The last dance. What a sad outcome that is represented on social media as a woman “Mestizia” Moratti. To the tune of “Simply the best”, Batman’s mother dances wildly alongside Ivana Spagna to create “traffic” on Instagram and get likes for the European elections where, after the Renzi-Calenda regional parenthesis, she is now a candidate with Forza Italia inzigando but for a position in government rather than in Brussels. In Asia they call it the “instagramization” of society.
Meta’s social platform has already distorted the American electoral campaign, an illustrious forerunner it was Donald Trump who, in 2020, performed on the various platforms shaking his pelvis and arms to the rhythm of the YMCA as well as, in 2023, the Korean one, where politicians dance in special stages set up on the street instead of holding rallies. Here too, Donna Letizia doesn’t dance alone. Nowadays everyone produces a new typology of themselves in favor of social media: and only what goes viral on the web seems “real” and the subject of debate, despite being constructed ad hoc. The phenomenon is spreading both on the right and on the left, but this is precisely where propaganda scores the most goals. There are plenty of examples from Matteo Salvini to Mayor Gualtieri.
However, those who most inflame social media are represented by two female television “totems” of the fighting left: Serena Bortone And Lilli Gruber. Bortone, with a political flair for which she could give repetitions to Elly Schlein, managed to pass off a banal bureaucratic and economic affair as a sensational censorship of a guest on her show, transforming him into a celebrated martyr of anti-fascism, in hatred of the prime minister , in the progressive international press.
Gruber, for her part, in the new book entitled monitorio Don’t get fucked – How the online porn supermarket steals your imagination, desire and personal data, defiantly declares in interviews: “I’m the first to talk about it”, while the argument in favor of online clicks has already been discussed at length abroad, and in Italy it has been creating debate for more than a year. A courageous editorial, written in good faith by Aldo Cazzullo, launched his book on the porn market, like a work that breaks taboos, a provocation for what he defines as a “hypocritical government” that does not legislate in favor of the new generations who learn about sex from Pornhub. A way to attack Giorgia from the first page while the family minister Eugenia Roccella does it with a law decree.
But the former Rai man cannot “ignore” that the topic was addressed at the end of July on the Catholic Rai1, complete with little-known details: from “incels” – young people who don’t have sex – to vaginal surgery (also mentioned in two chapters of his book). Especially because – guess what – that show about the exposure of very young people to porn was broadcast under the direction of Paolo Corsini: one of the left’s favorite martyrs. “Criminal” of being a journalist who went to a conference of the Brothers of Italy instead of getting elected in Europe, as “Lilli la Rossa” did in the ranks of a left-wing party. The issue of the need to guide our young people to sex, whose sexual education would today be deferred to porn videos, was already featured on the front page of the Confindustria newspaper a year ago, The sun 24 hours by Fabio Tamburini and, as if that wasn’t enough, also on Rai Radio 1, directed by the pious Pionati.
These are just two examples of how the strength of the network, if sufficiently supported by the usual Brancaleone army of the left, is capable of bending the story of the facts pro domo sua. Virtual reality that puts the truth in the corner. In return, even the right is not exempt from “instagramization” but it does so in a clumsy and thoughtless way which often backfires. The unfortunate one Giorgio Zanchini, the intelligent presenter of Rai Radio1, remained anti-Semitic in favor of social media for only a few hours, accused without reason by right-wing accounts only for having asked a simple question (“are you Jewish?”) to Ester Mieli, witty senator from Fratelli of Italy. That the social media war, between ballets and falsehoods, is worth much more than “likes” and is a serious matter precisely because it allows us to collect data (and therefore to know where the follower is positioned politically and then strengthen or change their opinion with bombardments of posts and tweets) have finally noticed it also in Rai.
After wasted years, in which Raiplay seemed almost proud of not exploiting the personal data of users (subscribed to the public TV platform with names, surnames, ages and preferences and, therefore, even more precious), now it seems that data collection and profiling has started. But what happens to this priceless state-owned data and what could happen to it? How are or will they be used by Rai managers? Who do they belong to? Nobody even knows the number of views of individual programs, which now count almost as much as the share which, however, is public. The amount of data is enormous. There is information on young people, collected during the Sanremo Festival, that of housewives, pensioners, the unemployed, immigrants and the disabled.
All consumption targets (but also political interests); the data should be used to personalize the Raiplay offer, a bit like what happens with Netflix. Nevertheless Raiplay homepages remain the same for everyone. Are they therefore used only for advertising and not to build a better offer for individual users as it should be in the logic of the web? Instead of worrying about the data collected by the porn industry, no one really talks about this. In this case, yes, so as not to get screwed.
Luigi Bisignani for Il Tempo 5 May 2024
Nicolaporro.it is also on Whatsapp. Simply click here to subscribe to the channel and always be updated (free)
