Social networks have become a real Far West: anyone can write the worst wives and get away with it, unless you have the misfortune of becoming viral. In that case, who can be saved: the unfortunate on duty ends inevitably overwhelmed by a “shitstorm” (literally: storm of mer ***), which I would not even wish my worst enemy.

The punishment of the square

In these hours, the last target of the Furia dei Social is Stefano Agio, professor of secondary school, who after publishing a comment hideously wishing the death to Giorgia Meloni’s daughter, the world has been collapsed on him. The man also attempted suicide, and someone – instead of stopping – has returned the dose: “Here, now he also wants to go through the victim”. I ignoring that, in fact, he is a victim. Let’s clarify immediately: the message against Meloni’s daughter is repugnant and deserves a sanction (and in fact it was suspended from work). But the punishment imposed “from the square” was enormously disproportionate to what a right law would have inflicted on him.

Online hatred

And here is the point: if the law intervened in a timely and decisive way against online hatred, people would take much more seriously what they write every day on social media. Instead, the vast majority of hatred messages remains unpunished, and so many are convinced that they can write anything I pass through the head. And when justice does not work, do you yourself take justice. But that “square” is not justice: it is only a pretext to vent one’s frustrations. The shitstorms affect one to educate one hundred, and that one ends up paying faults that are not only his (assuming he has). It is a mechanism completely opposite to our legal principles, according to which the penalty must be individual and proportionate to the fact committed. On social networks, however, the paradox happens: a person wishes someone to death and finds himself submerged by thousands of death threats by those who accuse him of having wished someone to death. How is it possible not to see madness in all this?

A sick system

It is a sick system, which continues to produce victims. Like the restaurateur of Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, who in May 2024 took his own life after being overwhelmed by the insults of thousands of online users, who accused her of falsifying a review to advertise. A venial sin, yes, rightly unmasked by some influencers and journalists. But he didn’t deserve all that hatred.

He did not deserve such an epilogue. The problem is that those who are not used to living in the spotlight do not have psychological tools to hold a shitstorm. We are not talking about politicians or public characters, who over time learn – in their own way – to manage criticism and attacks. We are talking about ordinary people, who from one day to the next find themselves at the center of the viewfinder and no longer know how to get out of it. Shitstorm generate panic, paranoia and potentially irreversible psychological trauma. Don’t participate. Don’t get your hands dirty.