Lifestyle
A conspicuously dressed-down shooter won Olympic silver. Then he went viral
Turkey’s Yusuf Dikec, pictured competing in the shooting 10m air pistol mixed team gold medal match at Chateauroux Shooting Center on Tuesday, went viral for his casual look.
Alain Jocard/AFP
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Alain Jocard/AFP
NPR is in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For more of our coverage from the Games, head to our latest updates.
Olympic shooters have been getting lots of attention for their cyberpunk-looking gear. But one is standing out for his decidedly lower-tech look — and the fact that he got to the podium nonetheless.
On Tuesday, Turkey’s Yusuf Dikec shot his way to a silver medal in the air pistol mixed team competition, and to instant online fame. His winning quality, the internet decided, was his seeming nonchalance.
While many of Dikec’s competitors were decked out in large ear protectors, visors and sci fi-esque shooting glasses, he played it a different kind of cool with regular eyeglasses and barely visible ear plugs.
Wearing a jersey that looked like an ordinary T-shirt, and shooting with his free hand tucked in his pants pocket, the 51-year-old gave off a noticeably casual vibe.
So casual, in fact, that scores of social media users jokingly wondered whether Turkey had sent a hitman to the Olympics. Some praised his aura as “infinite,” others as “insane.”
“We need you out of retirement for one last job.”
“Who?”
“Not who, but where. The Olympics, in France. You’ve always been our best shooter.” pic.twitter.com/4yZhElPSRA
— @goth (@goth600) August 1, 2024
And many drew a contrast between Dikec and South Korean shooter Kim Yeji, whose futuristic aesthetic and unflappable demeanor made her an overnight style sensation earlier this week.
Memes joked that the two embodied the contrast between Google Sheets vs. Microsoft Excel, men vs. women packing for a trip and anime protagonist vs. recently divorced engineer, to name a few.
“South Korea sent a fully-kitted out player for the Olympic shooting,” read one viral tweet. “Turkey sent [a] guy with no specialized lenses, eye cover or ear protection and got the silver medal.”
Dikec and his teammate, Sevval Ilayda Tarhan, won silver in the mixed team 10-meter air pistol event, bringing home Turkey’s first-ever medal in Olympic shooting.
He placed 13th in his individual event, and is already looking ahead to his next Olympics.
“I hope next in Los Angeles (for) a gold medal,” he said afterward, according to the Associated Press.
The former officer loves dancing and cats
This is Dikec’s fifth Olympics — he has competed in shooting events in every Summer Games since 2008.
He’s also a seven-time European champion and 2014 double world champion in the 25m standard pistol and 25m centerfire pistol, according to his Olympics biography.
Dikec’s bio says he took up shooting in 2001 after he started working as a non-commissioned officer for the Gendarmerie General Command (an armed law enforcement organization in Turkey).
His current occupation is listed as “athlete,” and EuroNews reports that he retired from the Gendarmerie.
Dikec lists exactly one hobby on his bio page: dancing. He’s also a cat lover, as social media sleuths quickly discovered.
His philosophy, ironically, is, “Success doesn’t come with your hands in your pockets.”
His unique style comes down to personal preference
Sevval Ilayda Tarhan and Yusuf Dikec pose with the Turkish flag and their silver medals beneath the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday.
Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images
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Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images
Shooting glasses — a customizable combo of a lens, mechanical iris and blinders that together can help athletes better line up their mark — have become pretty standard in recent years, though clearly not all athletes are required to use them.
Dikec told Turkish radio station Radyo Gol that while most shooters use one eye, he prefers to use both.
“Shooting with two eyes — I believe that it’s better,” he said, according to a translation from CNN. “I’ve done a lot of research on it, so I didn’t need the equipment.”
Chinese rifle shooter Liu Yukun won a gold medal Thursday with a similarly sparse set of gear, the AP notes — just earplugs, with no blinder or visor.
And Dikec is not the only athlete who shoots with his other hand in his pocket. He told the radio station that it’s a matter of feeling more motivated and comfortable.
The stance “is actually about bringing the body to equilibrium and focusing and concentrating,” he added.
Dikec seems to be taking his social media stardom in stride, reposting several memes to his Instagram page (and, of course, a photo of his silver medal). He has also continued to defend his style.
