After last week’s investiture session I spoke by phone with Juan José Millás. “What did you think?” I asked him. “How childish everything is!” He responded to me. And we comment on the childishness that today rests on our increasingly lacking culture-spectacle. Because not only in politics, but also in entertainment, consumption and even on Tinder, the feeling of childishness increases, and a mental dullness takes over the streets, where the only ones who seem to be right are the crazy ones.
We talk about fashion as a way of being included “in the conversation”, which is what today is called the set of issues of greatest interest in the “political space”. The words have escaped from a psychologist’s office and have jumped onto the porches of chalets, where couples regret not mothering and fathering by setting limits on their nepobabies.
There are also names and adjectives that escape from the laboratory or the hospital to the radio – such as “fascism is a cancer” or “a bipolar politician” –, without a hint of delicacy towards those who suffer from viruses or bipolarity and must endure their illnesses being revealed. used to label infamous individuals. And of course, people with high abilities and those with diverse abilities are closer than ever, because personality is psychiatrized in an era in which bald people are people with hair diversity.
A few years ago, the young people managed to sneak their putodefender – puto as an intensifying prefix – into the RAE, and everyone was very happy without missing anyone. “Renegades com un carreter,” they said in my childhood about the elders who spoke with a cue, because in the past the cart carriers must have been rude men with a sullen vocabulary, typical of a strangled life. On the other hand, today, posh and posh people who grew up among natural down duvets and colorful cupcakes, enjoy swearing, even when they act as directors and complain to the boss that “a girl does whatever she wants.” Meanwhile, they will salsa in front of the machirulos, gentlemen or chulazos.
It happens that advertising strategies that were previously used for children under three years of age are now being used by adults, even with animals or drawings. And they work amazingly: they manage to establish an emotional bond between the object and the person, despite not wearing diapers. They are adults saying holi, delaying their incorporation into mature society, spoiled in a wonderful but exhausting amusement park.
The instant gratification favored by the networks has established itself as a state of mind, just like the display of the navel. Long live the self! Even if it is imposed and overproduced. Digitally stimulated, owners of the false sense of control that technology offers, there are those who become impatient when the rider is late, even on a stormy night. Because they want to continue laughing at nonsense with a hot pizza. And laughter acts as an envelope: it installs the genre of comedy in our daily lives and, without even realizing it, it lightens so much woke behavior.
Words such as resignify, narrative or self-care are repeated, which give the interlocutor confidence, as if he were truly a prepared speaker. But the most unfortunate thing is that, even detecting this falsehood, we fall prey to the charming banality of any influencer and we rush to cancel out the spirit of the times in order not to seem outdated. Now it’s late.
