It Algemeen Dagblad newspapers are becoming less and less popular, they are focusing on paper and online on clickbait. If a child with three legs is born somewhere, they are the first to bring it. The more miserable and extreme, the more journalistic. At the same time, they seem to capture Dutch citizenship like no other. The new year had only just begun and they were the first to announce that the ‘traditional New Year’s dive’ – how old is that tradition anyway? – due to the weather conditions – it was windy yesterday – did not take place, but Dutch people who stayed elsewhere in tropical areas did dive into the sea en masse in groups. In Australia and New Zealand, the dive was organized in collaboration with Unox, the newspaper reported in the content ‘Dutch people dive into warm sea with orange hats’.
Dutch people and AD readers in particular prefer to read and click on news about Dutch people abroad, it fills them with a feeling of pride.
Crying and laughing, but the tears dominated.
‘Because of the weather.’
All the physical challenges that Dutch people impose on themselves out of boredom increasingly only take place when conditions are ideal. The Nijmegen Four Days Marches becomes more inhumane every year. This has nothing to do with climate change, but mainly with the large number of participants who are no longer able to walk large distances, but who want to do so to prove something to themselves and the environment. They only succeed when the weather conditions are ideal, and unfortunately they never are anymore. If an Elfstedentocht could be organized now, don’t worry, it will never happen again, it would probably be canceled due to too extreme weather.
We want to suffer, but we can no longer do so.
Then New Year’s dives in other, much warmer places on earth are a solution. What remains is the vicarious shame that unfortunately most Dutch people do not suffer from. Swimming in groups in places far away with an orange Unox hat on your head is nothing to be proud of. The Dutch are lemmings, all equally crazy.
This was possible after the Dutch scenes on the slope to Alpe d’Huez during the Tour de France, the orange marches during the football tournaments, King’s Day and the Max Verstappen mania. It is now more than clear that we are losing contact with the other earthlings. No idea when this exaggerated reaction to our inferiority complex ever started, that is up to future researchers. It is best to start by reading AD and ad.nl.
Marcel van Roosmalen writes a column on Mondays and Thursdays.