Man, I needed to see some serious hype today. That was the whole idea behind the practice. The title says it all, right? I was just trying to do a simple thing:
See some new World Cup photos. Real ones. Not that filtered, garbage stuff.
I figured, let’s check out what’s cooking, even if it’s just the talk or the practice rounds, the training grounds, whatever is happening now. I opened up my machine, typed the search phrase—you know the one—and I started scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling.
What did I get?
- Old shots from 2014 Brazil, all sun-bleached.
- A bunch of marketing puff pieces from airlines or energy drink guys.
- The same four close-ups of that one player from Qatar, over and over again.
I kept digging. I pushed past the first few pages, clicking on the weird forum posts and the deep-dive photo blogs, because that’s where the good stuff always hides. I was using all my usual tricks, trying to find that raw, energetic photo that makes your guts twist a little—the kind that makes you think, “Damn, I wish I was there.”
I spent maybe two hours doing this. I clicked through hundreds of images, saving a handful into a folder just labeled “WC NOW.” I even tried a reverse image search on some shots just to see when they were really taken. The whole thing was a dead end. Just recycled history. It drove me nuts.
Then, while I was sitting there, staring at a photo of a packed stadium from Russia 2018, something clicked in my memory. Not the photo itself, but the feeling it brought back. That feeling wasn’t hype or excitement. It was the feeling of a gut punch.
My Old World Cup Disaster: Why I Don’t Trust the Hype Anymore
That 2018 World Cup. That’s when the whole mess started, and that’s why I ended up as the blogger sharing these rough records today. I had it all planned. Took a massive loan, bought the tickets—the whole shebang—booked two weeks off work. Paid for the flight, paid for a dingy little room near one of the smaller venues.
Two days before I was supposed to fly out, my old company pulled the rug out.
My manager, let’s call him Stan, emails me at 11 PM. Says there’s a critical server issue, a huge client delivery glitch, and I’m the only one who knows the legacy system well enough to fix it. I told him straight up: “Stan, I’m gone in 48 hours. I booked this six months ago. Someone else has to handle it.”
He didn’t ask. He demanded. He called my apartment, saying the fate of the whole department depended on me. I ended up spending the entire next 36 hours chained to my desk, staring at code. I fixed it, sure. I saved their butts. But I missed my flight. The ticket was non-refundable. The dingy room? Poof. Gone. Thousands of dollars—just evaporated.
I went back to Stan, tired, miserable, asking for the two weeks I just worked to be added to my PTO balance, since I definitely couldn’t use the original two weeks I’d paid for. You know what he said?
He actually told me: “You volunteered your time because you love the company. We were all working hard. It wasn’t mandatory.”
That was the breaking point. The audacity. The flat-out lie.
I had a massive shouting match with him that day, the kind where everyone in the office pretends to be suddenly interested in their keyboard. I finished the week, cleaned out my desk on a Friday, and just walked. Didn’t even wait for the final paycheck. I just couldn’t stomach the sight of that place anymore.
That summer, my finances were a disaster. I was living off my savings, hunting for any old contract gig I could find just to pay the rent and cover the debt from that stupid trip. I wasn’t looking for a fancy, high-paying job. I was looking for a stable job, a human job.
I got picked up by a small company doing industrial system maintenance. Totally random pivot. They hired me because I knew how to troubleshoot anything. The pay wasn’t top-tier, but the schedule? 9 to 5. No drama. No 11 PM Stan emails. No pretending to “love the company.” I could breathe again.
A few months after I left, I heard through some old colleagues that Stan had been fired. Apparently, the server issue I fixed was actually his fault, and he blamed me for the ensuing chaos when I left. But by then, I didn’t care. I was already set up in my new, low-stress life, finally having time to just sit down and write these records down.
So, I closed the folder labeled “WC NOW.” I found maybe six decent photos out of hundreds. But the real record, the real memory from searching for those photos today, wasn’t about some dude kicking a ball. It was about realizing that I’d stopped chasing the fake, glamorous hype that costs you your money and your sanity. That’s why I’m here now, sharing my practice records, instead of sitting in a stadium I can’t afford, working for a boss who thinks I should “volunteer” my vacation time. This simple practice of searching for photos just brought me back to that moment.
