Did the country of Sweden enter a new stage of trolling this week with its @Sweden initiative? I think so, and it’s awesome.
To recognize what degree of high-level trolling the whole @Sweden ordeal is, we must first look back at the Nordic country’s mystifying history.
The Swedes first trolled the world with the opening of IKEA in 1953. The manufacturer became renowned for inventing furniture with indescribable and naughty sounding names matched with equally difficult instructions. It seems that only people with Ivy League degrees could build something called a Birkeland set of furniture. Also, it became the go-to store to ruin your relationships, as Liz Lemon and her man, Criss, found out on 30 Rock. (Criss probably loves that 99 cent breakfast.)
The trolling continued in the 1970s with the exporting of Abba, your parents’ favorite disco band. They were so annoying but, just like IKEA furniture, it was hard not to stare at them—and their glittery outfits, which were fit for a cruise ship’s theatre. Also, Abba’s breakout song, “Dancing Queen,” damaged me permanently with recurring images of Meryl Streep wearing the gaudiest pair of overalls ever.
Thirty years later, Sweden is still perfecting the art of trolling by letting its residents control the country’s self-titled Twitter account. The project, which launched back in December, started out with a bang. The first guy who ran the account admitted that he masturbated to get through the long, cold, and well, hard, winter months.
For next few months, the tweets from the account were as interesting as eating a piece of knackebrod flerkon with a dabble of lingonberry jam.
Then this week, @Sweden took a page out of the Hollywood playbook and brought in the drama. A young, blonde named Sonja Abrahamsson started tweeting. She’s great. She is probably my favorite Sonja to join a boring franchise since the Real Housewives of New York.
Anyway, her tweets are really good, like Favstar-level good. She is in favor of strip-searching anyone with a penis to find out if they’re Jewish while simultaneously coining my new favorite way to form a question: “whats the fuzz.” I reached out to her to ask if she’s figured out what the fuzz is with Jews, but I got nothing.
And we’re only at the midway point of her tenure. She can already knock making a Hitler joke off her list (although I still don’t get that one). She wrote a stellar review of Zooey Deschanel’s character in New Girl, and I love that she made a Desperate Housewives comparison. It’s probably because Desperate Housewives is only on its second season there at 11:45 pm, every third Thursday. That seems like a very Swedish thing to do.
Other gems include calling her breasts “foldable,” slyly making a Chuck Testa reference, and pragmatically realizing that her kids could be gay, so she can’t afford to be homophobic (or “have homophobia,” as she puts it). I love her. When does Sonja get her own talk show?
Sure, the Jewish tweet was a bit out there, but if you read past that initial tweet, you realize there’s something more there. Like how when the world gawks at the quirks of Sweden, Sonja smartly uses the platform to help her understand something she doesn’t quite grasp.
That’s what makes this experiment so amazing. If there was an @America Twitter account, do you think that it would tweet out 100 percent political correctness? The moment that account landed in the hand of a citizen from Fox Nation, it would make Sonja’s tweets look tame.
And, props to Sweden for not freaking out about this and showcasing the unique people that live in a land where the radio stations only play Robyn and Ace of Base on a loop in their Volvos. You would probably have a twisted global point of view, too.
So Sonja, continue with your unique way of trolling and get back to us if you need an explanation on Jews.
Photo via Nyheter24
