Thousands of French citizens planning to poop in the River Seine had their plans flushed down the toilet after it was announced that president Emmanuel Macron and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo would not swim in the river as they had previously announced, citing “political reasons.”
Officials didn’t expand on the decision, instead loosely saying the swim would happen “eventually.” Many suspect the decision was prompted by online plans to poop in the Siene with scientific precision, which would have ensured floaters hit the politicians right as they planned to dive into the river on Sunday at noon.
Citizens are irate at the astronomical amount of money which is being spent to clean up the Seine with plans to use the iconic river as the venue for open water swimming at the Olympics. The Seine, which has long been connected to the Paris sewerage system, has been too polluted to swim in for over 100 years.
Organizers of the Paris games wanted to showcase the river in 2024, and have since embarked on a cleanup campaign which has cost over 1 billion euros. However, scientific testing has shown that efforts have barely put a dent in the cleanliness of the river — which is still full of human excrement, garbage, and debris.
Protesters saw their chance when Macron and Hidalgo announced they would swim in the Siene to prove the water is safe for the games. Plans began circulating online for a mass-pooping event, complete with maps and water-flow measurements to pinpoint exactly where people would need to poop, and when to ensure their feces would make contact with the politicians at the time of their swim.
Those hopes were dashed Friday when officials called off the event. The Seine still contains dangerously high levels of bacteria, which are almost guaranteed to make athletes sick if they spend extended periods in the river. Now officials are in a race against time to ensure the water meets standards by July 30, which appears to be an impossibility based on the amount of pollution left to clean up.
That job only gets more difficult if people plan to poop in the river more.