“Oshie did indeed accomplish something incredible. Even more incredible, however, is the obsession it revealed.” — Danielle Ohl

I woke up Saturday morning, dug my phone out of the tangled mess of my sheets and groaned. 10:30 a.m., it read. I had missed my alarm and, subsequently, the 7:30 a.m. ice hockey game between the U.S. and Russia. With a heavy heart, I shamefully scrolled through my Twitter feed, praying for favorable results. What I saw was confusing.

Almost every tweet was about a relatively unknown professional hockey player: T.J. Oshie.

I know way, way, way too much about ice hockey, but the level of fanaticism surrounding Oshie seemed extreme even to someone like me. Yet it came from friends and family members who I know care nothing for the sport. “What the hell happened?” I thought to myself.

Finally, I stumbled upon a video that shed some light on the situation.

My first reaction to the 27-year-old player’s astonishing athletic display was, “Wow, now I understand the hype.” But since that morning, I’ve come to realize what Oshie did on ice isn’t nearly as impressive as what it revealed about the spectators at home.

The Olympics often bring out interesting facets of American culture. Rivalries, of course, foster a competitive spirit, and the excessive pomp of the various ceremonies stimulates the more sentimental side of our macho nationalism. These games, perhaps more than previous ones, show how technology has transformed the way popular culture develops.

Oshie did indeed accomplish something incredible. Even more incredible, however, is the obsession it revealed. We as a nation are obsessed with the extreme. How else would we explain the Miley Cyrus epidemic? Oshie is not the first professional to accomplish something downright awesome in his field — honestly, I’ve seen better — yet the extreme nature of his skill in context of an extremely intense game, in the bigger context of the most spectacular games the world has to offer, creates a magical potion for instant pop culture success.

That success, combined with the equally magical Internet, integrates even the most obscure of last names into our everyday rhetoric. And that, my friends, is the wondrous mystery of the American dream.

Maybe not everyone can be a Carnegie or a Rockefeller or a Bezos, but anyone can do something just crazy and fantastical enough to “pull an Oshie” and against all odds become a household name.