RIO DE JANEIRO — On Tuesday night at Olympic Tennis Centre, a Romanian men’s doubles team played the host Brazilians at the big stadium of Court 2.
Early in the match, a Brazilian shot was called out, and the Romanian, already into the motion of his return, completed the swing and whacked the ball off the court.
The crowd exploded at the perceived transgression. Boos rang out as the Rio fans expressed extreme displeasure at what seemed a fairly innocent breach of etiquette.
All I could think was, I feel you, brother.
For four days now, since I posted a photo of a very small coffee cup at a Rio 2016 press centre, along with a sarcastic comment, my Twitter stream — the social-media site of short posts — has been inundated with Brazilian anger. All kinds of it, at all hours of the day, most of it in Portuguese. It’s like the yelling that you often hear at busy Rio intersections has been piped directly into my Twitter ears.
@scott_stinson dude, if you drink a full Cup of Brazilian coffee you’ll never sleep again in your life. Our coffee is not bland like yours
— Paulissima™ (@paulissima_) August 7, 2016
The whole thing is, frankly, baffling. But it must say something about cultural sensitivity, and the fact that people here are particularly attuned to perceived slights from outsiders, that so many people could be outraged about something a random Canadian said about the size of a coffee cup.
First, some background. From the moment journalists from around the world arrived in this beautiful city for the Olympics, a constant story has been the shortage of various supplies. Water coolers run out, vending machines don’t exist or are broken, and the coffee available in the main press centre, hub for several thousand journalists, was served in small cups, if it was available at all. Many journalists groaned about the small cups online, including pictures of cups that were about the size of those you might get at a water cooler. So, on the small side. But, Brazilian coffee is strong, so not exactly a crisis.
On Monday, after arriving at the press tent at the beach volleyball venue, and having failed to buy much of anything for lunch because most of the items on the menu weren’t available, I tried for a coffee. The cups were hilariously small, about the size of the paper cups you use to get ketchup at a fast-food joint. Even allowing for the extra-strong coffee, it struck me as funny. It’s a sip of coffee. Maybe two sips.
I took a photo, using a pen for a size reference. (Cagey!) The caption: “I know everyone has already posted photos of the small coffee cups in Rio press centres, but seriously.”
Haha, little joke there. It’s Twitter, where most of my posts that don’t have to do with actual news are similarly smart-ass comments. I don’t even claim that it’s a successful Twitter strategy; my follower count is well below that of many colleagues.
So, that was that. Dumb joke made, on with life. But, somehow this post caught the Twitter equivalent of the Brazilian gulf stream, and great offence was taken. I was berated for not understanding that Brazil serves coffee in small cups, I was insulted for (allegedly) preferring the “dirty water” served back home — it’s weird how often that exact phrasing was used, especially since Rio isn’t exactly guilt-free on the dirty-water front — and I was repeatedly blasted for my American arrogance.
The angry tweets have kept coming, telling me to go home to America, telling me to do physically impossible things to myself, telling me to die. Today, someone asked if I was “teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.” (No.) And these are just the tweets I understand. The ones in Portuguese seem much angrier. I can tell by the ALL CAPS and the repeated use of the word GRINGO.
Buzzfeed Brazil requested an interview, so at least I was able to clear up the matter of my citizenship. To give some perspective on how unusual the attention is, my Twitter profile has been viewed more than 86,000 times this month, an increase of more than 3,000 per cent over last month. Coincidentally, that is about the same increase in my knowledge of Portuguese swears.
I’m honestly unsure why so many people are so mad about a dumb joke. Many journalists have written thousands of critical words about Brazil, Rio, the organizers and, yes, the coffee supplies, this week and as far as I know none of them have struck quite such a nerve. Was it the sarcastic tone? Was it the fact that I was (allegedly) an American? Was it just that Brazil is very particular about coffee-related social-media posts?
I get that people don’t like it when outsiders come in and poke fun at their stuff, but that said, I’d like to think that if someone from South America came to my country and said, “Damn, this coffee cup is big,” my response would not be to wish forcible expulsion and/or death upon them.
The tweets that aren’t yelling at me these days often say something like, “In Brazil we have strong feelings about coffee.”
You don’t say.
sstinson@postmedia.com