Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

16 should the objects have the same status as humans? The skeptic replies: if humans want to. Of course, it is more complicated than that, more sophisticated, denser, richer. There was a time when the big question was this: what does the media do with us? So many gave answers. Each answer convinced us for some time. Then it was abandoned. Then the question changed: what do we do with the media? Everything seemed to be resolved with this inversion. It was a happy time. The reception was stronger than the broadcast. The tiredness came, doubt returned. A third, more complex, and sinuous ques- tion was attempted: what do we do with what the media do with us? It’s already gone. Other formulations are possible: what do we do with mediation? What do we do with mediatization? Who’s in charge? One possible answer is this: everyone. Or no- body. The butterfly gives way to the virus. Before, in good times, it was said that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China rever - berated anywhere in the world. The thesis is confirmed. Without the butterfly. And without blaming the Chinese for the tragedies that history offers us. Each time with its tragedy and agony. Does anyone win with mediatization? Or is it a zero- sum game? Or, as market optimists like, a win-win? When the spectacle stops being a set of images to be a way of life, a “social relationship between people”, something has already broken. We will never live without a screen in between. We will never leave representation again, which can be, at the same time, del- egation, and staging. Would life have become an immense and permanent fake news, positive, praiseworthy, acceptable, com- fortable, smooth, in short, a sincere lie to sleep? A classic way to eliminate these uncomfortable provocations is to say that it has always been this way, that there has never been this “golden age” of life without mediation, practiced directly, without representa- tion or theatricalization. Without forgery. It works as an argument. For a week. Then someone applies the antidote of equal proportion and effectiveness: there is never anything new on the front . The articles in this book or- ganized by Jairo Ferreira awaken instincts, awaken thoughts, generate impasse. There are so many important names, national and international, reflecting without strings attached. I read, re - read, observed different aspects. One of them, quite secondary