[Lightspeed]

Did everyone spontaneously applaud Amanda Palmer in a Havelock North café?

Joe Biden had barely finished calling for unity when Amanda Palmer posted a tweet that split New Zealand in two. Her message began innocuously. “Just walked into a coffee shop here in Aotearoa New Zealand,” she said, believably. But then, the kicker: “and everybody behind the counter, not really knowing me but knowing I was American, erupted in spontaneous applause”

Palmer’s claim was incendiary. It didn’t mesh with the Aotearoa New Zealand many of us thought we knew, where any achievement, from getting an A on an assignment to winning the Rugby World Cup, is met with a grim nod and a stern reminder not to get too full of yourself. She was asserting that New Zealanders were not just nice, but effusively nice in public. It had to be a lie.