Hate in the time of Ciro Immobile
The recent episode of the road accident involving Lazio striker Ciro Immobile has revived a theme ancient in meaning and very modern in modality: the manifestation of hate, expressed today through social channels. For goodness sake, lots of messages of solidarity and affection, but a disproportionate amount of insults and insults to the accident victim. Tons of shoddy, unexpected cynicism. Unexpectedly? let’s talk about. The “real estate affair” sparked an open debate again: do social networks create hatred or do they reinforce hatred that already exists?
SUNDAY MORNING
It’s around 8.30am on a sleepy Sunday morning, April 16th, 2023. In a still semi-deserted and strangely quiet Rome (the power of Sunday morning), near the Stadio Olimpico Suddenly, an off-road vehicle and a tram collideThat’s on line 19. Obviously, the SUV has the worst. Front section destroyed, airbags exploded, driver injured. The emergency services arrive and try to reconstruct what happened and help those in need.
The public transport driver was also injured quite seriously, but unlike the other, he is not a public figure. The wounded is Ciro Immobile himself, forward from Lazio Rome, two of the champions’ four children were also traveling in his SUV. The two girls are unharmed, the father was less fortunate. Spinal sprain and complicated rib fracture. It could have been worse, he’ll be back on the pitch as soon as possible, but that’s not the point. Less than an hour and the fact became news. And what news!
THE TAM TAM
News outlets have just launched the first take and the news has already bounced on social channels: Facebook, Instagram and so on and so on. An initial moment of disbelief is followed by swarms of comments that there were two little girls in the vehicle, but many don’t care. The identity of the driver is crucial. It is an opportunity to express hate, bitterness and malevolence Use of Non-Football News. Ciro Immobile and his family are not new to certain treatments, his wife Jessica has repeatedly reported ill will toward her family, who cannot find a rational explanation and who is often not satisfied with sarcasm, however severe.
Some of the most uncomfortable comments include phrases like “This time he took pole.”or “They checked it with the VAR“. Someone else is clearer: “I had hoped he would die” and other expressions of joy at what happened. A mafioso imprisoned under the 41bis has not (and would not) suffer such punishments, a convicted murderer would enjoy 100% more humane credit. On the same day, on Sunday, another message broke, different but no less cruel and very similar in tone to the previous one.
After the Milan-Naples game in the Champions League and some bickering on the pitch (which should always end there, no matter how strong), a crush hater (the well-known serial haters) wants the Milan full-back Theo Hernandez E related family a slow and humiliating death, ugly and painful like that of Gianluca Vialli. Hernandez has a son, Ciro Immobile has four, two of whom have just had a shocking experience. It’s too much, a reflection is needed.
ME IF I WERE CIRO (OR THEO OR MATTIA).
Not that we haven’t previously hated ourselves ridiculously believing that bad feelings are the exclusive prerogative of the third millennium. Even in the stadiums of the past, which resounded with bad choirs, the wall was always the card of the idiots in this sense too. There were even more clashes and tensions than now. But at least the hate, that kind of hate, found a barrier on the doorstep. There were things you could think but not say, the censorship was primarily social. Today, in the name of a misunderstood freedom of expression, anything seems possible.
Of course, social channels don’t generate this widespread and common resentment, but certainly amplify it most of the time with impunity. AND they degrade our lives, the quality of our thoughts. It is something that is in the air, that enters the house, that is breathed through a mobile phone, that passes between the folds of a PC as if it were a Trojan. And the worst part is that haters aren’t ashamed of what they say, and they actually say it. There are standards of netiquettethere are unwritten rules of sporting rivalry, also hard ones, but never to be broken (because the boomerang effect then becomes predictable).
Social media administrators would have virtually absolute powers within their own purview, but seem to exercise them intermittently, for sometimes idle matters, and very often found respectable. Everything is a battlefield on social channels: politics, life choices, sexual orientation, even taste in music seem to be the background for the attacks of the so-called “keyboard lions”. Sport, especially football, seems to be the collector of the worst. They take offense, threaten each other, wish each other the worst. The space for a perhaps harsh but constructive dialogue seems reduced to a flicker.
Social media as a medium without brakes e without Borders ethical-verbal.
What do Ciro Immobile, Theo Hernandez and Mattia Zaccagni have in common other than the fact that they are three players (the first and the third also play in the same team)? They are public figures of a certain relevance and specific fathers of families. Even the paternity of Zaccagni’s son has been questioned. Whole fringes of fans have no qualms about trampling on the sensibilities of reference families, going so far as to target children in the first-person perspective.
Childhood used to be a sacred value, often rhetorical but put into practice. The culture of the “puppets” was far from flawless, today even this protective wall has been broken. It doesn’t appear that Immobile, Zaccagni and Hernandez (who aren’t the only ones who have suffered this) have ever filed a complaint with the proper authorities. It would be nice and important if they did it soon, just as it would be important if categories of citizens could file civil suits. Not to protect your loved one, but to protect everyone, especially yourself.
The social stigma could become a legislative measure, but above all part of a civilization and a culture that should be fully restored as far as this is still possible. utopia? Possibly, but it is not with simple prohibitions that we improve or civilize the world. The uncivilized must feel this way, and in order to feel this way he must be alone. Unity must be strength and not just as a figure of speech. Let’s at least try, otherwise neither football nor civil society will be saved. War always begins with words, and certain words are like swords: you shouldn’t unsheath them because then you won’t put them back in.
