Dear secret diary,
I am writing to tell you that your time is over now, it is time to retire, now you are old, you have gone out of fashion, you are no longer good for the new generations, for the children of technology. For the older generations you have been a friend, a confidant, a traveling companion, a container of emotions, anxieties, fears, pains, joys and shame. You were always hiding somewhere, in the most unthinkable places where no one could find you. You opened yourself with a key, and that key was a bit like the Holy Grail to be kept with care for those who wrote and to be found for parents to enter the secret world of their children. For adults it seemed the only way to penetrate the barriers of adolescent closures and to enter that internal world in which the boys barricaded themselves and that you, on the other hand, dear diary knew and protected very well. You have been the keeper of the most hidden truths, those that at times could not even be told to friends or friends, of which we were often ashamed. We were afraid of judgment, of what others might think, of being seen as “fragile” or invaded by emotions, fears and thoughts. Because you, dear diary, also kept everything that you did not want, or could, share. Guaranteed privacy and protection of private content that no one could read because a private space still existed.
Today, old friend, the private space has become a shared space: yes, you got it right, now it works the other way around, secrets are no longer kept, they are shared, exposed and made available to everyone. You no longer struggle to keep your innermost thoughts and deepest parts hidden, you automatically publish everything in your online diary. Do not make that face dear diary, I understand that it seems strange to you that in a few decades everything has been reversed and that you are a little worried because in this way the borders are a little too vulnerable. If you take a tour in the digital diary you will realize that everything that was kept is now exposed. Every thought, every fear, every thing you experience in life becomes public. You look for the public, you can’t contain the secrets, you have to share everything in real time. We have gone from the search for intimacy to shared intimacy. The concept of private life has completely changed and we have opened the doors to the era of contradictions: we fight for privacy and at the same time we make everyone participate in everything. An automatic sharing of one’s life that affects young and old. Dear diary, yes you understood correctly, nothing is more reserved. If you scroll through the various Home Pages of the main online platforms, you will find that people recover even during a panic attack, while they binge and then vomit, when they cry, when they eat, when they are in the bathroom, when they are in the operating room, when they are left by a partner when they are admitted to a psychiatric ward. It’s all a great show. A need for approval, for containment, for being there, for being part of something, for almost compulsive fulfillment. The emotions and the various experiences of life are lived when they are shared and are mediated by the camera lens, as if this sharing with others made people feel part of something and magically made them feel better.
Dear diary, now you understand why you are no longer in fashion: people love to show themselves, and in many cases to perform, without even realizing the risks they are exposing themselves to and without understanding that emotions should also be experienced, processed and managed, not always act. People, and not just the younger ones, are less and less able to keep what they feel inside, they immediately throw everything out and put it there in the window.
Dear diary, now we don’t write anymore, now we live the diary.
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