Quiz: Take Our World Cup Slop Test
International visitors are celebrating American culture—but so are AI bots, brands, and professional content creators jumping on a lighthearted trend
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with some extra humor and opinion. Today we’re putting your 🐂💩 detector to the test.
Despite numerous changes to the social platform known as Twitter when the last World Cup was held—the introduction of an algorithmic, interest-based timeline; the influx of vertical video; the debut of Grok; the verification system’s overhaul; the surge in AI-created content; the return of previously banned accounts and the emigration of dissatisfied users to new alternatives like Bluesky and Threads—Elon Musk’s “everything app” continues to drive sports conversation. Sports Twitter lives on, if in a somewhat undead form.
While TikTok and Instagram drove trends during recent Olympic Games, it’s X that feels best suited for the present moment. The platform’s auto-translate features have allowed us to enjoy memes from around the world.
And X still offers the some of the quickest, deepest connections between unknown fans and celebrities, while other platforms increasingly feel like one-to-many distribution systems programmed by professional account managers.
But it’s not all sunshine☀️ and lollipops 🍭 in Elon’s “digital town square.” Anyone who has spent time on the site has also been subjected to spammy content, AI-created misinformation, marketing ploys, and other shameless bids for attention (or worse). Slop comes in many forms.
During the World Cup, the combination has created a real-time online literacy test. Now it’s time to see how you do!
Club Sportico has gathered some of the most viral World Cup content from the tournament’s first week. Some of it is authentically heartwarming. Some of it isn’t. We’re curious to see how you score each post, then stick around for our take.
Club Sportico’s World Cup Slop Test
1. Freddy from Germany
2. Japanese fan discovers Mexican restaurant
3. Japanese fan discovers Texas Roadhouse
4. Three Lions celebrate English win
5. Swedish fan survives Golden Corral
6. BBC pundit finds waddling Mexico supporter
OUR RULINGS
Before we get to our takes, a word of encouragement if that was a struggle: It shouldn’t be this hard to tell real from shill online.
“We want people to be more discerning, not blanket skeptical, nor blanket gullible,” Purdue University assistant professor Daniel Schiff recently told me. “But it's an incredibly difficult burden to ask individuals to be technical forensics experts or professional fact checkers, especially when the moderation strategies for fact checking, watermarking, or labeling are so piecemeal.”
Freddy from Germany
Freddy from Germany has been the undisputed breakout star of the World Cup so far, on or off the pitch. And while we were among the initially skeptical, the New Orleans Saints staff verified his traveler bonafides when he visited their practice facility. He later got to talk to astronauts on the International Space Station.
Brands are now clamoring to get on board but Freddy seems to be largely holding them off, though he might be playing up his naivety for clicks.
Our Ruling: 100% Authentic ☺️1
Japanese fan discovers Mexican food
The Atlantic’s Will Oremus chatted with this account’s creator, who said “that the aim of the stories is comedy, not ‘realism, journalism, or persuasion.’” We find it a bit disingenuous—a fabricated anecdote if not entirely AI-created.
Our Ruling: 100% Inauthentic 🤢
BTW, a related video of an Italian person discovering refills also feels like classic engagement bait. The Azzurri aren’t even in the Wold Cup!
Japanese fan discovers Texas Roadhouse
Now this one seems legit. The poster later uploaded images from Japan’s match against the Netherlands.2
The chain has since leaned into the trend, inviting Freddy to dine at one of its locations as @texasroadhouse started posting on X for the first time in over a year.
Our Ruling: 100% Authentic 🍴 (and you can’t blame a brand for trying to join in on the fun)
Three Lions celebrate English win
So many English fans are partying across the U.S.; we didn’t need to see AI-generated animals instead. The middle lion doesn’t even eat the part of the cookie he dipped 😔
Our Ruling: 100% Inauthentic 🦁
Need a palette cleanser? Here’s what seems to be the world’s biggest fan of Fort Worth (but also a professional travel content creator 🙃) .3
Swedish fan survives Golden Corral
Maybe one of the trickier questions on the test. As Oremus wisely pointed out, this isn’t Elsa Thora’s first time in the spotlight…
With attention turning to the pitch, Elsa later went for the oldest engagement trick in the book: activating the In-N-Out debate
Our Ruling: Slop-ish 🤷
BBC pundit finds waddling Mexico supporter
Stranger than anything AI could’ve produced. It had to be real. Meet Merlin.
Our Ruling: 100% Authentic 🦆
Did we miss your favorite content from the World Cup so far? Share it in the comments! Or ask our experts to evaluate how real other viral posts are…4
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.
We reserve the right to downgrade Freddy to slop-ish if he starts doing brand deals.
Here’s more content apparently from Japanese visitors if you haven’t gotten enough:
At least those Norwegians rowing up the escalator in Boston seem to be 100% authentic. But don’t try this at home—especially if you’ve got a cape on 😳