There was a time when we photographed in front of the bathroom mirror with the Nokia 3310, the ultimate light and the face since Monday morning. Then came the era of filters, and humanity discovered that a touch was enough to go from “I just survived three sleepless nights” to “I am ready for a red carpet in Bali”. This is how the self -sectors were born: humanoid beings who live in their filtered reflection, where each pore is a blasphemy and each wrinkle is a defect to be canceled with the digital grace of a trembling hand on FaceApp.
They photograph at every corner, with golden light and motivational quotes that no one has asked, like: “Be the sun on your rainy days.” Translation: “Look at me, I put the preset Valencia.” The famous women then put the filters on the lifting and botox, if you meet the streets on the street (is it she? Is it not her? Is it mom? Is it the grandmother? She is twenty years old? Or seventy?).
Then came the memeflers: humorous evolution of the agcentrician, who understood that if you cannot be beautiful, at least you can be ironic. They post images of themselves with self -deprecating captions like: “When I say that everything is fine, but inside I am burning like a forgotten toast”. They will forget you, rest assured, even your accounts will not remain.
It is sarcasm disguised as depth. It is the melancholy that winks at the algorithm that chases us who chase him (when I write “us” is a way to be kind, obviously I mean).
But now we have entered a new phase: the one in which everyone has become an action figures of himself. Bodies carved by apps, poses inspired by Marvel covers, jaws designed with the IA and eyes that look far away, as if they were reflecting on existence … or on which caption to use for the next post. Finally, the triumph: the pseudoartistic conformism of artificial intelligence (conformism, have the same form, do the same things, think the same things, be the same). From the Ghibli -style faces (where your accountant also seems to have come out of my neighbor Totoro) to the dramatic photorealism Blade Runner style with epic background. All artists, all souls, all beautiful. A whole generation shouting: “Make me extraordinary!” – Not with experience, but with a prompt.
Extraordinary half the AI, but used en masse by more ordinary people of an office desk with the posts attached to the monitor, of a lunch break with a sad healthy schiscetta and conversations of football or politics, ordinary but in 4K, following the flow of a copy and glues and transform me into what I will never be, convincing to be something, someone, without effort. By now, the true face of humanity is no longer in the mirror, but in the “favorite” folder of a gallery AI. And the worst thing? We are likeding more there than in reality.
That perhaps it is not even wrong, because in reality we cannot understand I do not say the Recherche, much less a tour of Proust’s phrase, but not even what is true and what is false, what is idiotic and what is not. The important thing is to be yourself, reinvented by the AI, all such and which ones. As Sandro Penna wrote: “Happy who is different, being different. But woe to those who are different, being common”.