Farewell, then, Freddy – the fan whose face we never saw, the German we never heard speak German, the man forever behind the emoji, the World Cup’s Wizard of Oz. Farewell from X, at least. Shortly after Die Mannschaft’s World Cup elimination, the visiting German fan who became famous on social media through the tournament’s early weeks suddenly disappeared. As the legend of Freddy (or @freddyla7, to use his social media handle) grew and his posts marveling at the majesty of the United States’ gas stations, fast food offerings, stadiums, and highways continued to rack up millions of views, the German – who made a point of never revealing his full name or face – quickly became a Rorschach test for people’s attitudes to online popularity in the age of Elon Musk and Gianni Infantino.
Some accepted Freddy for who he claimed to be: a man enjoying himself in the land of the free as he roadtripped in pursuit of World Cup-fueled entertainment. Others of a more conspiracist bent, spying his rapidly amassing pile of brand engagements, saw him as a plant, a fiction, a psyop cooked up by the US government and corporate America to convince us all that actually, a country where it requires a mortgage to get a blood test is still the greatest place on Earth.
In the end, those in the latter camp claimed they had won: the haters unearthed a series of tasteless old tweets and exposed various discontinuities in the Freddian backstory, and now the man himself – or whoever or whatever invented him – has nuked his X account, claiming the platform is too “toxic”. But don’t worry, Freddy hasn’t evaporated completely: he remains a vibrant and essential cultural presence on Instagram, where you can still enjoy the digital crumbs left behind as he powers up on home fries at Denny’s, solemnly snaps the cooling towers while passing the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, or drinks a 7 Up in Leesburg, Virginia. Soon he will visit the White House in the company of Nick Adams, the self-described “alpha male” and actual Australian now using his job as Donald Trump’s “tourism minister” (the scare quotes are his, not mine) to cement himself as Trumpworld’s leading exponent of libcucking camp. If Freddy is fake, he/she/they will have plenty to discuss with a professional cosplayer like Adams.
Freddy is not the only foreign fan to have gained a small measure of fame this World Cup for exuberant displays of affection for America. The timeline (well, my timeline at least) has been flooded with footage of Japanese fans devouring Texas barbecue, the lads and lager louts of Team England descending into uncommon silence at the sheer blinking enormity of America’s sporting arenas, and the people of Lawrence, Kansas and Everywhere, Algeria falling head over heels for each other.
Most of this, it would take a hard heart to dispute, is organic and good-natured and real. All these people smiling and partying together at once? As Pep Guardiola might say, it’s so good, it’s so good. There’s something to savor in the spectacle of a tournament so exuberant and rippling with life that it has subdued, if only for a moment, the snarling joylessness and xenophobia of the Maga authoritarian project. The conquest has not been total, of course: there’s still a lot to hate about the way the Trumpfantino alliance has run this World Cup, and the event’s runaway success will no doubt provide cover for all manner excesses from Fifa over the next four years. But still: the vibes around this soccer summer – which many, myself included, feared were moribund on the eve of the first match – are indestructible.
At the same time, it’s worth reflecting on the suspicion raised by an “overnight” viral success like Freddy, the nagging sense that many feel that something about this whole myth of virgin contact with the New World’s naked splendor is not quite right. Is Freddy actually German? Is his name even Freddy? It’s possible that the answers to both of these questions are “yes”, but nothing can be taken for granted in the age of permaslop and perpetual astroturfing. We live in a time where, for many of us at least, our spidey senses start tingling at the mere sight of an em dash, and today’s feelgood viral hit is forever exposed, tomorrow, as a cruel marketing stunt. Amid the high of the New York Knicks’ historic charge to their first NBA title in 53 years, it was quickly forgotten that “My Mayor Muslim / My bagel Jewish / My Christian Dior / Knicks in four”, the seemingly improvised quatrain that set the internet ablaze in the early days of the finals series, was later revealed to be the product of an orchestrated branding campaign from Kalshi.
