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Rating: There is much talk about social networks, virtual interactions, new media, and web 2.0. The best minds in sociology have been engaged for years to provide a rigorous rationale for these and other controversial topics that branch out from the cybernetic splitting of the ego, to the spasmodic desire to almost magically build an intangible Eden, to the willingness to leave this world of tears, landing in a dimension where tears flow everywhere except on human faces.
The proliferation of seemingly real or completely corrupted alter egos, the pursuit of a moral-aesthetic perfection seldom sought in real contexts, and the detachment from the unyielding realm of things are just some of the phenomena that have heralded the new utopia of the 21st century: we communicate simultaneously without being placed in a context of actual co-presence, sharply abolish space-time barriers, use mass media by exchanging roles as producers and recipients of messages, and participate and get involved (even unintentionally) in media relationships where social hierarchies count (and should count) for nothing, where everyone is "Christianly" (almost) equal. Put in these terms, television—along with its strategies of popular enticement—seems like something from the medieval ages: we viewers sat on the couch waiting for the grace of some pleasant and welcome format without the slightest capability to intervene in the production of the provided messages; the greatest allowance was to turn off the device and opt for alternative activities. The "harsh reality" of television was (and still is, to some extent) the passivity of the recipients, forced to watch a deluge of shows without accessing their essence: the producer-receiver frontier blurred once "piercing the screen" and entering the staff of the "cathodic demiurges," a feat that has now become mundane for masses of certified idiotic semi-illiterates and extremely complicated for those with something significant to convey.
Utopia also calls for dystopia: to this astounding ease/rapidity in exchanging information, modifying (even irreversibly) the self, and shaping mini virtual celebrities far from the spotlight, we must add the specter of institutionalized online falsehood, the "farcicalness" of users dissatisfied with their earthly existence who, traveling infinite and indefinite web highways without tollbooths and service stations, build and manipulate new and unheard-of personas from nothing, passing them off as real and vital. The first to suffer are the good-natured innocent and naive patrons, untrained and/or not yet hardened by scams and deceptions; subsequently, even the same connected pirates become vulnerable once the deception is revealed and the deceiver is discussed. Justice is not always served, however: more often than not, the corruption of social networks not only goes unpunished but continues in its "viral" infiltration within the gears of the online media system.
Feisbum (a necessary semantic alteration of the famous Facebook) vividly and comically illustrates the uncertain configuration of virtual social networks, stigmatizing, albeit with light-heartedness and humor, the immense ease with which users can mold alters completely detached from harsh reality and alienate themselves from it, compromising not only their own existence but also that of others. Eight chapters and five shorts (lasting just a few minutes) - directed by a total of seven directors - depict broadly and widely the stereotyped Facebook-like machine lost among perversions, illusions, retaliations, strategies, conspiracies, scandals, opportunisms, and various appetites. In each episode, the frontier between tangible and virtual becomes increasingly coarse and ethereal, forcing the protagonists to understand the world they are living and acting in, individuals who do not always succeed in this cognitive "mission." On several occasions, we witness disastrous (and tragicomic) collapses by the web-addicted once they learn of their inability to completely and autonomously detach themselves from the earth and its accidental contingencies.
The start of the feature film is a shock: a wife intent on surfing social networks, a furious husband who starts insulting his spouse for her household negligence in favor of the web. It all leads to an irreverent quarrel that sees the couple physically confront each other and collapse in a daze. And the other episodes are no less: a "murbanite" cashier poses on Feisbum as a soldier stationed in Mogadishu, luring an innocent girl determined to provide aid by sending him money about to land in bank accounts closer than she imagined; Gavino's perils, a lecherous mechanic who meets online a self-proclaimed Indian girl set on marrying him without even having met in person (an aspiration that will incite his wife's revenge); the (not quite casual) shattering of Antonio and Valeria's marriage (daughter of extremely devout Neapolitans all about honor and family) due to an inappropriate and scandalous tag (the groom-to-be caught up in a risqué bachelor party); the psychotic and erratic struggle between Jano and Sveva for more online friendships; finally, the encounter of a bored and old professor with a young gothic girl he met online.
This film represents a sort of frivolous and stereotyped guide to using interactive web for naive mystifiers of the web's risks. Be aware, therefore, those not yet included in the context of social networks and who want to become part of them.
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