🎭 Scene 5.1 – “The invisible gap”

Avatar: Official debate Official debate

We're in a room in Barcelona, ​​at a conference about the use of social media.

Roberto, alone, sits in the back row, checking his phone:

I look to the right: belly, I look to the left: belly

Did you know that 95% of robberies are committed by Romanians?

This didn't happen under Franco, everything was safer.

Roberto gestures that he's exhausted. The conference begins:

Today we're here to talk about hate speech, which affects many young people who use social media. One in three is affected by it. These are the statistics. And this also causes them a lot of psychological distress and further polarizes opinions...

The scene ends.

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This scene isn't just about a young man looking at his phone during a conference. It's about how hate speech permeates the daily lives of those who use social media, often silently, repeatedly, and in a normalized way.

There's no open conflict. No one directly attacks Roberto in the room. And that's precisely where the power of the scene lies: it shows how hatred can appear as background noise, as isolated phrases, as supposed jokes, as false information, or as an authoritarian nostalgia that seeps into our phones while the world continues to function normally.

The scene speaks to the exhaustion that comes from constant exposure to violent, racist, or discriminatory messages. Roberto doesn't respond, doesn't argue, doesn't confront anyone. He's simply there, receiving this flow of comments that drains him even before the conference begins.

It also highlights an important contradiction: while the conference systematically explains what hate speech is and what its effects are, Roberto is already experiencing them in real time. What the presentation presents as data, he perceives as distress.

This scene isn't just about social media. It speaks to how hatred becomes normalized when it's repeated, how it affects us psychologically even when it seems invisible, and how it can fuel polarization without the need for grand, dramatic gestures.

And above all, it talks about this: that sometimes hate speech doesn't arrive as an obvious threat. It arrives as just another notification.

🔍 Who's missing from this scene?

Would this scene have been different if someone else had been there?

  • Perhaps someone who didn't assume "everyone knows," and who explained things slowly, without turning doubt into awkwardness?

  • A mediator, capable of translating technical language into everyday words, without infantilizing or making the learner feel inferior?

  • Someone who has also experienced that feeling of being left behind, and could say, "It was hard for me too," overcoming the embarrassment of asking questions?

  • A friend or classmate who didn't solve the problem for the other person, but stayed by their side, supporting them through trial and error and giving them the time they needed to learn?

  • Perhaps an adult figure—teacher, mentor, family member, educator—who understood that the digital divide isn't just about having or not having devices, but also about trust, language, patience, and the right to make mistakes?

What kind of person is needed to make learning accessible to everyone?

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🎭 Scene 5.1 – “The invisible gap”

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