Last year, the self-proclaimed “advertising expert” became nationally known as he traveled the country reporting illegal parking. Now he is burning the Koran in public. What just happened?
The great excitement has long passed, interest in it has waned, and now the Koran is being burned. A year and a half ago, a camera team from “Spiegel TV” accompanied self-proclaimed “advertising expert” Niclas Matthei, a young man with behavioral problems, then only 18 years old, who wore a high-visibility vest and a flashy helmet and rode his bicycle across German pedestrian zones to continuously report illegal parking. The law is just the law, he stressed, and he saw it as his duty to enforce German traffic regulations on the roads.
After his miraculous appearance, Matthei briefly became a hated figure and then a national cult figure. All major media outlets covered or accompanied him, invited him to their events, and WELT also conducted interviews with him. At this point it was clear that Matthei exhibited severe psychological behavioral problems. Does not matter. The man is too iconic, the expected prose of the role is too good, the expectation is that Matthei is just acting it all out, that he is simply embodying the most German of all German virtues, the love of order, and reducing it to absurdity with his performance. An extraordinary spectacle.
Matthei, on the other hand, later indicated that his only plan was to build a huge reach in a very short time through his strange appearance. At least that’s what worked. Due to his newfound fame, he was also invited to major clubs and discos throughout the republic, where he was celebrated as a “special guest” by the drunken guests and, according to his own statements, made a small fortune. Further collaborations with influencers with a wide reach will also likely earn him a decent income.
But every joke is told at a moment’s notice, even faster on the Internet than in the analog world, so not only interest but also Matthei’s reach drops significantly. He refuses. First he grew a mustache, “Hitler’s beard”, and provoked his followers with strange photos, then he drew attention to himself with increasingly strange actions. At Boblitz, in the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district, he emptied the public book case and gave himself up to it. This week the increase increased.
“Allahu akbar” – and then the Koran caught fire
On his social networks, he not only showed himself carrying a gun, he also showed himself burning a book. The Koran, according to his own statement. It is not yet clear whether the burned book was actually the Koran, but what is certain is that Matthei is in dire need of new attention. “Advertising experts have nothing else to do but burn the Koran, ah, that’s good,” he said, showing himself spraying alcohol on the burning book. The march “Erika” sung by NSDAP composer Herms Niel played in the background. Joseph Goebbels used the song for Nazi propaganda at the time. On his Instagram channel, the “ultimate advertising master” commented with “Allahu akbar”. The YouTube channel “The Holy Oven Cheese” was the first channel to report the incident.
Experts call this performative online radicalization. The real identity behind the online personality is subject to the mechanisms of the attention economy. It has to become more and more radical in order to function better (or slower: at all). This involves the use of so-called “ragebait,” which is content that intentionally annoys and angers people to encourage engagement. Performative online radicalization is particularly dangerous for people who exhibit psychological problems.
Matthei told himself that he wanted to become the self-proclaimed Dragon King 2.0. He means the overweight former YouTuber from Central Franconia who, with his controversial statements, has built a huge community of haters on the Internet, who regularly visit and bully him at his former residence. The Dragon King also initially took advantage of an increasingly rapid spiral of escalation until he finally lost everything and wandered the country without a place to live. It is doubtful that Matthei’s current actions were intended to convey a true political message. In another video he shows himself carrying a gun. Whether it is real remains unclear. He quoted the Dragon King directly and declared himself a “supreme being.” He wants attention. He doesn’t care about the price now.
