In these times of surprising revelations, of overwhelming exclusives, social networks are like one of those giant Chinese supermarkets – it’s not a cartoon, it’s just Chinese – where there is everything you need and many of those things you didn’t know you needed. , and even some that you did not even remember existed, but when you see them you are assaulted by the existential certainty that you have needed them all your life. They are, in this sense, an endless joy because they not only satisfy all your expectations but also expand your hedonistic happiness to regions whose existence you did not know or had forgotten in some corner of your youth.
This is how social networks also work, in commercial terms –those who have moved their storefronts to Instagram or Tik-Tok know this well–, but also in discursive or informative terms. A morning walk through Twitter can help you discover issues that you were unaware of and that, from now on, become a new and main demand. Marxists call this “consumerism”, but this should not be taken into account because they descend from Christian egalitarianism and its asceticism, so they have always seen any Dionysian or hedonistic abandonment as reprehensible.
This week, the political zone of Twitter has brought us, as the great revelation, the photos of the alleged corrupt brother of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, named Tomás, who had been missing since someone pointed out that there were indications against him. The diffusion of his face became the Big Deal, as if we had finally found the cabin without a shower where the Unabomber accumulated odor and grudges, and we had snapped a close-up photo of him with a surprised face.
The reality is a little more prosaic. Because it is true that the citizen, for whatever reason – where “whatever” may be that justice will not catch him or that he has been in Indochina recording Pekin Express -, has been missing for a long time. But it is also true that his face is available, like that of every inhabitant of the part of the world that has plugs and mobile phones, on Google Images by the dozens. He wants to tell himself that the “look, this is his face” is a little exaggerating the emotion.
The reality is often less exciting. In a hilarious Gomaespuma sketch, Guillermo Fesser was a journalist who was interviewing the mayor of Jericó, Juan Luis Cano, by telephone, because some archaeologists had found the ruins of the legendary Walls of Jericó – demolished by the trumpets of the Hebrew priests, according to the Bible. – and after the congratulations and brief explanations – such as that the walls were in the “castilla-La Mancha exposed brick” style –, the reporter entered the alderman: “And how was it? How did they manage to find the walls? ”. The unforgettable answer summarizes the investigations around Tomás Díaz Ayuso: “No, asking, asking.”