Endless Thread - Episodes We Love: Swedengate

Episode Date: December 28, 2024

When a Redditor said that he was expected to stay in his Swedish friend's bedroom while the friend ate dinner with his family, the internet exploded with hot takes. Is Sweden the most inhospitable country in the world? We talk to the individuals at the center of the Swedengate saga, including the OP himself. We also delve into how questioning cultural norms can shed light on Sweden's reckoning with nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Amory Siverston. Mixing and sound design by Matt Reed. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson are the co-hosts. This episode originally aired on July 15, 2022.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Merotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Got meet Ur. That was pretty good. I'm trying. The only reason I know this is that you just did it in front of me, which is play yourself how to say, Happy New Year in Swedish. Yeah, I almost said C. But no.

Yeah. Yeah. Got, neat, U. Gott, not U. Swedish people, I'm sorry. I know my accent is want-w-want.

It's fine. It's fine. There are many things that we hope for you in this new year. What do we hope for our listeners, Amory? Calm.

Sweet. Peaceful. Vegetables. Swedish fish, you know? I don't know. Whatever your food mood or your sweet treat is, I hope that you get to share it with others around a communal table. A friendship and family. Correct. And everyone is invited to that table.

Which brings us to an episode that we made two summers ago. Yeah. Wild. Swedengate. You all remember Swedengate? If you don't, keep listening because two summers ago, we made this episode, and it's a pretty good one. We like it. Yeah.

If you do remember it, still keep listening because this was a fun stroll-down auditory memory lane for us, and we hope it will be that for you. And if you haven't already figured this out, we are off. But we're going to be right back with some new episodes. So keep the feed toasty. And gut, neat, o'er. I think you're supposed to say that slowly, too. I think that's part of it. Not because you're self-conscious.

But you're supposed to like scream at while drunk? Why not? Aren't you? Yeah. That's the equivalent of happy New Year! Happy New Year! Happy freaking New Year! You know what I mean?

And with that, here's the episode. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. David, take me back. When did this happen? How old were you? What was going on in your life? Well, I was about 12 years old. After school, me and my friend decided to go to his place and hang out.

And, you know, we did, like, 12-year-old kids do sit in front of his computer, play games, read magazines. Reading any maybe teenage boy magazines, perhaps? No, no, me and him we were a big nerd, so mostly nerd stuff. Speaking of nerd stuff, hey Ben. All right, all right. What are you trying to say? Nothing you don't already know. Yeah. Talk about it, the pot calling the kettle black. I don't know.

That's fair. Anyway, welcome to a conversation I recently had. with a redditor named David Anderson, who was recounting an incident from about 15 years ago that he's never forgotten, and millions of people all over the world now cannot let go. Was he a close friend? Yeah, he was, absolutely. And had you been over to his house before?

No, that was the first time. So, Ben, there may be a couple hours into this after-school hang sesh. That's my favorite thing, after-school hang sashes. I love that. Yeah, but, you know, David's stomach starting to rumble a little bit. Snack time? Snack time. And fortunately, his mom was making dinner.

Okay. And I heard his mother call for him. So he went, and then I sat in front of his computer, and he came back a minute later and said, David, could you sit here and wait for 15 minutes? like, yeah, sure, what's up? And I'm just going to go eat dinner with my family. So, yeah, yeah, I was like, all right, sure, I can wait.

You go eat. Did he say anything else about it, or was it just kind of assumed that you would understand I'm going to go eat dinner and you're going to stay here? I think it was very much assumed. He was born with that kind of thing. As for me, I wasn't, so, you know, it was very strange. Now, when David says his friend was born with that kind of thing, he means he thinks this is just how his friend was raised.

Dinner time was family-only time in his friend's house. Or maybe in his friend's culture or country, David's friend is Swedish. Ah, Sweden. The land of meatballs and affordable furniture with confusing things. names. That you have to assemble yourself, yeah. And midsummer parties and smorgas boards. Oh, God, midsummer.

Oh, God. Abba? Abba? And Greta Toonberg? Oh, yeah. Greta Toonberg represent. All right, I'm down. Yeah.

