Trend of the Day: Olympics Last Supper

Looking at Google search trends suggests the Last Supper controversy was forged less by immediate viewer reaction than by recirculated clips.

Interesting view of the Olympics "last supper" controversy¹ from search interest. In the first airing (during the day, U.S. time) no one seemed to take any notice of it in the moment. Instead, people reacted to it online over time, as it was framed for them by influencers.

Search interest chart showing last supper, minions, heavy metal Olympics, Mona Lisa. The things people are surprised about in the moment and wish to know more about show up as sharp spikes, initially the “last supper” reference isn't one of them.

I like the comparison in the graph above because it captures the different shape of interest well. For instance, when I saw minions in the opening, I thought "what the heck are minions doing in here?" and looked it up -- as did a lot of people. It's something quite natural to do this when surprised, shocked, or just curious

Some people had the same reaction to the heavy metal part of the ceremony, others wondered what was up with the Mona Lisa bit (or alternatively, things like “how big is the Mona Lisa?” etc). But you just don't see that kind of interest for last supper in the first airing. Instead you see search interest increase over time in a way unrelated to the actual broadcast event.

The same graph as above with the time of the first and second U.S. airing circled. The spikes around Minions, heavy metal, and Mona Lisa follow the sequence of the earlier airing. The search interest on the last supper is independent of the airing sequence — or the airing.

In the second (evening) airing, you do see a bit of a spike. But honestly almost all the reaction is happening independent of the airing sequence, which indicates to me that people are reacting to framed online clips, not the live show.

Geographic Elements (mostly for fun)

Over the past week, of course, the search interest in the Last Supper “incident” has continued, and is still going, somewhat. As expected, it dwarfs those initial comparison search trends. That’s not surprising, interest around an ongoing discourse topic of note is going to dwarf smaller spike of transient interest.

July 23 to July 30 search interest for last supper, minions, heavy metal Olympics, and Mona Lisa.

For fun, though, I pitted the ongoing interest of the “Last Supper” controversy against the highest “reaction” search of the Olympics — the search for “Celine” during and after the airing of her rendition of Edith Piaf's “L'Hymne à l'amour”. It ended up being the case that searches for Celine — even over the long term — came out just slightly ahead over the last seven days. You can see the totals on the left hand side here, labeled average.

Because the amounts are close, we can have a little fun with it, and look at which U.S. states had higher search volumes for celine, and which for last supper. It turns out to be what you might think (sorry, I have to keep the last supper color consistent, but you’ll still see the pattern).

Map of search trend patterns. In general southern states (but not Florida) and many Midwest and plains states are relatively more interested in the last supper controversy than the coastal states and the Southwest.

A lot of these come down to small differences. When it comes to “last supper” vs. “celine” we’re most a country of purple states. But at the edges the difference is quite pronounced. Deep Republican states are not as interested in Celine (or maybe are just not watching the Olympics at all — hard to say!).

Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama where 60% ore more of the search volume between the two terms are for last supper.

And more Democratic states are less interested — relatively — in the last supper controversy (again, here red is Celine)

DC, Hawaii, and Massachusetts, with the celine portion of the search volume at 65% or more.

Anyway, to summarize:

• We can see from search trends that interest in many parts of the opening were tied to the airing sequence. This is an indication that people there were reacting to what they were watching during the airing.

• Interest in the “last supper” does not follow the relevant airing sequence, but grows over time unaffected by it, indicating that many of those interested in it had their interest piqued by clips circulated online or by the news, and the discussion around those clips. It does not seem to be a mass, spontaneous reaction to watching the event live.

• The relative interest state-by-state is probably more of a curiosity than anything else. But it’s still an interesting map, and has me thinking a bit about search geographies.

1. I know some people say there was no reference to the last supper, that it was all Feast of Dionysus, but to me there was very clearly a reference in it to the Last Supper, though it was not held throughout, at least in the afternoon airing I watched.