On Tuesday last week, Paul Jacob discussed the phenomenon of Europeans and other soccer — er, football — fans attending the World Cup games and getting to know Americans during and between gams, which occurred all over the states.
They were enthusiastic.
Like many other commentators, Paul quoted FreddyLA7, a Deutschländer who microblogged his American odyssey on X and became famous.
No sooner said than an emendation became necessary, for Freddy closed up his X account.
FreddyLA7 stated on Instagram Stories that he had planned to delete his X account at some point. His account’s deletion occurred shortly after Germany’s elimination from the World Cup, following a penalty shootout loss to Paraguay on June 29 (when Paul’s commentary was being prepped).
But there is more to the story: FreddyLA7 stated that the online response to his posts became “too toxic” and was “ruining the fun” of his travels, citing the platform’s toxicity and intense online backlash from the comment sections as reasons for deactivating his account.
All sorts of people — such as actor-author Stephen Fry — talk about how toxic X has become. They usually blame it on Elon Musk. Or, as in Fry’s case, “capitalism.” That is because it is leftists who make this complaint.
But it was not right-wing trolls who discouraged FreddyLA7. Everyone knows that. X may be toxic in varying ways, but the idea that the blame squarely falls upon conservatives and “reactionaries” and anti-leftists is preposterous. Freddy bugged the left because he was enthusing about America. And the left, today, tends to hate America . . . as well as the very kinds of Americans Freddy found charming.
“Too many people seem to have a problem with us having a genuinely good time here in the country,” said Freddy.