They got that nature, the forest, the lakes, great recycling over there. Yep. Free college tuition, universal health care. Don't hate it. But also, apparently, getting left in your friend's bedroom while he and his family have dinner without you? Not cool.

I was mostly taken aback by it. You know, what could you say? Is this just something his family do? Is it normal? Is it a one-time thing? Listener, it was not a one-time thing. Not for David and not for countless other people, as David would soon learn. Because although David didn't say anything to his friend in the moment, he did say something

online. Fifteen years later, when about a month ago, a post in the Ask Reddit community wondered, what's the weirdest thing you had to do at someone else's house because of their culture or religion? David commented with the story of the dinner that wasn't at his Swedish friend's house.

That comment got tens of thousands of upvotes on Reddit before getting screenshoted and posted on Twitter, where it got hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets. And people sharing their own stories about getting the cold shoulder, the empty plate, or some other manifestation of Swedish in hospitality that many had experienced. But not many had talked about. At least not on this

large of a stage. And much to David's surprise, his Reddit comment would kick off an international social media metaphorical meatball slinging campaign against a country that, frankly, is far more familiar with heaping helpings of praise, a campaign known as Swedengate. I'm Amory Sievertson. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. And today we're hearing from the people at the center of Swedengate about why this might not just be another social media storm that'll blow over. But also, why the Sweden Gate debate is giving them hope. The virality of David's story, at least initially, can probably be attributed to confusion mixed with humor.

The very first tweet about it read, how are you going to eat without inviting your friend? And then came the memes, like a stock photo of a group of children sitting in a circle labeled Swedish family eating dinner, and then one kid off to the side labeled their guest. There was even a weird Spotify playlist made in honor of young David. Do you remember those weird, joky Spotify playlist, Ben? Yeah, there's this great podcast called Endless Thread that did an episode about it. You should check it out, Emery, if you haven't checked it out. Noted.

Okay. Well, here's this one. Track one. Oh, my God. Track two, I am. Three, so hungry. Four, so very. Five.

Hungry. Six. Why? Seven. Won't. Eight. These people. Nine.

Feed me. Feed me. I'm so hungry. Some Swedes. were laughing right along with the rest of the world. The Swedish pop star Zara Larson quote tweeted the screenshot of David's Reddit comment and captioned it, peak Swedish culture. Other Swedes, not so much.

A woman named Mila tweeted, literally everyone is hospitable here. Did you unironically see a single picture on Reddit and base your view of an entire country on it? I don't know. Everyone is hospitable in the entire country. That seems a little suspect. False of any country. Yeah. Yeah.

But Zara Larson took to TikTok to support her claim. Growing up as a child, it will be really common to go and play at your friend's house. And then they will be like, oh, I'm just going to go and have dinner. I'll be back in 30. And they would just leave you in their room. And you just have to play for like 30 minutes until they came back after they had food with their family. What the fuck? My family would never do that.

What does the pop star think about people blaming her for validating? negative views of Swedish culture? Soon, David's story had spread from social media to mainstream media. The New York Times. The Wapo. Do people call it that outside of media?

I don't know. That's what I call it. The Wapo. Okay. The Wapo, Washington Post. NPR. Think pieces in Slate, salon, and on and on. When did you become aware that this had crossed

platforms? When I saw it on the news. Oh my God. David had no idea his story had even left Reddit. Until one day, he's reading a national Swedish newspaper. And I saw Sweden Gate trending and something about Reddit. And it got me curious. A strange article to write about.

Clicked it open and a picture there with my comment. on it and was like, what the? I, too, was like, what the? Worldwide Sweden's shade was not a social media trend I would have ever expected, living in a place that largely put Sweden on a pedestal. On a pedestal made out of Swedish meatballs. Oh, it's gross. So, Ben, one of the things I first did when I heard about this was I texted a Swedish friend of mine.

And I was like, you know, hey, what do you think about this? Swedes don't feed their guests' business. And she said she hadn't personally witnessed or experienced it, but that I should ask her cousins who were born and raised in Sweden. One of those cousins is Patrick Vesta. Let's start with the fact. Is this true, right? There's some truth to that.

