He doesn’t want to be Jesus. But more God with a rogue in the neck. Thomas Gottschalk is up to mischief online and could do almost everything better.
A column by Janna Halbroth.
Thomas Gottschalk recently ended his Twitter career. For years he was there under the pseudonym Herbstgold. But then the Malibuan had enough of Shitstorm and Likes. “What do I have to tell the world?” He asked devoutly in a “Stern” interview and decided for himself: “If someone follows Jesus, he may have good reasons. I don’t need followers.”
But don’t worry, this pious modesty didn’t last long. At the end of March it sounded from a new channel. Gottschalk was suddenly on Instagram. This is known to be similar to Twitter, only with pictures instead of words. He had been praying every evening for years, Thommy emphasized again with conviction: “Dear God, make me godly that I’ll be on Insta soon.” Prayers answered: God with a joke on Insta.
And what awaits us there? Bet you can’t guess? First and foremost, Gottschalk is begging for followers. followers? Yes, those were the ones that Jesus had, but a Gottschalk doesn’t need. His posts always end with the request: Follow. Split. He congratulates TikTok star Lisa in pajamas on the wedding and jokes: “Greetings to your many followers, please give me a few, I’m new to Insta now.”
Otherwise, Gottschalk is of course totally ironic and likes to make fun of everything that actually happens on Instagram. Wrinkles aren’t actually one of them because old people solve puzzle books and watch “Storm of Love” instead of posting photos on Instagram. Only our Thommy has remained young, but what he still lacks is a ring light with which to cheat away the wrinkles. For unknown reasons, such a device is still missing. The whole thing becomes a running gag, just somehow without a gag. And who needs a ring light when you’ve got a halo?
Slapstick of the unfunny kind
The missing joke is actually the common thread that runs through Gottschalk’s Instagram profile. To gender, he calls his friend Mike Krüger, only Krügerin, under a joint selfie with Boris Becker he writes “gangster among themselves”, his Easter bunny looks a little different because he is a cat and his overnight oatmeal (cold oatmeal ) swelled overnight like he did. Tooooo!
Has Gottschalk always been so unfunny? Do you have to be over 70 to understand the humor? Or maybe he was funny once, but the earth kept turning and Gottschalk, who perhaps has more to do with his namesake, was able to evade the earth’s rotation in a divine way and is the only one still in the nineties, maybe even eighties?
But even then, or better then, Gottschalk’s unfunny attempt to become an internet star should somehow not be entirely fruitful. Maybe it works with the latest try. Gottschalk posts holiday pictures with his love Karina Mroß. The two pose in front of the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. There has almost never been anything like this on Instagram.
A fountain in Italy? It could be. A well has water and Italy is the land of wine. Now Gottschalk only has to turn water into wine and with the followers it will work all by itself.
