A few weeks ago I was browsing YouTube in search of storytime that would help me get through the bitter gulp of having to wash dishes when, suddenly (and look how wonderful the YouTube algorithm is that knows what kind of content is going to leave me thinking), I found a quite peculiar video. It was a renowned Spanish porn actress telling her experience of the famous " polyamory ". It was the first time I had heard the term, and although it was easy to deduce from its etymology what the matter could be about, I decided to play the video to see what type of precious stones I could find 😵.

It was no big deal, just a person whose exposure skills were good enough to convince any gullible that the idea of ​​getting romantically involved with multiple people at the same time is the new canon of the 21st-century lifestyle. However, it is not the extreme moral relaxation behind all this that worried me and motivated me to write, but the increasingly palpable influence of the consumer culture and dismiss us: a generation that lives boasting of its irreverence and pragmatism, but which yields to the first novelty without questioning it as much as it questions other things. Zigmunt Bauman (2003) encapsulates this very well in the prologue of "Liquid Love" :

We try to patch everything up by claiming the best intentions and supposed trust and freedom as axes, when what we really do is throw an invisible ball at the other so that if something goes wrong, the fault lies with those who accepted - because they "were aware" of what that it could happen - and not in our stubborn desire to want to experience everything as it may and whatever the cost.

I brought up the theme of polyamory because I want you to realize what is happening with people and the way in which society relativizes everything. Leaving aside the dilemma about whether it is "good or bad" (you will already know how to draw your own conclusions), situations like that derive from an almost imperceptible pressure on us to act in a certain way, something that we don't notice anymore because it is no longer like in movies where coercion is explicitly manifested by bullying or comments from "friends" who have no idea how to lead their own lives; now it is much worse: they sell us movies, series, music, even people who try to make lightness in emotional commitment seem completely normal or, failing that, make us believe that falling in love with anyone in an insane and superficial way ( * cof cof Netflix entire catalog) is okay. Of course, this is not a new thing of this century, but if we take into account the influence of the internet and the culture of the instantaneous, the effect intensifies.

Then Jane or Joe -because it happens to men and women- all innocent and inexperienced arrives at college, meets with the new gentlemen friends and decides that they need to live everything, become "man", become "woman", gain experience because they do not want to be told later that they are 17, 18 or 19 years old and have not "done anything" or have not "winnowed" enough. Or worse yet, because they think they have something to prove themselves. And a futile race begins for who gets more; no one tells them but they perceive it everywhere and it begins to become a need, not someone's need, but the need for more.