And I would say probably yes. Patrick's in his mid-30s. He lives in Stockholm. He looks the part of a stereotypical Swede, white, blonde, which maybe seems a little weird to say, but it'll become relevant. promise. And he told us he's not sure how widespread the practice of not including your guests at dinner is, but he knows it happens. And he offered at least one explanation. So the Swedish

culture is very respecting to other people, right? And it's very much non-intrusive, right? So you want to make sure that you don't sort of mess with anybody else, like you don't impose yourself on anybody else. And the way this might have worked is say this kid, Patrick suggested maybe the Swedish family assumed that David's family would be making dinner for him. So they wouldn't want to impose by spoiling his actual dinner, nor would they expect the imposition of an unexpected dinner guest. And this sort of thing would just be kind of understood. Exactly. But most of Swedish culture is understood. We don't spell things out.

It's a small country. We've all lived here in the same place for a thousand years. Sweden is a small place. It's a nation of only about 10 million people, roughly the size of New York City or London. And when your whole country's population is the size of a large city, it makes sense that the culture might be a little more insular and less subject to the influences and norms of other countries. So people are very much connected. People know each other. And because everything is not written, you just know it. It's kind of hard for outsiders to figure out what to do, right?

Patrick did give us a few tips for if you are invited over to a Swedish person's house, maybe even for dinner, things like shoes off in the house, which I fully support wearing outside shoes inside should be straight up illegal on all seven continents. Okay, here's another one. Bring a dish with you to share in the food prep and cost. Don't overstay your welcome. Insert the please leave by nine meme. And be sure to reciprocate the invitation in a timely manner. Oh, and if you're standing, the night at someone's house? And then we would bring our own sheets because otherwise you're assuming that the host not only has to host people, but also clean all the sheets and do all the work. Well, these practices may seem puzzling or inhospitable to some.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm not taking sheets to your house. I'm sorry. Well, then you're not invited. But still, these things are, they're low stakes. You know, they're easy to poke fun at on social media. But Patrick says, There have been some more serious conversations in recent years about what it means to be Swedish and about how to protect the country's distinct cultural identity.

Swedish people now and a lot of political parties are taking a much stronger defense of Swedishness. Whereas 15 years ago, you wouldn't have this conversation, like people wouldn't openly be defending it because it was considered a bit tacky, maybe, a bit nationalistic. Patrick attributes some of this to higher rates of immigration, crime, and a growing right-wing political movement over the last two decades in Sweden. These things do seem to be happening there. But I was curious what he thinks of this kind of existential national identity conversation. Personally, I think it's very positive, right?

Because there's a lot of good stuff about our society, right? It used to be, at least, very safe. It used to be very, you know, very independent. Like, people could do what they wanted. It used to be very respectful and sillist mostly for women, right? For women's rights. And I think those are unique things in the world that we should be proud about. And I think what happened was that it went from all those things.

We know them and we live like that to a state where, okay, not everybody knows and agrees with these things. So we have to spell it out. This is Sweden. This is what we do here. This is what we believe in. If you don't like that, then that's fine, right? but we're not going to change. This reminded us of a comment someone left in our subreddit,

suggesting that the Sweden Gate uproar demonstrates, quote, the inability of others to understand that different places have a different way of life. Another reddeter referred to the collective teasing of Sweden on social media as an example of, quote, the dangers of the online hive mind mentality. We know about those. Yeah. Yeah.

And so does Patrick. He didn't seem too concerned about this. He works for a big tech. tech company. So he sees these kinds of viral pylons almost just as a fact of life. I mean, what you describe is the internet. These things are always gone on and they will always go on, right? But I think you're always going to have these stories pop in and out. And Patrick thinks the Swedengate story is going to pop out any day now.

Give it another week and people would have forgotten about this. One month later in counting, the Swedengate hashtag is still going strong on Twitter. And there are some people, including Swedes, who are really hoping, it will not only stay alive, but that Swedengate will be the start of a national, cultural reckoning. A lot of people are opening their eyes that no country is perfect, no country is above criticism. Sweden is used every day against America. But how much better are we really? Great question. A definitive answer on whether America or Sweden is better in a minute. Finally.

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the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. creative studio. Okay, Ben, I want to go back to David.