EuroNews reports that he told the Turkish press: “I did not need special equipment. I’m a natural, a natural shooter.”
Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday that it prefers the latest offer from rival Hollywood studio Paramount over a bid it accepted from Netflix.
Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Bloomberg
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Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Bloomberg
The Warner Bros. Discovery board announced late Thursday afternoon that Paramount’s sweetened bid to buy the entire company is “superior” to an $83 billion deal it had struck with Netflix for the purchase of its streaming services, studios, and intellectual property.
Netflix says it is pulling out of the contest rather than try to top Paramount’s offer.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid,” the streaming giant said in a statement.
Warner had rejected so many offers from Paramount that it seemed as though it would be a fruitless endeavor. Speaking on the red carpet for the BAFTA film awards last weekend, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos dared Paramount to stop making its case publicly and start ponying up cash.
‘If you wanna try and outbid our deal … just make a better deal. Just put a better deal on the table,” Sarandos told the trade publication Deadline Hollywood.
Netflix promised that Warner Bros. would operate as an independent studio and keep showing its movies in theaters.
But the political realities, combined with Paramount’s owners’ relentless drive to expand their entertainment holdings, seem to have prevailed.
Paramount previously bid for all of Warner — including its cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and Discovery — in a deal valued at $108 billion. Earlier this week, Paramount unveiled a fresh proposal increasing its bid by a dollar a share.
On Thursday, hours before the Warner announcement, Sarandos headed to the White House to meet Trump administration officials to make his case for the deal.
The meetings, leaked Wednesday to political and entertainment media outlets, were confirmed by a White House official who spoke on condition he not be named, as he was not authorized to speak about them publicly.
President Trump was not among those who met with Sarandos, the official said.
While Netflix’s courtship of Warner stirred antitrust concerns, the Paramount deal is likely to face a significant antitrust review from the U.S. Justice Department, given the combination of major entertainment assets. Paramount owns CBS and the streamer Paramount Plus, in addition to Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other cable channels.
The offer from Paramount CEO David Ellison relies on the fortune of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. And David Ellison has argued to shareholders that his company would have a smoother path to regulatory approval.
Not unnoticed: the Ellisons’ warm ties to Trump world.
Larry Ellison is a financial backer of the president.
David Ellison was photographed offering a MAGA-friendly thumbs-up before the State of the Union address with one of the president’s key Congressional allies: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican.
Trump has praised changes to CBS News made under David Ellison’s pick for editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, told Semafor Wednesday that he was pleased by the news division’s direction under Weiss. She has criticized much of the mainstream media as being too reflexively liberal and anti-Trump.
“I think they’re doing a great job,” Carr said at a Semafor conference on trust and the media Wednesday. As Semafor noted, Carr previously lauded CBS by saying it “agreed to return to more fact-based, unbiased reporting.”
‘The Wire’ Star Bobby J. Brown
He’s Trapped Inside Barn Fire!!!
Listen To Dispatch Audio
Published
Broadcastify.com
Here’s the dispatch audio from the fatal barn fire that killed “The Wire” actor Bobby J. Brown … and you hear dispatchers saying he’s trapped in the building after trying to start an old Cadillac.
TMZ obtained the dispatch audio, which also reveals Bobby’s wife called for help. It sounds like a huge inferno, the barn is 50-feet-by-100 and — by the end of the call — it’s all up in flames.
We broke the story … Bobby died Tuesday from smoke inhalation. The deadly fire started after Bobby entered the barn to jump-start a car. His wife suffered severe burns trying to save him.
Bobby played Officer Bobby Brown on the hit HBO series “The Wire” … and his other credits include “Law & Order: SVU” and “We Own This City.”
He was 62.
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews in Hundreds of Beavers.
Hundreds of Beavers
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Hundreds of Beavers
The streaming service Tubi has become a repository for a wild assortment of movies, TV shows, and original properties. They’re all free to watch, provided you’re willing to sit through some ads. So we asked some Tubi-philes to recommend some great movies that you can find on the service: Hundreds of Beavers, Color Out of Space, Petey Wheatstraw, and Mambo Italiano.
Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture
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