Letter From the Editor: Serotonin Mining
In divisive times, the World Cup is providing a much-needed sense of unity and connection.
I spend a lot of time paying attention to what makes people angry. That’s not a complaint. It’s the job. Politics, accountability, and the decisions made by people in power that affect all of our lives are the Coffman Chronicle’s bread and butter. If you’ve spent any amount of time online, you know that outrage has become its own ecosystem. Every day delivers a fresh reason to be furious, anxious, exhausted, or afraid. Perhaps that is why we so often dip into snark with our snarkitorials and Truth or Satire series.
Like many Americans, I was nervous about how the World Cup tournament would unfold in North America. The United States is living through a politically tense era. Our immigration debates are fierce, the rhetoric often harsh. We have spent years hearing stories about division, polarization, and mutual suspicion. The Trump Administration’s efforts and policies over the last 18 months have established an atmosphere in which there were legitimate questions about whether international visitors would feel welcome.
What I’ve seen instead has been something beautiful and incredibly hopeful.
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My algorithm is now filled with videos of fans from around the world discovering America not as an abstract political argument, but as a place filled with actual people. They are exploring the America I know, from savory burnt ends in Texas to the peaceful beauty of the Smoky Mountains. They are eating birria on a tailgate and singing “Sweet Caroline” at a baseball game. They are tasting southern comfort food and getting caught in an Arkansas thunderstorm.
Sure, they are also visiting the traditional tourist destinations, but in large part, they are experiencing something closer to what each of us lives day to day.
They’re eating regional foods they’ve never heard of, making pilgrimages to Buc-ee’s and wandering through Walmart in a state of fascinated confusion. They’re posting videos from beaches, mountain towns, city neighborhoods, diners, parks, and places that will never appear on a tourism brochure.
Perhaps most importantly, they’re meeting Americans.
I don’t mean the Americans from cable news segments, Hollywood films, or social media. International fans are breaking bread and having conversations with people much like you and me. There’s the guy who gives them directions, and the family who recommends a restaurant. I saw a great story about a hotel employee who drove fans to the stadium when no Ubers were available, and she knew that walking was not as reasonable as they assumed. There is a bartender who wants to hear where the young couple was from when they order crocodile, and the group at the bar who tells them the difference between Landry and Zydeco sauce.
One of my favorite stories came from Lawrence, Kansas, which hosted Algeria’s national team. Residents welcomed the team with Algerian flags. The University of Kansas marching band learned Algeria’s national anthem, and residents bought Algerian jerseys. An American college town thousands of miles from North Africa decided that if Algeria was going to be their team for a few weeks, then Algeria was family. That is my America. That’s the country I know.
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Of course, there are also countless stories from Boston, where Scotland’s Tartan Army appears to have become local celebrities, making the rest of us wish we were Bostonians for a day. Everywhere you look, there are stories of friendships forming between people who, absent this tournament, might never have crossed paths.
My current obsession is a delightful little South Korea-Mexico friendship story unfolding at the tournament. After each winning their first game, fans from both teams celebrated together. The FOMO is real, y’all. Fans who might otherwise never have met found themselves celebrating together, trading songs, sharing food, and bonding over soccer. It felt like a reminder that people can build connections far faster than governments can negotiate treaties. Even after the two teams faced one another, the fans remained in this beautiful bromance.
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In fact, I saw someone online joke that this tournament has done more for international peace and diplomacy in a few weeks than fifty years of foreign policy. Perhaps that’s hyperbole, but I completely understand what they mean. Another said that the World Cup didn’t need America, but America desperately needed the World Cup. I could not agree more.
What has struck me most isn’t the soccer. No, it’s the way people are rediscovering each other.
For years, Americans have been told how the rest of the world sees us. The stereotypes are familiar: loud, ignorant, rude, lazy, arrogant, and insular. At the same time, Americans have our own caricatures about other countries and cultures. The World Cup has become a giant machine for destroying those stereotypes.
I’ve lost count of the number of posts from international visitors saying some version of the same thing: “We were lied to about America.” What their media told them to expect is not the reality they are living. It isn’t because America is perfect. Far from it. No, it is because no nation of 340 million people can be accurately reduced to a handful of clichés.
