-Essay-
ROME — It was a story that began just after New Year’s that featured would-be heroes, fake news and LGBTQ+ rights, and it was bound to cause a stir in the Italian media.
Giovanna Pedretti, owner of the pizzeria “Le Vignole” in the Lodi area near Milan, ended up on TV and in the newspapers for responding to a homophobic review left by a client on her Google page.
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“I was seated next to a gay couple and I didn’t feel comfortable” read the comment. Pedretti promptly responded that “our restaurant is open to everyone, and the requirements we ask of our guests are politeness and respect for everyone.” She also added “I think our establishment is not for you. We do not select customers based on their sexual tastes. I kindly ask you not to return here unless you find in yourself the human requirements that were lacking in your attitude.”
She posted her response online and it quickly became a viral sensation, anointing Pedretti a hero of the LGBTQ+ community. But then on Jan. 14 came the news that she was found dead, a presumed suicide. What happened?
In the days before her death, doubts about the truth of the original comments began to arise, with some suspecting the restaurant owner may have written the homophobic comments to gain attention for her restaurant with her righteous response. As soon as the spark of hesitation appeared, users on social media started to attack her.
In a flash, Pedretti had gone from hero to suspected fraudster. Her story is a sad reminder of how the concept of truth can be transformed in our new online realities.
Fall into the spotlight
A friend of mine told me years ago why he didn’t follow people who are particularly active on social media — professional influencers, but also those who tried to emulate them without receiving anything material in return: it was his feeling of discomfort looking at their loneliness. My friend’s tone was neither patronizing nor rhetorical: simply, the idea of facing that compassion every day weighed on him.
He told me this four years ago, just before the pandemic that would later exacerbate the phenomenon of influencers and the marketplace associated with it. But already, even if there was less of the hatred for virtual fame than we see today, the moralizing and resentment was already lurking in the minds of many toward those who were trying to be famous on Instagram.
The aversion my friend had to those seeking digital acclaim seemed like a decidedly humane reaction.
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The store front of Le Vignole with the gate closed and a note on it.
Adnkronos
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The other side of the screen
Obviously no one knows why people kill themselves. The reasons for suicide are by their nature unfathomable; what may have a certain effect on someone may not on someone else. But it is equally sensible to keep in mind that, in most cases, especially online, one does not really know anything about the person on the other side of the screen.
Indeed it might be a good idea to always assume that the person we are seeing or talking to is vulnerable, even if we may later find out they are just the opposite.
Is the truth enough for its own sake regardless of the consequences that seeking it may bring?
Of course, if, for example, there is someone unquestionably powerful on the other side, who has committed a scam of an economic nature through his or her influence, we should seek out the truth — and even report it to the authorities. But if there is no crime on the other side, at most a clumsy gesture to get a couple of extra customers in a provincial pizzeria or to feel loved for 24 hours, does it still make sense to seek the truth? Is the truth enough for its own sake regardless of the consequences that seeking it may bring?
And even if the answer were to be in the affirmative, does it make sense for this truth to be screamed out on social media, where a small dose of vitriol has a way of building into a tidal wave?
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The subtle art of finger-pointing
Truth, certainly, is an absolute value, like justice and beauty, values that are ultimately non-human in their purity. As Simone Weil recounted, such values transcend the power of mortals and stand out beyond the horizon of what it is possible for us to truly understand.
Truth in this sense has its own superhuman force, which in certain cases animates those who seek it and those who fight for it. That was the case for Ilaria Cucchi, Stefano Cucchi’s sister who tirelessly campaigned in 2022 in an attempt to reveal the truth surrounding her brother’s sudden and seemingly unjustified death in prison in 2009. Such pursuits of truth typically have none of the aesthetic and somewhat mean-spirited veneer with which those who, more and more often, try to pass off their own social media behavior as a search for truth.
That impulse that drives someone to strut and show off is always the same.
Thus false words are quickly aimed at revealing an equally false truth to an audience, and then to the media, that do not bother to try to understand whether what they have in front of them is true or is false. Beyond the real or imagined authenticity of a screenshot of a Google review, is a much simpler and more humane truth to this story: a woman who used to run a pizzeria in a small town, perhaps, invented an online exchange to look good in order to feel more loved or to get more customers to come to her restaurant.
What is the difference between so many of us online and the woman? That impulse that drives someone to strut and show off is always the same: Is it not the very action of posting an item that makes one appear virtuous, whether true or false, that reveals the undeniable truth of the impulse that unites us all?
Is it not so much different than what we do every day when someone compliments us and we want others to know? Doesn’t it express the need to be loved, to be spoiled, to be liked? And if we lie about or embellish these compliments, wouldn’t this lie express our need even more strongly?
It seems that the most revealing part of this story is this internet-age “search for truth,” since so many of us wouldn’t even know it if we found it.
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