Among the many mysteries of social media, one of the greatest is people’s irresistible need to comment on absolutely everything. Why engage in written battles with complete strangers who will almost certainly misunderstand you? What satisfaction can possibly come from insulting the author of a post? And, above all, where do you people find the time?

I recently published a reel featuring the not-so-sweet encounter between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron. The video was played more than 7 million times, reached over 3 million accounts and accumulated 11,000 hours of watch time, almost 500 days of human existence devoted to watching two politicians not particularly enjoying each other’s company. It also received 98,000 likes and more than 3,000 comments.

You’d think this was excellent news. It was not.

For days, my phone buzzed relentlessly while thousands of strangers competed to prove that having access to a comment box does not necessarily imply having something to say. I ended up reading far too many of them, mainly because someone had to remove the most racist ones.

So, for the benefit of anthropology, here is a brief summary of what people had to say. Consider it a small field study on why humanity should perhaps have been given the internet only under supervision:

  • 20% EM is gay / likes older women
  • 18% GM is a bloody fascist / Mussolina
  • 12% I hate EM / We all hate EM in France
  • 8% GM is pretty / I’d do her (and other disturbing variations)
  • 7% Racist replies (mostly targeting users that have Arabic surnames)
  • 5% I love GM / strong woman / my hero
  • 5% Macron has an affair with Trudeau / other conspiracies theories
  • 4% Italians are ashamed of GM / she does not represent me
  • 4% Some very long copy-and-paste opinion post nobody read
  • 3% Free Palestine! (always works)
  • 3% She tried Modi she can’t go French anymore / Once you try Indian…
  • 3% GM is rude / GM is unfit for her role / GM is not diplomatic
  • 3% random bot posting something unrelated to the video
  • 2% EM is a socialist / EM is left wing
  • 1% Who is she?
  • 1% Is this supposed to be funny? (always my favorite question)
  • 0.9% They are warmongers / I hate them both
  • 0.1% ”DG MEME is normalizing fascism with this video” (not statistically significant, but particularly dumb)