It’s turning-out time at the bars and clubs, but I’m already back home, sitting in the dark, eavesdropping on a video call between a Norwegian man and a carload of adolescent Indians who are cruising through the streets of suburban California; I can tell they’re trying to catch him out, though I can’t follow the conversation when it switches to Hindi.
I tuned into Lasse Lund’s Instagram Live this weekend for the same reason as everyone else: to work out if he’s telling the truth. The basic details of his story are that he ended up living on the streets of Mumbai between the ages of 11 and 17 after his father moved back to Norway and his mother was jailed for overstaying her visa. He claims the authorities failed to support him on his return to Norway and, due to his lack of education, he ended up working in factories doing manual labor. He’s now returned to India to film a documentary telling his story and says he wants to give back to the people who helped him survive his childhood. I can see why you might think it sounds too good to be true.
When I first saw the videos of Lasse wobbling his head from side to side while speaking in a thick Indian accent, my first reaction was to make a joke about it—the only logical response to a world where it’s no longer possible to tell what is or isn’t real is to laugh at everything. On Friday, the VICE Twitter account shared my convoluted gag comparing him with the author Karl Ove Knausgård—“If Lasse Lund is really Norwegian, then why hasn’t he written a six-part cycle of autobiographical novels scrutinizing every aspect of his life in excruciating detail?”—the next day, we received a reply from the man himself (Lasse, not Knausgård), calling us “retarded” and sharing a photograph of himself as a child flipping the bird.
As clips of him clocked up millions of views, Lasse has spent the weekend responding to his newfound fame, posting videos addressing particular comments (“he must have ate everybody’s food he’s so fat”) and taking questions during Instagram livestreams like the one I tuned into during the early hours of Sunday morning. “There’s nothing fake about my story, my life has been fucked up,” Lasse told his audience of 50 people, repeatedly tapping his face in an attempt to show that he’s real.
Now, I know that scammers can use face filter technology to make you believe that your dead grandmother has come back from the grave to reclaim her inheritance, but after watching Lasse pull up his shirt to show the scars on his back from where he was once stabbed, I’m mostly convinced he’s not AI. And I don’t think he’s got anything to do with the crypto geeks trying to cash in on his internet celebrity ( “I’m not a part of no memecoin fucking pump and dump scam,” he told the livestream). And though he’s rocking that red Polo Sport T-shirt, I’m pretty sure this isn’t an extremely elaborate avant-garde marketing stunt from Ralph Lauren.
Last night, I jumped on a call with Lasse. He’s still a little sore about the Knausgård joke (“You don’t know my story, don’t you fuck around and make fun of me”), but he likes VICE and was happy to talk about how the last few days has been for him. He’s never beating the pottymouth allegations though, that’s for sure.
VICE: You’ve gone viral this weekend. Congratulations.
Lasse Lund: I was part of the weekend, and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be a part of the whole year going forward with what’s coming. I never thought of it getting out like it did. I went to sleep at 11 or 12 at the hotel while we were filming it in India and suddenly woke up to 17,000 followers the next day and was like, “What the fuck is happening?”
It must be weird for you.
I got fed up with keeping it in, and I want to hold someone accountable for what happened instead of me just wondering why the fuck no one took responsibility.
What did an average weekend look like growing up in Mumbai?
Brutal. Things that no kid should ever experience. It’s not normal for a teenage kid to find out things about the underworld.
How did you survive for all that time?
Tourist guiding. Hustling on the streets. It was easy to get acquainted with people because I was white, speaking more English than the others. When you’re a foreigner in India and a white guy comes up to you and says, “Hey, I’ll show you around places and help you with the prices.”
What sort of things did local people do to help you?
A place to stay, food, clothing—they literally were there for me when I was in fucked-up situations, they came and helped out, that’s what family does.
How’s your relationship with your actual family now?
I have my eldest brother that I have contact with, but the rest, nothing.
Have you found people judgmental since being back in Norway?
I don’t have idiots around me, but I have been mocked for my accent, my head bobbing, and whatnot since I came back.
I guess you can’t grow out of the head wobble.
No, it’s literally imprinted in me. It’s like you’d need to lobotomize me with a fucking nail through my eye to get rid of that.
Where feels more like home to you now, Norway or India?
India, I can tell you right away. Any country other than Norway feels more like home to me than Norway.
I’ve seen a speculation on Norwegian Reddit about whether you’re telling the truth.
Whoever the trolls are, I don’t care what they say. It’s my life. I know how I fucking lived. I have people that don’t want me out there telling my story. I’ve had messages from my own family members—I don’t even know who they are or which part of the family they’re from. While I was in Mumbai, after I put out the first videos, they were like, “Please, can you take down the post because it’s affecting our family and our name?” I sent just one message back: “Fuck your name.” This is my story, and it’s out there.
It’s been interesting seeing you do the livestreams. I feel like people have been trying to catch you out.
I don’t mind. That’s why I’m like, come in, come on live, fucking fish if you want. You can come at me—I’ll fucking bite you in the ass, motherfucker.
I’d get frustrated. Like, how can I prove I’m a real person.
I don’t give a shit. The trolls can be trolls. There are lots of things I’m going to put out the day I get a Netflix documentary because this is just crumbs of my whole story that I lived down there. I didn’t know just getting my little crumbs out would get such a big fucking following.
Anything else you want to say right now, then?
I’m not AI, and this is not a story. This is my life.
Lasse didn’t want to share too many details of his life on the street because he doesn’t want to spoil the “adventure and mystery of what’s coming,” but he promised that there was a big video coming today, which will apparently make us feel very bad for joking about him on Twitter. He asked me to include a link to his Gofundme page and I got the distinct impression that if I didn’t then I might be receiving a visit from the Hells Angels at some point.
OTHER NEWS
- Booker nominated author Gabriel Krauze is set to publish a new autobiographical novel inspired by his time spent with soliders in Ukraine. Will there be as much bunning of zoots as in his first book? Maybe. Either way, I’m sure it won’t be short of people getting “wetted up.”
- Fakemink was seen riding through the streets of London in the back of a cycle rickshaw, looking for the billboard advertising his new album Terrified. Hopefully that Maybach he crashed will be repaired before too long.
- And it turns out even Drake’s NDA’s refer to him as The Boy, according to an episode of the Internet is Dead podcast featuring Zane Kind, who worked at his creative agency in Los Angeles (guess that’s another copywriting gig I’ve talked myself out of).
PREDICTION OF THE WEEK
It looked like the upcoming World Cup—hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States—was going to be a major flop, but there’s been an injection of excitement after Argentinian scientists revealed they’ve grown a test-tube Maradona. It remains unclear whether newly relocated Palantir billionaire Peter Thiel is in any way involved.
BRAND NEW SENTENCE
“invented a new kind of factory farming where the animal suffers even more . we are using ai also”
BONUS PREDICTION: WHAT WILL LASSE DO NEXT?
An appearance on YouTube talkshow Hot Ones leads to host Sean Evans being hospitalized after trying to match Lasse’s superhuman tolerance for spicy food.
Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi
The post ‘There’s Nothing Fake About My Story’: An Interview With Lasse Lund, the Norwegian With an Indian Accent appeared first on VICE.
