The Enhanced Games

Overview

The Enhanced Games refers to a rumored upcoming 2024 sporting competition that was advertised as the Olympics without drug testing, which would allow athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids. The event's campaign started in June 2023 on Twitter, linking to its own website that hosted information about the Enhanced Games' mission. Overall, the campaign led with the tagline "Science Is Real" and labeled the Olympics as corrupt, offering itself as a solution to "the Olympic exploitation of athletes." The Enhanced Games gained viral attention in late June 2023, when its account tweeted a video of an imagined "enhanced" athlete who was faster than Usain Bolt.

Background

The Enhanced Games launched its website, enhanced.org,^[1] on June 12th, 2023. The website's "Event Plan" section,^[2] reads its mission statement:

The Enhanced Games advocates for bodily autonomy. We embrace the inclusion of science in sports, and we fundamentally believe that the choice to use enhancements is a personal one. Athletes will not be tested for performance enhancements, and are under no obligation to declare their enhanced status in order to compete.

The "Event Plan" section^[2] also included six core values: "Encourage Enhancements, Embrace Capitalism, Focus on Core Sports, Reuse Existing Infrastructure, Pay Athletes Fairly and Break World Records." The website also had another section^[3] called "Stop Exploitation" which labeled the Olympics committee and FIFA, among other international sports organizations, as "Rife with corruption and hypocrisy," offering the Enhanced Games as the "disruption" for international sports' alleged hypocrisy. Another section,^[4] was called "Science Is Real" that led with the paragraph:

Enhanced acknowledges that science has always played a central role in sports. From the Tarahumara tribe to the ancient Greek Olympians, athletes have used performance enhancements to help them reach their full potential for all of recorded history.

The Enhanced Games' President, Dr. Aron D’Souza, has a Ph.D. in Intellectual Property Law from the University of Melbourne. D’Souza is also associated with Peter Thiel, having led Peter Thiel’s litigation against Gawker Media, and is in a sphere of high-level venture capitalists, being a Co-founder of the OPEN – Venture Capital Fund.^[5]

The website also provided multiple promo images for the Enhanced Games (examples shown below).

Online Reactions

The Enhanced Games first gained viral attention for a tweet^[8] posted on June 19th, 2023, that included a video that highlighted an imagined "enhanced" athlete who was "faster than Usain Bolt." Over the course of 10 days, the tweet gained roughly 5,000 likes and 6 million views (shown below).

He is the fastest man in the world. He has broken Usain Bolt’s 100m record.

But the world isn’t ready for him. The Olympics hate him.

He has been vilified. He will be vindicated.

Come watch him compete at the 2024 Enhanced Games. pic.twitter.com/iop3IUptGz

— enhancedgames (@enhanced_games) June 19, 2023

The tweet gained mass viewership over a week later, starting on June 28th, 2023, when viral quote retweets were posted by Twitter users. For instance, the first and most viral was posted by Twitter^[9] user @ElytraMithra who wrote, "'the first sports event without drug testing' BRO FUCK yes, i want to see someone with legs as wide as a fucking tree run the 100m at 45 miles an hour…" The QRT gained roughly 21,200 likes in one day (shown below).

"the first sports event without drug testing"

BRO

FUCK yes, i want to see someone with legs as wide as a fucking tree run the 100m at 45 miles an hour

i want to see the swimmers with gills and webbed hands

i want to see marathon runners ramp the cori cycle up and never tire https://t.co/ofyw0ECw7J

— hemelytra (@ElytraMithra) June 28, 2023

Despite the seemingly supportive nature of @ElytraMithra's QRT, others in the replies portrayed skepticism and criticism. For instance, Twitter^[10] user @dbishopii replied to @ElytraMithra, attesting, among other statements," I want to see how far we can push human performance with technology but I can’t quite stomach 'die of a pulmonary embolism at age 40 for my amusement'" (shown below, left). @ElytraMithra herself also tweeted^[11] a follow-up reply, reading, "ah okay it's either a performance art piece of a psyop, pack it up lads lmfao" (shown below, right).

Various Reactions

Following

The Enhanced Games started its Instagram^[6] account on June 19th, 2023. It also started its Twitter^[7] on June 19th.

Search Interest

External References