Umberto Eco? Dery Dyer? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A prominent intellectual once denounced social media because it amplified the voices of imbeciles who in the past only propounded their opinions at local bars after drinking.
This notion has been attributed to the Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco who wrote “Il Nome Della Rosa” (“The Name of the Rose”) and “Il Pendolo di Foucault” (“Foucault’s Pendulum”). Would you please help me to find a citation and determine the correct phrasing of Eco’s remark?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 2015 Umberto Eco received an honorary degree in “Comunicazione e Cultura dei media” (“Communication and Media Culture”) from the University of Turin. The Italian newspaper “La Stampa” (“The Press”) reported that Eco spoke to journalists after the conferral, and he delivered the following harsh judgment in Italian. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
«I social media danno diritto di parola a legioni di imbecilli che prima parlavano solo al bar dopo un bicchiere di vino, senza danneggiare la collettività. Venivano subito messi a tacere, mentre ora hanno lo stesso diritto di parola di un Premio Nobel. È l’invasione degli imbecilli».
Here is one possible translation into English:
“Social media gives the right to speak to legions of imbeciles who previously only spoke at the bar after a glass of wine, without damaging the community. They were immediately silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of imbeciles.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 2020 “The Return of Collective Intelligence: Ancient Wisdom for a World Out of Balance” by Dery Dyer printed a version of the quotation:2
STUPIDITY GETS A MEGAPHONE
The social networks give the right to speak to legions of idiots who once talked only in a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. They were rapidly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the imbeciles.
UMBERTO ECO
In 2021 “The Echo Chamber” by John Boyne displayed another version of the quotation as an epigraph at the beginning of the book:3
‘Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.’
In conclusion, Umberto Eco deserves credit for this quotation which was originally spoken in Italian in 2015. Multiple English translations have appeared during subsequent years.
Image Notes: Illustration of a jester’s hat from OpenClipart-Vectors at Pixabay. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Jane Bella whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- Website: La Stampa (The Press), Article title: Umberto Eco: “Con i social parola a legioni di imbecilli”, Article author: Gianluca Nicoletti, Date on website: June 11, 2015, Website description: Italian daily newspaper published in Turin. (Accessed lastampa.it on March 20, 2024) link ↩︎
- 2020, The Return of Collective Intelligence: Ancient Wisdom for a World Out of Balance by Dery Dyer, Chapter 10: The Descent into Collective Stupidity: Traveling on the Road to Nowhere, Quote Page 172 and 173, Bear & Company, Rochester, Vermont. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2021, The Echo Chamber by John Boyne, (Epigraph at the beginning of the book), Unnumbered Page, Doubleday; An Imprint of Transworld Publishers, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