I see in the newspapers today Maneskin’s hot selfie with presenter Jimmy Fallon shortly after announcing that they will play at the next Rolling Stones concert. And a few pages earlier, the selfie of Joe Biden, who is almost 60 years older than the four Roman boys, yet he holds his cheerful smartphone as he portrays smiling along with his supporters. When a historian tells what we have done over the years, he will start with selfies, I’m pretty sure. It is the way we use to say look what I’ve done, where I’ve been, who I am withor. The way to say who we are, or who we would like to be. This is why Mario Draghi’s clear choice to ban selfies in his highly acclaimed visit to two schools in Bari is striking.
The staff of the prime minister had made it known that he would not like: “He perceives them as inauthentic with respect to himself”, the explanation. I did a quick search on the net and saw that in fact, selfies with Dragons are as rare as comets or Marian apparitions. There is one with a reckless senator of the Democratic Party on the day of trust in the government, last February; a couple, stolen on the fly, with two of the Olympic athletes received at Palazzo Chigi; and an old one from 2019 in Pisa shortly after leaving the European Central Bank. Enough. This is added to the fact that Mario Draghi premier does not have a tweet, a post, a live video, a stories, a reel. Nothing. The Prime Minister is going through these social years like a salamander in the fire: indifferent or unscathed, it depends on the point of view. Epper this thing about selfies is even clearer: because it is not just about the communication that the head of the government does (like Joe Biden’s selfie with supporters), but also what others can do by telling friends “hey look with who I was today ”by starting the like counter. It’s like raising a wall between oneself and others, denying a selfie. A gesture that could be interpreted as coldness. But in his refusal to indulge in this ritual, it is as if Draghi were inviting us to do without it.
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