There are still a few days left until the new year begins, but somewhere in Catalonia a person is already choking on their neules fearing that moment. We are referring to the 3/24 network moderator who will be on duty for New Year's Eve. She will probably have already assumed that she works the night of the 31st, I don't think that will keep her from losing sleep. What will keep her awake these nights is the possibility that the first baby born in Catalonia in 2024 will be called Ahmed or Zakaria, like the earliest child in 2023, who was born in Palamós, and narrowly beat Dayla Mia, from Esplugues from Llobregat
If that happens, the network moderator of 3/24 will spend the first hours of the year trying to manage the racist comments that will hang on X several avatars with a Saint George's cross in the profile and trusting that there are not very many of them left on Instagram "and that's how it goes", "and now the house is paid for", "they came from outside to take us from home", etcetera. In fact, if the first baby born in 2024 is called Ona or Nil, the user @guifre1714 will find a way to say something that would warm the heart of Sílvia Orriols.
I do not believe that the public television news channel has a particularly racist or retrograde audience, but it does happen that this small but very active faction of profiles has found there the material that gives it life, to the point that the medium and they have entered into a relationship almost of codependency. When they recently posted the famous viral news about the four-year-old boy named Aran to whom the TMB host gave a prize for his birthday, one of those digital almogàvers wrote: “It was clear that Mohamed was not the guanyaria.” The clip with the fundraising of La Marató, which this year dealt with sexual and reproductive health, was filled with comments against the “xaros of TÑ3” and there is no human story or local news that the commentators on duty miss.
I suspect that the newsroom thinks about them when they post videos with headlines with the word eco-anxiety or when they inform them about the benefits of cloth pads and that they also log in every morning looking for that dose of dopamine that keeps them alert.
