The permeability of truth and falsehood, of fact and illusion, is the central there of the comedy Grand Magic, written by the Italian dramatist Eduardo De Filippo in 1948. 

In the play, we find a group of people staying in a large hotel by the seaside, waiting for that night’s star attraction, the magician Otto Marvuglia. Everything begins with a magic trick, in which Otto causes Marta, the beautiful wife of the jealous Calogero, to disappear. But the trick with Marta completely backfires, because she ends up running away with her lover. And, from then on, as she can’t be made to reappear, the magician resorts to the power of illusion…

The sudden appearance and exponential growth of the social media have given each of us the capacity to communicate with the whole world. While these tools have opened up new opportunities for dialogue and collaboration, they have also provided fertile ground for falsehood and manipulation. The “truth” is no longer the most plausible version of the facts (confirmed by the press, science or impartial observers), it is instead the unpredictable result of a hotchpotch of contradictory opinions and narratives. The “truth” of some has become the fake news of others.