Borrowed Accounts

Some German celebrities—Joko Winterscheid, Palina Rojinski, Marteria, Prinz Pi, MC Fitti, and Laryin—gave their social media accounts to homeless Berliners in February. One day each, during what they called One Warm Winter. The idea was straightforward: let people see what a day actually looks like when you’re sleeping outside in winter, unfiltered, through a verified account instead of a news story.

What got me was that this had to happen. We’re constantly moving past homelessness—in feeds, on streets, in the news—without looking. The people living it might as well not exist. But post it through a celebrity account and suddenly it’s real to us. That’s its own kind of depressing truth.

The accounts showed what you’d expect: food distribution lines, hours searching for clean clothes, the endless logistics of keeping yourself alive and warm. A shower, a warm place to sleep, clean clothes—things I think nothing of—are whole projects when you’re homeless. Time moves differently. Everything is harder. And cold in Berlin in winter isn’t romantic. It’s survival.

Nobody wakes up and chooses this. The people who talk about homelessness like it’s freedom or simplicity are the people who’ve never actually been broke, actually cold, actually desperate. They’ve never had to choose between eating and staying warm or between an hour inside and twelve hours on the street to keep moving. They’re imagining something they’ve never lived.

I don’t know what changed after the campaign ended. People probably felt something, scrolled past, forgot. The homeless people kept walking. Life went on. Maybe it planted something in someone. Maybe I just wanted to believe it mattered.