I’m not on Twitter, not on Facebook—the Italian Constitution allows me not to be. But there is evidently a false Twitter account in my name, as there seems to be for other well-known people. I once met a woman whose eyes brimmed with gratitude as she explained how she read me all the time on Twitter and sometimes corresponded with me, reaping much intellectual benefit. I tried telling her that it was a false me, but she gazed back as though I were telling her I wasn’t really who I am. If I was on Twitter, then I existed. Twittero ergo sum.
I wasn’t too worried about trying to convince her, whatever she might have thought of me, since she was evidently pleased with what the false Eco was telling her, and this whole business was hardly going to change the history of Italy, nor that of the world—nor my own, for that matter. At one time I regularly received large dossiers from someone who stated she also sent them to the Italian president and other illustrious figures in protest against a person who was persecuting her. She was sending them to me, she said, because each week in my L’Espresso column, I came out in her defense. She therefore interpreted everything I wrote as relating to her personal problem. I never tried to contradict her, as it would have been pointless, and her own grave paranoia would have done nothing to solve the Middle East crisis. Eventually, because I didn’t reply, she turned her attention on someone else, I’ve no idea who.
The opinions expressed on Twitter have no relevance, since everyone is talking—those who believe in the appearances of Our Lady of Medjugorje, those who go to fortunetellers, those who claim that September 11 was planned by the Jews, and those who believe in Dan Brown. I’m always fascinated by the Twitter messages that appear at the bottom of the screen during television shows. They say anything and everything.
Twitter is like a village or suburban bar. You hear the village idiot, the small landowner who reckons he’s being persecuted by the tax authority, the local doctor who resents not getting the post of professor of comparative anatomy at a big university, the passerby who has already had too much grappa, the truck driver who talks about the beautiful women he has picked up on the highway, and occasionally there is someone with a few sensible ideas. But it all ends there. Barroom gossip has never changed international politics, and it was only the Fascists who worried about it and banned the discussion of high politics in bars. On the whole, though, what the majority of people think is reflected in the statistic that emerges at the moment when, after due reflection, they vote, at which point they ignore what’s been said at the bar and vote for the views expressed by someone else.
And so the ether of the Internet is crossed by irrelevant opinions, not least because, even though great ideas can be expressed in fewer than 140 characters, such as “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” rather more are needed to describe Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and still more to explain the meaning of E=mc2.
Then why is Twitter being used by leading politicians, who could simply send out a press release and be quoted in newspapers and on television, reaching also the multitude who aren’t connected to the Internet? And why does the pope get a few seminarians employed by the Vatican as temps to write short summaries of what he has already said Urbi et Orbi in front of millions of television viewers? Frankly, I don’t know. Someone must have persuaded them that it all helps to stir faith among a large number of Web users. But then, apart from politicians and the pope, why does anyone else use Twitter?
Perhaps to feel important.
2013