On 28 October 2012 Lercio was born. So if you don’t know what Lercio is, you have missed a beautiful thing. And lots of clever laughs too. But if you read these lines I’m sure that you too are a fan of Lercio and maybe every now and then you ask yourself: but who will be behind it? And since when has it existed? The answer to the second question is precisely: October 28, 2012. To find out more, I tracked down one of those who have been behind it since the beginning, Stefano Pisani.
That day of 2012 on Altervista a blog debuts (a blog on Altervista, not even a site) which looks like a parody of a free press that was pretty strong at the time, Leggo (it still exists and is doing well I would say). The idea of making a parody of a popular newspaper to satire on journalism and the world came from one of the forty guys (at the time they were) behind the project. The story explained it well the Post a few days ago: in short, many of them had met in 2009 in a blog by Daniele Luttazzi called The Luttazzi Gym; when the gym closed they moved to Facebook and opened a page called Lactic acid. Until in 2012 the most computer scientist of the group, MIchele Incollu, presented the parody of Leggo to the others, saying that he decided to call it Lercio. The idea was to do it again what The Onion did and still does very well, an American satirical site that uses the classic scheme of combining a real premise and a joke. The result is invented news, but not fake news, but rather a satire of our times, a way to displace us and make us think with a laugh.
in conclusion Lactic acid becomes Lercio (although Incollu will then leave the project and with him over the years another 16 will come out). The debut was the following (own author Incollu of course): “China, a well blocked by a child freed”. This text followed: “Dazu (China) – Yesterday afternoon, a team of Chinese firefighters restored the only well in the remote village of Chimgan. The well was blocked by little Tatsu, a 5-year-old boy who had been preventing the villagers from accessing their water supply for 3 days. The operation was complex. A firefighter had to lower himself into the well until he reached the child. Noting that he was in good health, he proceeded to tie an explosive belt around his waist and went back up. The explosion uncorked the well on the first try. Tatsu landed a few hundred meters away. A real fortune, because it gave him a sufficient advantage to escape the lynching attempt by the dehydrated inhabitants ”.
But the real success came a few months later, in January 2013, with the news “Operating system error: Radio Maria passes Mega Death” (an American trash metal group). Many, including Repubblica, then took the news for real, relaunching it. The first of a long series of misunderstandings. After all, sometimes the real newspapers make headlines that look like Lercio headlines, but they are not: to underline them on Facebook and Twitter there is the profile Ah but it’s not Lercio.
.