{"id":11474,"date":"2026-07-21T20:10:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11474"},"modified":"2026-08-01T15:24:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:24:58","slug":"world-cup-watch-parties-build-team-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/world-cup-watch-parties-build-team-chemistry\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup watch parties build team chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our World Cup watch parties, there is no such thing as \u201clarpers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you\u2019re not familiar with chronically online Gen Z slang, a \u201clarper\u201d is someone who fakes an identity or interest in order to fit in with a crowd, a term frequently used by experienced soccer fans to make fun of clueless newcomers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But in the Great Room, I watched the tournament with dozens of other die-hard fans like myself. We all collectively groaned when the United States were knocked out of the tournament. We all laughed at the Erling Haaland memes and \u201cthe Mbapp\u00e9 special.\u201d Our unbreakable bond culminated when we went crazy after Spain took the edge over Argentina in the World Cup final.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, I loved hanging out with other invested supporters. But I also loved explaining to new fans what the yellow card was or \u2014 God forbid \u2014 the offside rule. In just a single match, even the casual onlookers became die-hard fans. We were all united by the hype of the greatest tournament in soccer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Within just days of the program, the watch parties are what made the World Cup so special for me this year. The high fives, the laughter, yelling \u201cFOUL!\u201d at the referee behind the screen \u2014 these were the moments when we made new friends.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">No wonder why people call it \u201cthe beautiful game.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In between classes, cherubs gathered together to watch World Cup matches, cheering on their favorite teams and making lasting bonds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":11482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,340],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[664],"class_list":["post-11474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences","category-front-page-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":664,"user_id":321,"is_guest":0,"slug":"kim26","display_name":"Jane Kim","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ce2fb3ac2774bb1ac4e2c4be198b9421883fbf8eb9ea490723fdd1781e7c9bdd?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Kim","first_name":"Jane","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11474"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12820,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions\/12820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11474"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}