At Africa Is a Country , we are very proud of our World Cup Road Trip series. Although the World Cup directed our attention to one shared happening, what one’s experience of the World Cup largely depended on was whether you were simultaneously experiencing it online, and if so, primarily through which platform, etc. Since at least Qatar 2022, the World Cup has increasingly felt asynchronous on this dimension, consisting of several overlapping tournaments, each with its own villains, injuries, scandals, and moral weather. What feels distinctive about the present moment, however, is that we are losing not simply a shared sense of time, but a shared world. At least in the group stages, the World Cup felt like it briefly restored a condition that democracy, journalism, and ordinary social life all depend on, namely shared attention.