When I check into a hotel room, does complaining about the accommodations make me a bad guest? Twitter doesn’t seem to think so.
As Western journalists checked into their hotels for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics they began inundating Twitter with pictures of their grievances: Pictures of yellowed tap water, translation misunderstandings and a certain spectacular escape from a jammed bathroom (literally breaking through the door) caught national attention and ridicule. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek, but the ease with which we mock a nation’s misfortunes is unsettling.
What we Americans are quick to forget is some of these “#SochiProblems” are legitimate, everyday struggles. The tap water issue is to the point where some Russians don’t seem to think twice about it – Russian President Vladimir Putin himself admitted that his own sink water comes out dirty. Four years ago the government promised to fix the water quality, but according to an article by PolicyMic’s Sarah Kaufman they have yet to follow through. Kaufman said those who can’t afford bottled water simply have to boil the dirty water and hope it doesn’t make them ill.
New Republic’s Julia Ioffe pointed out that these minor issues are valid critiques – but there’s a fine line between justified criticism and mean-spirited, malice-driven enjoyment of another’s misfortunes. She calls out Americans on our intent, almost as if we’re going to Russia hoping to find something to complain about.
This is profiling, plain and simple. We take our Western standards and ideals over to a different culture and expect things to be the same. Granted, for an event as prestigious as the Olympics we tend to expect a higher grade of service – but what can we expect from arguably the most corrupt and mishandled Olympic construction effort yet?
2007 found President Putin citing construction costs at around $12 billion. The end result? Closer to $50 billion. Even if the infrastructure is temporarily bolstered, the rot of corruption at the core still tarnishes the veneer of a shiny new Olympic complex. All that waste and garbage has to be disposed of somewhere, and Sochi’s surrounding neighborhoods are just collateral damage in the grand scheme of the Olympic games, apparently.
The fact of the matter is, with that much poorly handled money poured into a massive construction effort under a tight deadline in less-than-ideal conditions, it’s not too crazy to imagine visitors’ lodgings being disheveled and not quite up to our posh tunnel-vision Western standards.
We need to treat these pictures as what they are – evidence of a larger problem. Foreigners have to bear these conditions for just a few weeks. Residents of Sochi have dealt with this for years. Why don’t we take the opportunity that’s knocking and start some real discussion about it?
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