing and dancing like Beyonce. Nevertheless, so she can continue to run the (Twitter) world, and I will continue to spice up my life.