How charmingly Nordic. In the land of Lego and clinical hygge, the citizens of Denmark have decided to play a game of digital David versus the American Goliath, armed with nothing but a few lines of code and a sudden, performative aversion to corn syrup. The Danish App Store—that most sterilized of digital boutiques—is currently playing host to a surge in software designed specifically to filter out the stench of the Star-Spangled Banner from one’s shopping cart. It is a peculiar form of modern exorcism, conducted through a touch-screen interface, as if the right sequence of swipes could somehow purge the European soul of its decades-long addiction to the American empire.

One must admire the profound lack of self-awareness required to use an iPhone—a product of Cupertino’s unrelenting pursuit of global hegemony—to download an app that identifies whether your ketchup was manufactured in Ohio. It is like using a guillotine to perform a delicate manicure; the instrument is perhaps a bit too intimately connected to the system you are attempting to dismantle. Yet, here we are. The Danish consumer, usually so pragmatic and focused on the structural integrity of their wind turbines, has pivoted toward a grassroots boycott that is as ambitious as it is doomed. They are ditching American vacations, severing their ties with Netflix, and treating the products of the United States with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for a lukewarm herring buffet.

This movement is a masterclass in the tragicomic theater of the absurd. The Danes are canceling their trips to the Florida Everglades or the neon-soaked gutters of Las Vegas, presumably because they believe that denying a theme park its entry fee will somehow recalibrate the geopolitical scales. There is something almost touching about the belief that a family from Aarhus choosing to holiday in a rain-drenched coastal town in Jutland instead of Orlando will cause the architects of American foreign policy to lose a moment’s sleep. It is the 'I told you so' of the frustrated intellectual: if we cannot change the world, we can at least ensure our money stays within the borders of a kingdom that respects both social democracy and expensive knitwear.

The exodus from American streaming services is perhaps the most telling symptom of this cultural fever. Netflix, that great digital pacifier, is being unceremoniously dumped in favor of... what, exactly? One can only assume a sudden, frantic search for home-grown content that doesn’t involve a gritty detective staring gloomily at a grey sea. The vacuum left by Hollywood’s relentless machine will be difficult to fill. When you remove the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the latest docuseries about American serial killers from the collective consciousness, you are left with a void that even the most avant-garde Danish playwright would struggle to populate. It is a form of cultural asceticism that feels less like a political statement and more like a mid-life crisis for an entire nation.

But let us look at the deeper pathology of this boycott. It is a scream into the void from a continent that has long realized its own irrelevance in the face of the American tech leviathan. By downloading these 'anti-USA' apps, the Danish public is attempting to reconstruct a wall that was torn down by the internet years ago. They are seeking a digital border in a world where data knows no nationality. The sheer bureaucratic impulse to categorize and exclude is quintessentially European. It is the belief that if we can just label the problem correctly—if we can just tag every bottle of Coca-Cola with a digital warning sign—we can somehow reclaim our autonomy.

Of course, the irony is that these boycotts are often as transient as a summer breeze in Copenhagen. The moral high ground is a wonderful place to stand until you realize the Wi-Fi is terrible and there’s nothing to watch on TV. Eventually, the desire for convenience will triumph over the fleeting thrill of virtue signaling. The Danish consumer will find that life without American logistics is a life of significantly more friction, and in our modern, friction-averse society, that is the ultimate sin. For now, however, we can enjoy the spectacle of a small, wealthy nation trying to pretend it isn't part of the very globalized mess it helped create. They will swipe, they will boycott, and they will feel a brief, shimmering sense of superiority. And then, inevitably, they will return to the fold, likely because the next season of their favorite American show just dropped, and some principles are simply too expensive to keep.