But go to the mine!

This article is published in issue 48 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until November 30, 2021

Imagine Edmond Dantès, the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, in an unprecedented reinterpretation with an energetic and colorful speech and a Milanese accent bordering on the Vanzinian: you have just thought of Musazzi, the century Stefano Musazzi, Instagram celebrity and nemesis of every Italian influencer. With its weekly column Life as an Influencer, @ilmusazzi (as you can find him on his social network) has become the flogger of a certain ignorance of the large traffic hubs of social networks, men and women who indulge in forgettable stories of house cleaning and dogs brought to the vet, invent conjugations of verbs and pronunciations unlistenable, and sometimes they replace professors and specialists by giving advice to millions and millions of followers without having the qualifications to do so. Already from episode one of the format, Stefano Musazzi’s perspective was clear: «Influencers, millions of followers, almost everyone loves them. And then there is me, looking at their stories I think: “What the fuck are you saying?” ».

Let’s start with a philosophical question, so to speak, to which only you can give an authoritative answer: what is an influencer today?
“It’s a good question, because I myself am often singled out as an influencer. And so we have to understand each other upstream: is an influencer a person who has 300,000 followers? If so, then so are Favino, Berlusconi or Fiorello. As far as I’m concerned, an influencer is a person who makes money solely from this activity. A person who does not live on anything else, but only by sponsoring creams or muds and in some way influences – in a mostly negative way, as far as I’m concerned – the users with whom he comes into contact. But then let’s face it: if at 20 you need someone on the Internet to advise you on what color to buy a shirt, you have failed as a human being ».

Describe the “average” character or profile of these people.
“Everyone is made their own way, actually. There are those who have understood the mechanism and march on it: it is no coincidence that I notice that many gaffes are made by influencers in sponsored content, because then there is the asshole on duty, like me, who points out the mistake by bringing further public to advertising. Personally I solve by “bippando” the name of the product, or covering it. Then there are those who are ignorant of their own, and with them you can not do anything about it, they are disadvantaged penalized by life. Finally, there are also those who think that entering my videos is fashionable. An anecdote: every now and then I make stories on Instagram with the “pearls of the day”, to stay on track with the blunders of the influencers who don’t end up in the weekly post. Here, I happened to receive a private message from the girl protagonist of the pearl of the day. He complained about the location of his blunder: “Come on, I deserved the post, not the story” ».

Do you think your criticisms can be received by those concerned?
“More than the influencers, I would like to open the eyes of their followers. The so-called creators don’t give a damn: either they take it badly, and I become unpleasant on a personal level – and sometimes they denounce me – or they just don’t feel touched. And sometimes I also end up pleasing them: I have often reposted content of charming or skimpy girls, and the next day they had 1,500 or 2,000 more followers ».

One criticism is that she has become like her antagonists like it or not.
«As I said: an influencer only makes money by doing this. I have never taken a euro through Instagram. I receive several requests for collaboration and sponsorship on a weekly basis. I have always refused them all. And not reluctantly, because if I accepted them I would cancel what I have built. Credibility is essential for me. In recent months I have refused something like 40 thousand euros of sponsorships, because for me it would be counterproductive. Yet there is a job behind what I do: it takes 8-10 hours to make an episode, and I do it for free ».

How long will all this go on?
“Maybe the figure of the influencer will undergo an evolution, but by now it has entered head-on and firmly on our landscape. The average Italian likes trash, so I find it difficult to turn around. I hope that this profession disappears, indeed directly that Instagram servers implode (laughs, ed)».

So yours is a kind of civic service.
“It’s a public service, that’s right. I enjoy doing it, and I always want to emphasize that on a human level I have absolutely nothing against these people. “

Is basing our sociability on social media a mistake?
“For me, you don’t have to base anything on social media. I never mix my private life with Musazzi. I never made a story of myself on Sunday afternoons with my fiancée at the lake, so to speak. And I think no one should give a damn about the intimate and personal life of others. Because if one has to fill his life with that of others, it means his sucks. “

Have social media changed our existence for the better or for the worse?
“Definitely for the worse. For the better for a small fraction of people who create intelligent content, perhaps, but that’s rare. To the worse for everyone else, because they have removed the concept of censorship and self-censorship. Fifteen years ago everything was controlled, television, cinema; if you host of program X in prime time had said: “This morning I washed my hair with detergent”, the broadcaster would have cut that part by not broadcasting it. Today the influencer Taldeitali can wake up, pick up the phone and speak to an audience of five million people, perhaps saying that those pills he recommended last week don’t have such good effects. And in the meantime it has created damage, often to underage children. It’s all out of control. “

It is aimed above all at “apolitical” influencers, or perhaps it is better to say disengaged: but there are also many with enormous following that use the same means to convey social or cultural messages.
«Personally, I always tend to strike objectivity: if you say you have a” torticus “instead of a stiff neck, that’s objective bullshit. Conversely, I never object to what could be subjective, everyone has their own beliefs. Having said that, if those who make political disclosure do it without study and without in-depth analysis, it does damage. But it is different from those who express their opinion trying to do it objectively: if it is done with full knowledge of the facts, I see nothing wrong with it “.

What are your expectations for the future of your character?
“I’m working on something I can’t talk about yet, due to those confidentiality obligations (although when influencers say so, ‘I have something at stake but I can’t tell you anything yet,’ the crime rises, I admit). I can anticipate that I am very proud and proud of it, because it will be a program with one of the masters of Italian television ».

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