Visitors are discovering that Americans are often friendlier than expected, more curious than judgmental, and more welcoming than suspicious.
Meanwhile, Americans are discovering that the people we’ve spent years hearing about in headlines are not headlines at all. They’re just people. They love their families, their countries, good food, telling stories, and partying hard. And they love arguing with referees. What could be more familiar?
What the World Cup does better than almost any event on Earth is force people to confront the reality that human beings are much more interesting than the stereotypes assigned to them.
Visitors are also discovering something else that Americans often take for granted. This country is enormous. I don’t mean just geographically. I’ve lived in five states throughout my life, and I swear we are all so much alike at the core, but also so incredibly, delightfully diverse. People are arriving expecting a single America and leave having encountered dozens of them.
The climate and weather change. The geography, flora, and fauna slowly shift from region to region. The predominant food and music alter. The accents morph, and the architecture evolves. If you’ve traveled this nation, you know that you can feel and smell the difference between the desert near Albuquerque, the plains in Kansas, the mountains in Tennessee, and the bayou in Louisiana.
In the span of a few states, you can move through not just time zones, but entirely different traditions, cuisines, landscapes, and communities. America is not one thing. It is both Appalachian towns and Pacific beaches. It is barbecue and seafood chowder. It is immigrant neighborhoods and farming communities. It is jazz clubs, rodeos, food trucks, college towns, dive bars, fishing villages, skyscrapers, and small-town main streets. The US is a place that contains far more diversity in every sense of the word than many visitors expect. I believe that is our greatest strength.
The internet often convinces us that humanity is primarily composed of tribes shouting at one another across digital barricades. The World Cup keeps reminding us that humanity is also composed of people sharing meals, trading scarves, learning songs, taking photos together, and trying to explain local customs to bewildered visitors.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve become wildly addicted to watching these videos. Usually, when I open social media, I’m doomscrolling and, frankly, spiraling. Lately, however, I’m serotonin-mining, and man, it has been a long time since I could say that.
The World Cup won’t solve America’s political divisions. It won’t fix our immigration debates or magically heal every cultural wound. It is unlikely to end any international conflicts or even influence future political decisions. However, for a few weeks, it has provided something that feels increasingly rare: perspective.
The United States is not merely its politics. Neither is any other country. We are all more than our headlines, more than our stereotypes, and more than our portrayal in other nations’ media. We are not our leaders, our worst media depictions, our best moments, or our most vile history.
We are, all of us, merely beings moving through the cosmos on a wild and wonderful blue orb. We don’t always agree, like the same flavors or music, or even think of one another, but we share so much.
For a few weeks, we share the World Cup. From where I’m sitting, that’s one of the best stories of the year. If you need me, I’ll be watching reels on social media and feeling just a bit more sane. (Seriously. Just search Soccer fans discover America.)
And to our international friends visiting, we are so honored to have you here and genuinely hope you have an amazing time.
If this letter made you smile, subscribe and stick around. The news often gives us reasons to worry about one another. Sometimes it’s worth celebrating the moments that remind us why we shouldn’t give up on each other.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tomorrow.
See more:
“How a love affair between Algeria and Lawrence became the story of ‘26 World Cup,” NewsBreak, June 14, 2026.
“Rock Chalk Algeria: Residents of Lawrence, Kansas, embrace their World Cup home team,” KMUW, June 17, 2026.
“Tartan Army invades Boston,” Yahoo Sports, June 17, 2026.
“FIFA World Cup's sweetest rivalry: Mexico and South Korea fans celebrate friendship with BTS song before the final whistle,” IndiaTimes via MSN, June 19, 2026.
Thank the heavens for the World Cup! Proving to the people who really matter we are not our headlines or what’s going on in Washington. Hope they’re having a great time!!
Thank you for such a needed response to the daily dose of crazy that seems to be suffocating our brains and our spirits. We’re all really more similar than different (okay, maybe not athletically) and we inhabit this big, blue marble together, so how about we put our differences aside and pretend every day is the World Cup. Forever.