If someone wants to understand what kind of person a new acquaintance is, or just wants to know a little more about people they already know, take a look at the profile they have on the platforms social media it is necessary. Cursing doctors, sarcastic lawyers, hopelessly self-absorbed writers, artists who have made rudeness their way of communicating, draw conclusions about their personality before we have to sit at the same table with them, exchanging compliments and opinions about right and wrong. But is it?

Do social networks reveal aspects of personality that are carefully hidden from prying eyes when they are physically present? Or they create new virtual personalities, people who – consciously or unconsciously – test their strength in roles that are different from the one and monotonous, imposed social life with a physical presence, even if the evolution of each gives more variants of personality in the course of evolution. time and yourself? And can this… expressive potential that they offer function as a safety valve, blowing away what can be repeatedly destructive in the physical presence? It depends. The action may take place in a virtual environment, but the result may be reflected in real feelings of anger or depression and have real victims, for example through, justified or not, the “cancellation culture” process.

There are no Manichaean answers in studies attempting to answer if not exactly the above then at least related questions, although they tend to find that what is “liberated” on social media is violence, and not kindness or consent. A 2018 Pew Research survey found that 71% of social media users have encountered content that made them angry and made them react.

In fact, investigations of this nature only confirm, with more evidence, the impression that many of us who participate in social networks see and deal with them, even if we are or once were part of the problem. The not so new online environment includes millions or hundreds (in our narrow virtual reality) of views. Pleasant, annoying or hostile to our own beliefs and in the face of which the rules of conduct that would probably apply in a natural social event with a small number of participants, it is impossible to restore order and composure. These are not rules designed to work on a massive scale, in the relatively new nature of the online crowd. And although even the mere utterance of the word “crowd” causes almost internal fear, this fear does not prevent us from becoming part of it. Probably because although, as Canetti writes (Mass and Force, ed. Iridanos), there is no greater fear for a person than the touch of the unknown, which under normal conditions forces him to keep a distance – even a “physical” distance from others, at on the street, in a restaurant, in public transport, this fear subsides in the crowd and the pleasure of dissolving in it, merging with it begins to manifest.

One person or a group of two or three people will not dare to destroy the column dedicated to the victims of Marfin.

This pleasure, as Canetti notes, is associated with a clear danger: “Having removed the burden of distance”, a person “feels free”, and “his freedom is going beyond”. One person or a group of two or three people would not dare to destroy the column dedicated to the victims of Marfin, and if they did, then, in all likelihood, someone else would stop them, even simply by asking: “What are you doing there?” . But the crowd does.

This body, into which hundreds or thousands of selves have infiltrated, having violated the social boundaries of the One, physical or online, has the same characteristics: angry, aggressive, resentful, confident in its infallibility, resisting its dissolution and, speaking of social networks, in fact in fact, you have to build another crowd, another mass of acceptance, many likes and retweets, of course already defeated, because in this way you accept the conditions for the existence of the crowd.

Some of my real life friends simply chose to abstain, finding that any act of “protection” served to keep the mob fighting. Some continue to practice the dynamics of distance, and some create their own small “armies” of followers, but clearly some slide into attitudes and behaviors beyond the “boundaries”, secretly moving into hateful camps where there is no place for reason and empathy. Because the crowd is controlled only by political forces and tendencies that are hostile to reasoned argument and calculation of context for any conclusion.

But these friends are marching in hopes of creating a new audience that can walk the cannibal trails online while retaining their humanity. And, analyzing the advantages and dangers of hope, even those who do not agree with the Christian tradition, which has long ranked it among the theological virtues along with faith and love, can agree on one thing: it can be valuable at any time.