The Redditor, whose story launched hundreds of thousands of comments, tweets, and people expressing their utter horror that he wasn't fed at his Swedish friend's house? Yes, because you know what Reddit's like. A lot of times, unless a Redditor's location is relevant to the topic at hand, or they're using British English words like trousers instead of pants or spelling color with a U. We had a row. Right, we had a row. It was tickety boo. The point is... You never did, you never had tickety boo?

Didn't, no, never. Glad to have it in my life now, though. Yeah, get some tickety boo in your life. All right, all right, enough with you. The point is you usually have very little idea where a Redditor is from, because it's anonymous. And when I read David's comment, and even up until the second I heard his voice when our interview started, I kind of just assumed he was American. Maybe it was the really casual way his comment was written.

I don't know. Maybe you just weren't really paying a very close attention to anything. Ben, have you read the comment? I'm just teasing. Also, you're being such a scam right now. I'm sorry. Go on. Please go on.

All right. Well, I allowed myself to keep on thinking this because despite consuming a lot of the Swedengate coverage before talking to him, you never hear from David in any of that coverage, any of it, anywhere. And so all of a sudden, I thought, wait a minute, am I the first person to reach out to you? Yeah, you are the first person. What? Incredible. Right.

And instantly I hear that he has an accent, of course. He's told me he's in the Central European Time Zone. Hmm, I smell Lingamberry Jam. You're smelling what his friend's mom is cooking. Are you in Sweden? Yep, exactly. Are you Swedish? I'm host Swedish.

So, confirmed. The guy who went viral for calling out his Swedish friend and accidentally kicked off this summer of Sweden Gate is himself Swedish. Plot twist. I mean, for people like me who'd only seen his Reddit comment on paper and assumed he was making fun of like, the weird new Swedish family who just moved in down the street.

Yeah, it was. But it turns out he's lived in Sweden most of his life, his dad's Swedish, his mom's from Indonesia, which is where David was actually born and spent his early years. And then his family moved to Mozambique for a little bit and then to Sweden. And it's because David has experienced other ways of life that the incident at his friend's house was so befuddling. Of all the things I've seen in,

every different countries and cultures. That was the biggest culture shock to me. To most cultures, eating is more than just food. It's a social gathering. Like, you want to bring as many people as possible. It's fun. In China, a common greeting is, have you eaten yet? They say that instead of hi.

Ben, have you eaten yet? No, but this is making me hungry. Will your family feed me? No, but you might want to get yourself invited over to David's house, or really to David's mom's house kitchen, because according to him, things would have gone very differently if he and his friend had gone to his house after school. Every friend I ever had over was forced to eat, regardless if they wanted it or not. So, you know, some people might not want to try stuff, which my mom unfortunately do get. offended by. What's a delicacy that your mom makes that you think might, someone might look a little skeptically at if they're not familiar with it? Absolutely chicken feet. Chicken feet? Yeah,

chicken feet. But David told me there are some stereotypically Swedish things about him. Oh, 100%. Like what? Swedish people are very distant, maybe even. cold, some might say. Okay. For example, if you enter a bus and the only seats that's empty are next to someone, we're not going to take that. We're going to stand

up. What shocked me was the cold, stoic culture of Sweden, and that it was just like you say hello and you're like, hello, hey. I'd be like, oh God, everyone hates me. I must run into the ocean.

This is June, Finney. And we don't think she hates us, even though Ben started our conversation with her like this. We're talking to June in June. Yes, yes you are. I'm just saying. June is from Canada, which of course is on the opposite side of the stereotypical friendliness spectrum from Sweden. So it was jarring when she moved there for grad school back in 2010, especially because June is black. Yes, even just some of the history of some of the foods in Sweden, like I mentioned, um,

There is a dessert called Negra Ball. That was what it was called before. It's now called Hokklaad Bowl, which is chocolate balls. But still, what the hell is this? So in a post about not feeling welcome in a Swedish home went viral, June shared her own experience in a piece for the online publication, Refinery 29. Like, for the most part, it is warm and friendly if you're Swedish. If you're not, then there's, again, that cold, is not necessarily a direct hostile.