In some ways the split that Freddy has triggered among soccer fans (a polarization that maps, albeit not perfectly, on to the political division between right and left) resembles the debate about this tournament’s hydration breaks: are they a necessary innovation to protect players’ wellbeing, or a craven cash grab? They’re both, surely, but professional sport has become very good at reducing the range of emotional responses among fans, about every contested issue and storyline, to two options: naivety or cynicism. Between “Let people enjoy things!” and the progressive-reflexive “PSYOP”, any middle position risks looking hopelessly compromised and weak.
All the neo-Freddies guzzling and gorging their way down the West Coast and across the Sun Belt remind me of British food influencers in America – goggling naïfs blown away by a simple ham sandwich. And look, sometimes a ham sandwich really is that good; sometimes a burger truly can transport its eater to religious heights. But come on: we must not kid ourselves that such delights are not widely available in the World Cup tourists’ countries of origin, that the masses of Europe and Asia remain innocent of exposure to big-barn supermarkets or fast food outlets or restaurants able to seat more than 20 covers.
It’s testament to the strength of the social media-driven monoculture – which America itself has done more than any other nation to create – that virtually every corner of the globe now has some place shilling authentic Kansas City barbecue, sea salt-dusted soft serve, smashburgers, Nashville hot chicken sandwiches, mala Biscoff-crusted fried catfish po’ boys, or whatever the latest viral culinary craze is. You don’t need to come to America to find this stuff; it’s everywhere.
What’s really at stake here is not truth but attention. For influencers, especially those from abroad, there’s now a full-scale industry in feeding America’s legend back to itself. The climbers and try-hards of the internet are like moths to the bulb, and in the phototaxis of digital culture no prize shines brighter than America. Drinking a slushy, sizing up at Mickey Ds, locking in for a Spicy Deluxe at Chick-Fil-A: there’s gold in them there hills, or clicks in them at least. It doesn’t matter whether the performed enthusiasm for any of this is genuine or made up; what counts is that it is posted online.
Maybe the ultimate problem here is that people simply don’t care whether things are real, don’t want to engage with the world as it is. Real life, for many, is a domain of constant struggle and disappointment; much better to retreat into the realm of fantasy and wish reality away. While Freddy is busy snapping up cheap gas on his trans-American odyssey, fan accounts on X that plainly label their output as “fictional quotes” frequently generate thousands of views for completely fabricated “insights” from football’s highest authorities into the day’s World Cup action. One such account posted an extensive “quote” from Arsène Wenger about Matías Galarza’s first-half punch on Kylian Mbappé in the round of 16 virtually the moment the match between France and Paraguay ended; it has now attracted more than 2,000 likes.
Is @freddyla7 fact, or fiction? Whatever his actual identity, nationality and intentions, “Freddy the German” was never destined to be understood by the culture at large as a real person. Freddy is an idea: of the modern football fan, of the foreigner in America, of the human as cyborg, dissolving into the smartphone, becoming one with the machine. As a fan, Freddy is a vessel for the accumulation of experiences (international friendlies in Alabama! Portugal v Croatia over noodles in the hotel room!) and agendas (like the loathsome IShowSpeed, he is a tediously relentless Ronaldo evangelist). As a visitor to America, he is the model of deference and awe (“He was unbelievably gracious and thankful,” noted JJ Watt on the Men in Blazers podcast after meeting Freddy in Houston), a man ready to confirm America’s greatness to itself while never threatening to outstay his welcome. As a poster, he is unstoppable. He’s Tocqueville in a CR7 shirt – just with none of the great French chronicler of America’s acuity or critical wit.
“His head is squarely on his shoulders, despite everything – he understands that this is not normal, this is not real,” enthused Watt in the extended character reference he gave Freddy on Men in Blazers. Well, exactly. Nothing now is real – except for the lunging desperation of footballers on the field, and America’s invincible gift for drawing the world’s believers, fabulists, missionaries, and marketers to its light.
