The video on racism on the train is an example of how we have replaced blaming for empathy on social media

Let’s start with the facts: they are all wrong. There is an American girl of Pakistani descent, Mahnoor Eucephwho takes a regional Milan-Como (tragic mistake) and finds himself in the midst of the twenty-year-old maranzas and mean girls, who, dazed by the stupid girl, make fun of her Asian boyfriend by imitating the Chinese and giggling in that typical annoying way of girls. This is because twenty year olds are potentially all Samantha Cristoforetti but much more likely you don’t want them sitting next to you.

In her reconstruction of the facts, which is the only one that counts here, the American approaches the Italian girls, asks them to stop pissing me off and they make matters worse. The American does what we’ve seen Democrats and Republicans do so many times over the past few years, whether it’s a lunatic ranting about gays at the mall or a black man in the driveway: Pull out his cell phone. and whore on social media (which is always better than shooting them). And she writes: “I hope you Italians can track down these girls and shame them“

The power of the powerless has come down to this: taking back the peasants by asking for their head on TikTok and ending up on the wrong side (but with a few hashtags and many likes). Since social networks change but we remain a society of lunatics, we are always with those who “then I’ll film you and spit on you”. “We are” in the sense that it is the noisy minority that begins to take up the call of the American in the public pillory. On the other hand, he couldn’t call the carabinieri. Hello police there are some girls laughing at me, run. Will they understand English? Better to make a video, so as not to pass for a mythomaniac and document everything (yesterday they found a bloody maid in the street and they were looking for the attacker but the cameras filmed the scene: she hit herself with bricks in the face).

You record the video to document yes, but then you publish it, perhaps with a view to gaining a few followers and moving from those trivial videos in which Mahnoor Euceph used make-up for free to trivial but paid videos in which he makes up for the sponsor (I dream of being insulted, taking everything back and publishing as a victim, the only way to be famous without talent, and gain many followers so as to earn from advertising like the miracle workers of social networks).

The video works, millions of times. There is racism, arrogance and youthful ignorance, the accusation against Italy. The American says that they ruined her trip (next time: silence on the executive carriage). But she also says something more surprising: she and her boyfriend have never experienced so much racism. And they live in the United States. At this point, at least two things come to mind.

The first is that if I were the least bit empathetic, a blackmailing word that went from “I understand the human experience” to “you’re right because if I were you I would like them to agree with me”, I would declare that I can’t know what it feels like to belong to an Asian family around Italy. A laugh can hurt (yes, but traveling with the poor is no joke either).

But I won’t say that. First of all because as a small-town rich man I’ve known wickedness and I have enough marginalization points to earn the right to speak. And then because it’s true that laughter can hurt (if you’re under sixteen) but it’s even more true that the internet allows you to take revenge on bullies by turning you into an anabolic bully. What makes us believe that being an asshole with others for revenge is better? The second, which interests me more, is this: not to minimize, but if the pinnacle of racism is three suckers laughing in your face, you can consider yourself lucky.

Nobody tells him. Because they all have straw tails on fire and are convinced that those girls represent the nation. They apologize “in the name of Italy”, as if they were Mattarella, they invite her to every city, to every house, it’s almost time to sell her children. However, the American does not seek hospitality, she seeks revenge.

The crowd finds out what the three rude girls are called, where they work, which university they attend (full of people with no shit to do, as you know Italy is a very competitive country). The American, who has the same idea of ​​private justice as those proto-League members who chase pickpockets at the station, had only one wish: ruin their reputation. The line between taking responsibility and if you don’t do it, you can’t see it anymore.

It is in the midst of this frenzy that something surprising and almost unnoticed happens: Bicocca and Cattolica, prompted to respond to comments as if they were two pizzerias with customers enraged by pizza with a burnt edge, feel the urgency to dissociate themselves from racism and all forms of discrimination (made me wish I had D&G chopsticks and cannoli). They write that they will look into the case to “possibly sanction” those responsible. Perhaps universities have become the new kindergartens to encourage the birth rate.

This article has already been written a million times. With the difference that we are in reverse compared to a few years ago when if they didn’t publish you in the newspapers you could write your truths on social networks. Today if I wrote these things on social media I would be banned for life. (Elon Musk would have saved by buying a newspaper instead of chasing Twitter). But if you stick to an appropriate language you can be free, free to ask for my head, or for the head of whoever asks for my head, and so on potentially indefinitely as long as there is bandwidth or free time. Empathy?! We have long since established that social media doesn’t help us understand the other, we need it to punish him.