It's the death of a thousand cuts, which if you dare to be anything other than what they want to conform to, then it's an issue. June said she was never asked to wait in another room while others ate, but she did notice something about Swedes and their food. When I was at gatherings that were hosted by Swedes, it was exact amounts of food. It was just enough that they're like, we are providing this for you and we don't have to give any extra because no one wants to feel indebted to anyone else. It's so interesting to me that we do exactly what we need for, like, who we are and who and who we know. But any strangers, we don't want to do that because, God forbid, we'll have to, we owe you something.

And then that's a relationship we don't want. And I'm like, that is the antithesis to nearly every culture in the world. And June shared some Swedish history and theories around how some of these cultural attitudes and practices potentially came to be. You know, going from an agrarian society like all farmers. from a very feudal war-filled past, which is partially why the whole connection thing to today's cultural thing.

Throw in the black death, famines, Sweden's long, harsh winters. And yeah, it's at least conceivable you'd end up with a population that's a little more socially wary, imposition averse, resource protective. But we also put the point to June that someone made in our subreddit

that maybe the internet is demonizing something just because it's different from what we think of as quote, normal. Yeah, yeah. And that's the problem sometimes with social media discussion. It's very binary in that it's black or white, right or wrong. I say it's more of like,

it's me holding up a mirror to the culture and saying, are you sure this is, you know, look outside yourself for once. And this is for everybody in the conversation. Like people are not othering Swedes, just as much as Swedes are othering others in their own country. Do you know what I'm saying? It's just like they're doing it too. They just don't want to admit it.

This gets back to what it means to be Swedish. And who is, quote, not Swedish enough. Maybe one or both of your parents were born outside of the country. Maybe Swedish isn't your first language. Maybe you're from the so-called Bible Belt in southern Sweden, which June says

is a thing. In that part, which is called Skone, which is kind of made fun of a lot by Swedes because they're not seen as real Swedes. They were part of Denmark at one point in history. That whole movement of like, you know, you are not Swedish, you don't belong here, or Sweden is for Swedish people,

kind of came out of that. The modern conversation about what it means to be Swedish and who gets to decide, that likely isn't going away anytime soon. But June thinks Swedengate has forced some Swedes to consider a different question. What could or should it mean to be Swedish? And so I think it's been a good learning experience for a lot of people, but especially Swedes in particular, because they can kind of use that mirror to look up at themselves and be like, how can, if we want to change, which, hey, some of them, you'll always have people who, never want to change and that's always the case. And the people who are like, oh my God, that's terrible.

I have to do better. And I can go back to not making people bring in bed sheets when they come to sleep over. June told us that one of the most interesting conversations she saw online in the wake of David's Reddit post was initiated by the first person to use the hashtag Sweden Gate in connection

with it. There's not lost on me that every major media that has written or spoken about it did not identify me as the originator. They just think it came out thin air. Every media outlet until we got to talk to her. This is Levette Jallo.

And it's not lost on her that she hasn't been credited until now because, as she explains it, that is the issue of being a black woman. If I was a white swede that had used the hashtag Sweden Gate first, there would be acknowledgement for that. Levette thinks a lot about hypotheticals such as this. She's a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant who's worked with companies like Spotify and Facebook. An activist and author of two books about what it means to be black in Sweden.

And on my spare time, apparently I start viral threats on social media without knowing about it. Levet may be the reason Sweden Gate is trending now, but this technically isn't the hashtag's debut. I did not know that the hashtag had been used last year by alt-right. Swedish people to talk about Sweden gate immigrants are ruining Sweden. So suddenly the hashtag was filled with people's opinions about Swedish hospitality. Co-opting a hashtag from xenophobes, you love to see it. The Twitter thread Levet used it in started out like this. Quote, laughing at Twitter finding out that Swedish people will not feed their guests,

two crying laughing emojis. As a kid growing up here, we knew to just... go home around dinner time. Levette was born in the Gambia, but she moved to Sweden when she was 11 years old. And I came here, dressed in a jeans jacket. Nobody told me that snow was coming. Oh, no. So I arrived at the airport, literally dressed summertime, and I realized that Sweden's very cold.

