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  • 2006-03-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Snappy Answers to Dumb Olympics Questions (en)
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  • This list of cheeky answers to dumb tourist queries has been circulated on the Internet in various forms since at least 2000. While 2006 iterations of the list positioned it as having to do with the 2010 Winter Olympics (which were held in Vancouver, British Columbia), earlier Canadian versions merely noted the questions and answers had come from An International Tourism Website (always unnamed) Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006] This list of howlers exists in at least two other forms, however: Australian and South African. It is an omnibus humor piece, in that the questions and insolent responses thereto can be reworked to fit most any country. In 2000, the purported tourist inquiries were presented within a framework of their having been asked in relation to the Summer Olympics (which were held in Sydney, Australia, that year). Versions being circulated offered the claims that these questions and answers were from the Sydney Olympic Committee via their Web site, or were Questions e-mailed to the Olympics Info Line, or merely Posted on an Australian Tourism Website: By 2003, a South African version was doing the cyberspatial rounds: Although couched as humor, these lists might also be considered as oblique expressions of unease from people contemplating the pending invasion of their home by outsiders. Such lists are typically associated with the Olympics, an event that brings to its host city large numbers of participants and spectators from all over the world for weeks at a time. Although many people consider it an honor for their country to be selected as the site of an upcoming Olympics, some residents of the areas where the Olympic competitions are actually held quickly become disenchanted with all the fuss, displacement, noise, crowds, increased traffic, and similar inconveniences created by construction and other preparations (which often begin years in advance) and by the staging of the Olympic events themselves. That such lists tend to circulate about some countries that have recently hosted the Olympics or been named as host countries for upcoming Olympics games (e.g., Canada, Australia) but not other such countries (e.g., USA, Greece, Spain) might also indicate a sense of disgruntlement amongst people who see their countries continually associated with simplistic, cartoonish stereotypes (i.e., all Canadians are lumberjacks or Mounties and reside in a country perpetually blanketed with snow; all Australians are beer-drinking louts who live amongst herds of friendly koalas and kangaroos). Humorous lists of queries purportedly posed by gormless tourists exist in other forms, like this enumeration of howlers supposedly put to park rangers. (en)
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