Michael Phelps: Most popular swimmer evar!!!!11!

August 11th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

It’s early in the Olympic Games, and already Michael Phelps is in cruise control. He’s competing in about ten million events, of course, but just as entertaining as seeing him win those events is seeing him effortlessly slide into second- and third-place finishes so he can rest. Dude is so good, he beats everyone else, and people say he’s intentionally dogging it.  It’s like he’s having his personal rec swim out there; the rest of the Olympics just happened to show up.It’s impressive.

But this is 2008, not 1896, and the true test of success in life is not gold, bronze, or silver, but News Feed, Zombies, and Scrabulous. Screw medals; how many Facebook friends does Phelps have?

Darren Rovell investigates:

With a gold in the 4×100 relay this morning, Michael Phelps now has eight gold medals to his name and two for this Olympiad. The bad news? He’s not allowed to have any more friends. On Friday, the day of the Opening Ceremony, Phelps reached the limit on his facebook page of 5,000 friends. More than 1,600 come from the University of Michigan, where Phelps goes to school, almost 200 come from New York and about 170 friends come from Baltimore, his hometown.

See, I was totes going to get 5,000 friends too, but then I was all like, pshh, Facebook is stupid, I don’t need any more friends than 15 anyway, like, screw that. I’m too popular already.

I feel pretty good about my decision.

Anyway, in case you really wanted to tie yourself to another person’s Olympic success, you can still become Michael Phelps’ “fan” on Facebook. The board seems pretty active, but beating the smarmy French will do that to a message board. USA! USA!