And Sweden seemed especially cold to Levet. Cruel even, at times, once she went to school. It wasn't unusual for kids. to call me a monkey or to ask me if my skin is brown because I smig myself with poop. You know, things like that. Even today, when Lovett tells people she's from Sweden, everybody's jaws drop, like, you're not blonde and blue-eyed. And I'm like, yeah, I have a mirror, I know.

But also more than 33% of Sweden's 10 million population have one or both parents born outside of Sweden. On top of that, over 25% of us, are non-white, where people of color. And yet, she still gets the all-too common follow-up question, but where are you really from? Generally, I just tell people who ask that question, my mother's uterus.

And that ends the conversation. Because nobody wants to ask my mom about her uterus, that's it. Levitt doesn't pull any punches, clearly. The next tweet in her thread said that in Sweden, quote, a lot of foul things are just, just accepted as normal. And she wasn't just talking about Swedish in hospitality, but about how that mindset manifests as racism and discrimination

against the country's minority populations, starting with its indigenous populations. They've been marginalized, they've been sterilized, they have had their way of living, they've had their children taken from them and put into re-schooling systems. Then you look at race biology, which literally was born here before it was exported to America.

that literally put white people at the top of the hierarchy and black people at the bottom. We're still seeing ramifications of that in healthcare. We're still seeing ramifications in how black children are being treated here in Sweden. Then you move on to, well, let's say, Second World War. Sweden maintains the image that we were neutral. No, in fact, we had internment camps for anti-Nazis. In fact, we did allow enemy lines to be crossed within our country whilst we did nothing. Sweden is used every day against America.

But how much better are we really? Just because we don't have guns? We still have racism. We still have people who are disabled, who are being disenfranchised. We still have houselessness. So it's not a utopia really to beat America over the headway, because we have our own things to take care of here. The response to Levitt's Twitter thread was swift and

overwhelming. She says it started with men passive-aggressively inviting her to their houses for dinner. And then it started getting scary because people were actually very angry asking me why I hate my own country, Sweden. LeVette says she had people calling her racial slurs and telling her to go back to Africa. So I decided that I have to address this because this happened before and I know how far it can escalate for a black woman here. So I decided to host a room. to discuss Swedengate. Levet used Twitter spaces to host this conversation. It was six hours long and nearly 300,000 people attended.

Swedish people, non-Swedish people, white people of color. They shared stories of growing up in Sweden, of immigrating, of leaving, people affirming David's experience, people defending David's friend, and really everything in between. We asked Levet if this felt like a conversation long overdue. She said, no, the overdue part, particularly for Sweden's minority communities, is being heard. Every time we start having these conversations, we deepen these conversations, we give it nuance. We get silenced by either someone gaslighting us and telling us it's not real.

We misunderstood things. Or we get threatened. Our lives get threatened, mine included. So silence here is always people talking about immigration. people with immigrant backgrounds, but you never get to hear our voices because the Swedish international PR is that strong. And PR isn't typically that big on nuance. We heard June Finley talk about this too with regards to social media. It's hard to have a both and kind of conversation in an either or kind of space.

But Lovett is trying to build that space. Take her Instagram page, for example, where you'll find pictures of her on Sweden's national holiday last month wearing the traditional Swedish garb and proudly waving a Swedish flag, immediately following a screenshot of a tweet she made, calling out Sweden's, quote, fragile sense of image when it comes to our country and customs. When I speak well of Sweden, and there's so many great things to speak about Sweden, nobody has a problem with that. Nobody comes into my comments or my emails or my Instagram to tell me, go back to Africa, you monkey or you N-word. But when I dare say that Sweden has a problem with racism in healthcare, in the police force, in housing,

then people are more like, well, you should be grateful you're here, is the assumption of go back to your mud hut. You have to love Sweden to even be able to criticize it. We do not criticize people we do not love. And we know when a loved one criticizes us or gives us constructive criticism is out of love and for us to change. think good things can come from Swedengate? I have to believe. I cannot live a life where I just give up on the same place that I have given

so much to. So yes, I have hope. And I know good things will come out of this. Number one, a lot of people are opening their eyes that no country is perfect, no country is above criticism. And nationalism, when it's blinded, can be very harmful because you'll be attacking the same people that wanted better the country. You know what, Ben? I have another source of hope to offer up from this whole Sweden Gate saga. A pretty surprising one, actually. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, it's hope more so for humanity than for Sweden specifically, I'd say.

