1. A couple of years ago, at a library reading club in a town I won't name so as not to embarrass anyone, there was a man among about twenty women. Nothing new, because that's more or less the usual percentage at these stimulating gatherings between readers and authors, Catalonia inside. I immediately sensed that he—sixty facts, clean-shaven, baritone voice—was the partner of one of the women who had read and underlined her novel. They sat side by side and, from time to time, whispered things in each other's ears. Now one smiled, now the other touched his knee. Small gestures that denoted a playful complicity that wasn't exactly the fruit of a long-term marriage. From the glances between them, I guessed a recent, first-flight love. At the end of the event, at the time of the group photo, the man managed to slip away and not leave. He asked if they would post it on the library and city hall's social media accounts and discreetly left the frame and moved away from the woman with whom he seemed to share new dreams. Some of the reading club members, who seemed to be leading the way, dropped a few hints. But, out of prudence, Pepet and Pepeta preferred not to leave any evidence of what seemed, by all accounts, to be a still-emerging love.
2. Over the past few days, I've been thinking about that couple and realized that literature is less dangerous than music. Ever since the Kiss Cam at the Coldplay concert turned Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot into the poster children for global infidelity, I've been thinking that I never knew if my two readers were widowers, two singles eager to be single, or if they both had families of their own and, once a month, took advantage of the . In any case, if it was an extramarital affair, the story ended there and no one made a fuss. Certainly, Byron and Cabot's reaction when they were caught on the giant screen at the Massachusetts concert was hilarious. Because of the grimaces and the way he dives down to disappear. If I had been prepared, it wouldn't have gone so well. The scene has spread worldwide at lightning speed, reaching the top of the summer conference agenda, everyone is getting drunk, millions of funny memes have emerged, T-shirts have been sold, the two protagonists have a Wikipedia entry, and even the Lego joke is circulating as "My first affair." It's been two weeks, but the two lovers immediately realized how virality is a weapon of mass destruction. Regardless of how each of them was received at home, he had to resign as CEO of Astronomer, and she also stepped down, a few days later, as chief of staff of a company we knew nothing about and that everyone talks about as if it were Coca-Cola.
3. But aren't the devastating professional consequences of the image excessive? What scandal is there in loving two people who work together? Were they doing their jobs well? Why, in a land of double standards, must Byron and Cabot bend, yet Bill Clinton remained in office despite the affair with Monica Lewinsky? Why is Donald Trump, who has made waves, still president of the United States, yet these two sparrows had to resign, in shame, before being ousted? Who judges? Who quarrels? In the infidel, there is a public pyre. We see the invasive and influential capacity of social media, but perhaps we don't sufficiently recognize its moralizing vocation. The prevailing messages today are those of the purity of the Holy Inquisition. And laugh.
