Olympic swimmer blames second place finish on Twitter, Facebook

Viewers of the 2012 London Olympic Games are getting a pretty bad rap these days. Just yesterday, NBC blamed viewers for problems with their online coverage of the games. Now, it seems that your tweets and Facebook messages may have cost an Olympic swimmer the gold — or, at least, that's what she says.

Australian swimmer Emily Seebohm set a new world record while qualifying to swim the 100-meter backstroke, but when it came time for the finals, she came in second. And she's blaming her silver medal on the praise she racked up on Twitter and Facebook in the days following her record setting swim.

According to Seebohm, the well wishes via social media made her believe she had already won, causing problems with her performance. Said the silver medalist, "When they tell you a thousand times you are going to get it, somewhere in your mind you are just like, 'I've done it.'"

She'll be participating in another race this weekend, though presumably, she'll be enjoying some social media downtime while she waits. "I obviously need to sign out of Twitter and log out of Facebook a lot sooner than I did."

[Image credit: Swimming Pool Lanes via Shutterstock]
[via The Verge]

This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca

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