Okay. But it comes from our O.P., David, and the friend that left him hungry in his bedroom 15 years ago. Was this kind of the beginning in the end of the friendship? Or did you stay friends and just not talk about it again? We're still friends, actually. I did send him a picture. Yeah, yeah, I did send him a picture of the comment. And I said, well, you have 50% of the responsibility of this.

Oh, my God. I mean, no pressure. But if your friend would be willing to talk to us. Yeah, I could absolutely ask him. Oh, please do. Oh, and he did. Yeah, my name is Martin. Martin Sal, aka the friend without whom David's Post and thus Swedengate 2022, would not exist. I'm finishing up my thesis to become a civil engineer. Yeah, that's pretty much what I do.

And Ben, that's pretty much all Martin does. He's been so wrapped up in his thesis lately that he hasn't been paying attention to social media at all, or so he claims. He claims he had no idea that David had made a post that accidentally turned Sweden's global reputation from this meatball-making, nature-loving, practical furniture paradise into a child-starving B.YO bedsheets, nationalistic hellscape. Hyperbolicly speaking, of course. And even if he had, he wouldn't have known David's post was about him, because he says he has zero memory of this particular incident. No, not at all, actually. But he also doesn't deny it for a second. It feels like a pretty common thing in Sweden to do that kind of thing, you know.

Ask someone to wait in your room whilst you go and eat. So were you ever told to wait in a friend's room while your friend... Yeah, yeah, multiple times. Really? Yeah. So not only was this a thing, but it was such a thing that it isn't a thing? Something like that, yeah. But for anyone who was up in arms,

about an unfed guest, rest assured. It's not a thing Martin does anymore. Nor does he excuse or defend it as just being part of Swedish culture. No, no, absolutely not. And I mean, not my mother either, actually. She's really embarrassed about this when I told her that, like, this post was about him being at our place. She got really embarrassed and stuff like that. Oh, no. Had she heard of this? Had she heard about Swedengate social media? Yeah, yeah. She had. she had no idea about where it came from and all that stuff because she's a very

generous and thoughtful person so she feels really bad about it now, you know Was Martin pissed at all that David posted about this on a public platform like when David joked to him that he was 50% responsible for this whole Swedengate tsunami I mean did

does he feel that? Does he resent? that? You know, what he told me was that he thought this was really funny, really, and that the only thing that made him angry or, I guess, sad would be a better word, is when he did finally wade into the posts and the tweets and all that this generated. And he saw some of that nationalistic and racist comments left that June and LeVette referred to. And he also said something that echoed what we heard them say. He, too, hopes that the larger Swedengate comments, conversation is here to stay, and that it leads to less unquestioned acceptance and defense of cultural practices just for national identities sake, and more acceptance of others just as

human beings. And maybe more giving each other a seat at the table, a nibble of the Swedish fish, you know, a taste of the cinnamon bun, something, something, a sip of the salmon soup. Oh, boy. Well, if David and Martin are any indication, it's never too late. I feel like the fact that you two are still friends, it's like a little microcosm of what we might all be able to take from this, that you got past it. We worked past the cultural differences and you remain friends to this day. Yeah, that's quite a beautiful way to look at it, actually.

Well, might I suggest that when your thesis is done and your head is above water, I just think maybe you should have David over for dinner. Yeah, I think so too, actually. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, an invitation to my midsummer party, Emery's Swedish pancake recipe, join our email list. You can find it at WBWR.org. slash Endless Threat.

This episode was written and produced by me, Amory Severson, and co-hosted by me and... Ben Brack Johnson. Mix and sound design by Matt Reed, editing help from Jeb Sharp. Our web producer is Megan Catell. The rest of our team is Norrisack, Steen Russell, Quincy Walters, Grace Tatter, Paul Vicus, and Emily Jenkowski. Endless Threat is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and an extremely jiggly, sticky, delicious pile of Lingon jam.

That's right. That's just true. If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email endless thread at wbUR.org.