In the Facebook neighborhood group of my town – it belongs to my mother, but there is sentimental heritage – there are more followers than inhabitants. It is a modest account, without the hubbub of videos and live shows or ‘selfies’ in every cute corner to chase the excesses of the algorithm. For years it has maintained a constant rhythm of publications to energize the life and ties of an Asturian corner of seven thousand or so inhabitants. A true digital neighborhood patio. A social network.
Thanks to ‘Pravia al dedillo’ I have learned of the existence of Claudia, the neighbor who did not sell me at Wallapop. But to get to Claudia, my namesake Lucía must first exist. She is the Pravian who dedicates her free time to showing that every day there are also things to tell, and she, on top of her, does it without claiming to be an ‘influencer’. She is a discreet chronicler of the affairs and characters of the town, she doesn’t make money with it but she makes people. To get to Lucía and Claudia there also has to be my Aunt Ana, who in addition to tying knots for the Saint (“I’ll tie your balls and until he appears I won’t untie them”) assumed that the Facebook group would fix the problem. . I laughed.
The problem was not one of the really important ones as it was one that money can solve. But there is also a lot of sentimental value in the first video game console you share with your children and in the entire collection of games you build together. We lost the Switch with dozens of video games and this on the second-hand market has a cost of several hundred euros: placing it in a resale store or cutting it on Wallapop would have been as easy as hitting ‘play’. For Claudia’s daughter, who found the case with the small fortune, she could have been a Christmas invisible friend. But a message in this group with more followers than town residents activated the chain. Claudia could have read the message and passed on: almost everyone has kids or adults around who would put it to good use. Or get a few euros. To my surprise, what would become the “internet do your magic” meme worked on this occasion.
So thanks to the fact that we lost that family treasure on Christmas Eve, we had a Christmas story the next day to remember that digital life is also all those good people we meet virtually, who are more but make less noise than the ‘trolls’ . And we untie the knots for the Saint, of course.
