The hashtag #NBCFail has become an unavoidable sight on Twitter these past few days.
On July 27, the day of the opening ceremony, there were just 212 #NBCFail tweets. By July 28, there were 6,000. By July 29, there were 20,000.
Summer Olympics fans, media nerds and commonplace critics alike use it to complain about shoddy streaming experiences, editorial mistakes and most of all NBC’s preference for obfuscating footage of major Olympic events until airing tape-delayed primetime broadcasts stateside.
After Twitter suspended the account of British journalist Guy Adams acceding to an NBC request the hashtag became a trending topic.
But there’s one man who tweeted #NBCFail before it was cool. His name is Steven Marx and he’s a web designer out of Peoria, Illinois. Way back on July 26 a full day before the opening ceremony kicked off the Games in earnest Marx posted this prescient tweet from his Mac:
Marx was referencing the network’s streaming app, which promises to deliver all the action from London in real time, but doesn’t mention until the fine print that you need to be a cable subscriber.
Marx is a bit of an enigma but according to his website has done web work for a farm, a compost company, a massage therapist, and a dental office, among other clients.
At time of writing he had just 18 followers, but we expect that number to grow. We’ve also contacted Marx for more details on the man who started a movement, and will update this story as we hear more.
News of of Marx’s avante garde tweet comes to us via the social media analytics company Peoplebrowsr, which tracks conversations across the web.
NBC’s coverage issues and lack of sharing spirit have also inspired a couple of hilarious parody accounts.
