Freddy, the German Soccer Tourist Who Won America's Hearts Has Deleted His X Account After People Dug Up His Old Posts

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"There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter." - Marcus Aurelius, Gladiator

Some things are too good to be true. Or if they are true, like Marcus Aurelius's Rome, the are so fragile that they cannot last for long or survive even a whisper. It's very possible that even pure positivity of this World Cup 2026 is such a thing. 

The dominant story of this tournament hasn't had anything to do with what's happened on the [checks soccer glossary] pitch. It's been the overwhelming, heartwarming displays of goodwill from sea to shining sea. No sooner did the world's soccer fans step off the plane than they seemingly fell in love with our place. And us, in turn, fell in love with them. 

Long before The Tartan Army set and argyle-socked foot on American soil and charmed the pants off a surly, provincial town like Boston, there was Freddy, from Germany. His posts about the wonders of Waffle House and the stood before our high tech soda machines with their unlimited refills with the awe of an Art Major touring the Louvre for the first time, seemed to hold up a mirror to our entire way of life. Freddy gave us perspective. He helped us see our life in a way we couldn't, because we're too used to it. We needed his point of view so we could step back from our own day-to-day and have a newfound appreciation for the abundance that is ours.

And in a series of beautiful moments, he was rewarded for it. Including a visit to the White House and the headquarters of the agency that's currently working on getting Americans back on the moon:

That unadulterated sense of community, fellowship, and wh at Freddy's people would call gemütlichkeit seemed too good to be true. Or, as in the Roman Emperor's warning, too fragile to last. And it has. 

Because this is, in fact, the Year of Our Lord 2026, there's no good so pure and filled with joy that someone, somewhere, isn't going to dig around looking for a reason to ruin it for the rest of us. To use the vernacular of Dave Portnoy's book title, people went to work looking for some reason to cancel Freddy. And apparently found enough to chase him off of X:

… without context, critics attacked him for the audacity of having a good time, and the fame he never wanted disrupted the simple trip he came for.  

And he left. 

It's hard not to see it as proof that these platforms often chew up the very authenticity they pretend to celebrate. 

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Not only am I not going to defend Freddy's old posts, I'm not even going to look them up. I'm just going to assume he wasn't demanding anyone's assassination or calling for a genocide somewhere. But what he may or may not have said in the past isn't the point. 

What matters most here is that anyone would look at him, the benevolent, neighborly nature of his posts and decide he need to be "exposed." That is everything that's wrong with everything and everyone. What is it in the human soul that would compel any of us to see a story like Freddy's and decide it's worthy of a good trashing? What does one get out of that? Que bono: Who benefits? 

I mean, it's not like this guy is asking you to vote for him for US Senate. Anyone who wants to decide matters of life and death like they alleged do deserves all the vetting we can give him. This was a guy enjoying himself in America in the summer our 250th birthday. Ohmergerd! This isn't really his first visit to the states? He's been to some major cities that all the tourists go to without mentioning it? Liar! Deceiver! Fraud! J' accuse! J' accuse! After all, how dare he pretend to be astonished by the size and scale of a rural WalMart if he's already been to the sportsbook at MGM Grand on the Strip? Thank you for sparing the American public from any other irreparable harm his posts were going to cause. 

Sarcasm aside, if you're one of the people who made a conscious decision target this man and dig into his past for the sole purpose of harassing him off social media, do some soul searching. What it says about you is a hell of a lot worse than what you could say about Freddy.