Umberto Eco isn't even cold yet, and already, on Facebook and other Twitter sites, the now famous quote is flourishing: \u00abSocial networks have given the right to speak to legions of idiots who, before, only spoke at the bar, after a glass of wine, and caused no harm to the community. They were immediately silenced, whereas today they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the imbeciles.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
So true and yet so paradoxical! Even social networking enthusiasts would recognize the emptiness of their exacerbated egos? The word to the people, for the people, against the people, doesn't seem to bother manipulators of all stripes, saboteurs and other populists; witness some SVP (but this is also true of left-wing revolutionaries), taking offense at anything and everything, for example against a pope who has done them no harm other than advocate peace. \u00abHe's not my pope!\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Always this me, always so little intellectual interest, especially when it comes to a message as universal as Francis'. Everyone invites themselves onto the net; even Le Regard Libre<\/em> is there! Maybe that's why we're trying, little by little, to switch to paper, a step forward that some would call regression, but for us a legitimacy that the pixels of our screen don't possess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be that as it may, the continuous flow of all individualities, however (un)interesting they may sometimes be, has become inescapable. To give it a raison d'\u00eatre, constructivists will call it a \u00absocialization arena\u00bb. Amen to that! Anyway...<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wouldn't bother us - we wouldn't even bother with it - if large-scale stupidity only concerned adults with a (slightly) trained mind. Where it gets more serious is when those who are easily manipulated - children, but sometimes also the elderly - fall prey to it. On the Net, on TV, on their cell phones, in their bedrooms, even on the family dinner table, the most crass vulgarity is everywhere. O plethora of Ch'tis in Los Angeles<\/em>, reality TV, swearing, violence, pornography, hatred at your fingertips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n