When Chloe Kim woke up Monday morning, life was quite different. She didn’t have an Olympic gold medal and she had a respectable number of followers on Twitter, but nothing especially jaw- dropping.
What a difference a day makes.
On Monday, Kim, 17, started the day with about 20,000 followers on Twitter. At 9:42 p.m. EST, she won her first Olympic gold medal. NBC commentators mentioned her social media account and the fact that she had tossed out a funny tweet in the midst of the competition. That’s when the floodgates opened.
Within 90 minutes, her followers had increased sixfold. As of 9:42 a.m. EST Tuesday morning, she had 175,000 followers on Twitter.
So, not only is Kim now a bonafide Olympic sensation, she’s also a social media star. And, for the past few days, at least, she has staked her claim in the food space.
The tweet that merited an on-air mention talked about food.
She talked about food earlier that day, too.
Her post-competition press conference also seemed to focus on her love of food:
And she sang songs of praise about the calming qualities of food on Sunday.
A quick scan of recent older tweets also sees mentions of pizza and fast food chain In-N-Out.
Kim’s Instagram followers, meanwhile, have spiked to 409,000. She tends to ignore food and stick to snowboarding there, which, when you think about social media’s obsession with food pictures, is kind of ironic.
