Once upon a time, private life: it was the place where you tried on clothes and mated, complained about the office manager and violated house arrest, cooked and bled. Then came phones with a camera lens built in. "The beauty of this century is that just when you think the sense of modesty is zeroed out, it surprises you by dropping below zero." Exhibitionism has become not just normality, but right; not just your right to expose yourself, but the duty of others to find you interesting. Our "taking of the Bastille is the taking of visibility by the mediocre. The only exceptionalism we tolerate is mass exceptionalism."

In her new survey of contemporary follies, Guia Soncini identifies some key points of this umbilical religion, starting from the moment Chiara Ferragni invented the selfie economy and going all the way back to Monica Lewinsky, whose main mistake was being ahead of a time when demanding attention is right, duty, norm and common practice. Between the naiveté of militancy on the Internet and the bipartisan exhibitionism that nullifies any difference even in politics, from Calenda to Salvini, a journey into the social level that makes the footballer and the intellectual, the influencer and the congresswoman equal, where "the commodity is us, let no one feel excluded." Seeking an answer to the questions that nag at us when we are commodity and showcase, vendor and product, illusionist and transparency extremist. Of course we could shy away from taking the stage, but everyone has a camera in their pocket, and "if you end up sneaking photos of me anyway, I might as well publish my life myself."