This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.
The photos are sometimes as funny as they are telling. Bizarre toilets. Brown tap water. Hotel rooms still being constructed as guests move in.
Shared by journalists arriving in Sochi for the Winter Olympics, each image delivers a quick digital hit of derisive humor while painting a bigger picture of an Olympic host city that does not quite look ready for primetime after years of hype and questions.
But the snowballing attention around the "Sochi Problems" — or @SochiProblems, or #SochiProblems — has become a problem of its own.
See also: Russian Response to Sochi Problems Goes Creepily Wrong
First: Any journalist on an all-expense-paid-and-then-some trip to Russia to cover the Winter Olympics is living a dream. Every reporter there is experiencing a great privilege. Speaking from experience, it's one an overwhelming number of journalists covering the games from newsrooms half a world away would give their eye teeth for.
Second: Your door doesn't have a handle yet? You have to throw your toilet paper in the trash instead of flush it? Those living conditions are exponentially better than what billions of people around the world experience every day.
Yes, this lack of preparedness is an embarrassment for the games' Russian organizers, not to mention the estimated $51 billion price tag. Yes, the photos can be amusing. But the increasingly gleeful schadenfreude surrounding individual inconveniences experienced by reporters on the assignment of a lifetime is also beginning to pick up the odious tinge of entitlement.
Sports Illustrated's Robert Klemko noticed, and summed it up perfectly in one tweet:
Being unready for an international sports event is bad. Flying to a foreign country on an expense account and complaining about it is ugly.
— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko) February 6, 2014
To be fair, I'm as guilty as anyone. I've already written two posts with the phrase "Sochi problems" in the headline today. And I've posted numerous tweets like this one over the past couple of days:
At this rate @SochiProblems could pass the official @Sochi2014 by end of today. Ouch. What's Russian for "fail"?
— Sam Laird (@samcmlaird) February 6, 2014
Olympic host cities have historically scrambled to get ready for the games, so part of this is simply a function of the Internet age. In 2014, the web makes it easier than ever to broadcast embarrassing details to the world at large. Netizens also have an insatiable appetite for the weird. Joining in, as I know well, is fun. Getting your own little joke in can be irresistible. But the herd mentality can grow nasty all too quickly.
So let this be a gentle reminder to us all in the Twittersphere. Let's keep things in perspective next time we chuckle at some tweeted Russian interpretation of a common word, or at an ugly hotel. Let's remember what an opportunity covering one of the world's biggest events is. Let's remember the billions of global citizens who survive in far worse conditions on less than $2 per day.
This is what former chess master Garry Kasparov — a vehement critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and perhaps the country's most famous sportsman — had to say earlier this week.
I hope the journalists in Sochi complaining about a lack of doorknobs & wifi pay as much attention to the lack of free speech & elections.
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 5, 2014
Leave it to someone whose success hinged on seeing the board as a whole to focus on the bigger picture — for himself, for his country and for the rest of us.
Call it reality checkmate.