Thank you. It makes more sense now (not a lot, but more).
I can see how the logo (#5 that was) can remind people of the “goatse”. Prolapsed rectums are pretty nasty, as are prolapsed uteruses–hell, prolapsed anything…
That Coily thing should have been drowned at birth. What was that? ugh.
My problem with the logo is that it is monochromatic, which is rather dull. Most of the Olympic logos utitlize the colors of the Olympic Rings. If each number were a different color, it would be a look a lot nicer.
This video opens with the original Olympic logo introduction (warning: may cause seizures), which looks to me like an escaped MTV bumper from the 1980s.
That, and there was also a meme of photoshopping various images to make them suggest goatse (really, anything that even vaguely said hands on either side of a circle would do).
Yeah, but (and with your love of metros) you have to admit the London Underground one was quite good. 
Duly corporate and boring - they really nailed it.
I happen to know that Sean Stayte. He thought when it was just on boingboing his 15 minutes had come and gone, and was surprised it got so much national airtime. What seems to happen is:
Still a better logo than Lisa Simpson giving a beej.
“It’s flexible” is adspeak for “we realize you hate it, so give us some time to come up with something new.”
“It’ll evolve” is adspeak for “we’ll quietly replace it with something new once the attention’s died down and just forget this ever happened.”
It’s too bad really. The design that lampooned the goatse was really quite good IMHO.
Much better than the design they chose.
