A Decent Melody

This is ABSOLUTELY a perfectly fine footpath.

In fact, with how much space I’m seeing here, it is entirely plausible, that the European hordes will just create a temporary little Wanderweg right next to the highway. With that much space they might not even have to interfere with traffic.

the grass is not a permanent feature. there just happens to be a chunk of it there. the side of the road can vary from grass to swampwater ditches to steep embankments to absolutely nothing within a very short distance.

they will call in every highway enforcer in the state and mass incarcerate the lot of you before they allow you to Darwin Award yourselves across 6 lanes of traffic into an international incident or, (their real concern) impede the progress of the single most important north-south interstate corridor in america, ball kicky game be damned.

You are a US American motorist driving along i-95 during rush hour. You see a pedestrian dart in front of you. You have 2 seconds to make a decision:

Attempt to stop (cause multi-car pile up and kill pedestrian anyway)

Attempt to swerve #1 (cause semi truck next to you to jackknife, cause pileup, kill pedestrian anyway)

Attempt to swerve #2 (into ditch/swamp/retaining wall, 85 mph/137 km per hour, killing yourself, your passengers, and a bunch of other people on the road when your car inevitably sends pieces shooting off into traffic. Also, the pedestrian gets run over by the person behind you, who was NOT expecting a pedestrian and didn't even see them)

So, Reddit being Reddit, had already tracked down the origins. Turns out there were some disgruntled Europeans that were unhappy with the fact that the train operator was price gouging the tickets that were usually $12 so that they were $150+ to get from the hotel to the MetLife stadium. Roughly 900m away (through a swamp). The European complaining was like “it’s 900m I’d rather fucking walk it”. Not that he was going to walk it, just that he was pissed off at the price enough that he’d jokingly consider it.

In swoops a blue check mark rw dude who, like the above, took him literally and explained swamps and how roads work in a very condescending manner (not like the above). The European response was so clearly sarcasm (paraphrasing: “I’m strong! I can make it across a swamp! I’m not paying $150 dollars for a 15 minute train ride”) but it went over the blue check mark guy’s head.

So he doubles down, insisting that they’ll all get run over on the I-95 and Europeans are arrogant and stupid. So what did the original guy do? After a bit of back and forth about terrible infrastructure he starts Smooth Sharking the blue check mark guy! No it’s totally fine! I’ve crossed big roads before! Swamps are nothing! Blue check guy does not recognise the sarcasm or the obvious rage bait so doubles down again.

By this time, it’s got enough traction that more Europeans show up to rage bait this one guy with stuff like “nah the whole Dutch fan walk is gonna walk alongside the I-95!” “You can’t do that you’ll get killed by trucks!” “It’s fine they can’t kill us all there are too many! Some will make it to the match!”

Of course it make blue check mark guy very angry and he started ranting about Europeans being arrogant enough to walk. He was also equating it with them not helping with that Special Operation Tango Toddler has going on, which like okay dude. But others only saw his rants about it and that began to spread. Once it reached TikTok and folks were making videos accusing Europeans of white supremacy (yes that is a thing that happened) it genuinely spun out of control to what we’re seeing now.

I don’t doubt some idiot Europeans have indeed tried to justify doing this, there’s one on this post (along with one person clearly smooth sharking. Like c’mon, circling grass and writing “path” is not a serious response, it’s rage bait) but the idea that “European football fans think they can walk this” isn’t real. No one has earnestly being saying they’ll do it. More people have been shocked by the dominance of car led infrastructure than have thought “yeah I can cross an 8 lane interstate highway.”

Tl;dr: This is manufactured outrage based on one guy getting smooth sharked because some other guy thought a $12 ticket suddenly being $150 was a bit fucking much for such a short journey and he’d rather walk than pay that.