Perhaps I am writing this article with the hidden vanity of vindicating my prophetic gifts, which seem to be on the right track. Some time ago I baptized the Global Loneliness Syndrome, an emotional disorder that will surely fill the offices of psychiatrists and psychologists in the coming years. After declaring myself a passionate enthusiast of new technologies, I announced a possible psychic imbalance caused by the excessive or immoderate use of chat rooms, especially with strangers. People capable of communicating with anyone in virtual spaces, but reluctant or reluctant to attention with their wives, husbands, parents, children... They make a double serious mistake:

There is never the certainty of chatting with whom we imagine. The other person can dissimulate or falsify his way of being, hide or disguise himself. A disguise capable of covering up an unbalanced personality, a liar, a trickster... or, simply, someone normal. And so, in a groping dialogue, we run the certain risk of falling into the clutches of pretence, deceit or falsehood, or of torrid or twisted intentions (a danger not to dramatize, but not to minimize either). In any case, there always hovers the haze of fog or mist in the conversation.

The subject who chats is also in a comfortable position to slip into the simulated or pretended. How easy it is, under the impunity of anonymity, to offer a distorted vision of oneself, to present oneself with a personality closer to the ideal self than to the real self. A comment, an opinion, an event... slipped candorously, even without intention or purpose to deceive.

I know the story from news and reports that have appeared in several media. It is the story of José Ángel Taboada, fifty years old, living in Alcabre, Vigo (so read these lines with a slight Galician twist). Angeliño's life passed with a dull cadence, going from bad to worse. He ended up without work and without the right to any benefits; he lived poorly with financial aid from Cáritas and some belongings and garbage that he rummaged in the containers of the area while he was riding his bicycle. Lonely, isolated, without electricity, without water..., although some locals claimed that he had inherited it not long ago.

So much sadness defeated Angeliño, who succumbed to the Diogenes Syndrome: he overcrowded the house, and a good part of the orchard, with junk and filth, until they became uninhabitable and impassable.

He became, according to the locals, sullen, sullen, elusive, with few words. Indigent, unsociable and asocial. He stoically accepted the status but, as a good Galician, he coined his own existential Philosophy : "I am like soap, what people think of me doesn't matter".

One unfortunate day he felt unwell and literally let himself fall, apathetic, among that pile of filth. That's how he stayed... "Morreu soliño", as a Galician would say. Nobody missed him, nobody noticed his absence. Nobody asked for him...

Well, inconceivably, the deceased Angeliño... was followed by 3,544 friends on Facebook, and 550 on Linkedln. Perhaps due to the effect of the virtual meigas, Angeliño, hiding behind his corresponding alias, became Angelito. Note the contrast, because this is how his virtual friends define him: witty, joking, with a sense of humor -enxebre humor-; sensitive, optimistic and supportive; a great lover of the delightful Galician landscapes...

Everyone was unaware of his real life; with the exception, perhaps, of Dori Macía, a resident of Tenerife, with whom he had intimidated in a special way, to the point of promising her a visit in times of some bonanza. Dori was surprised that Angelito, or Angeliño, took several days to post some of his cute things, such as that hackneyed photograph of a spermatozoid with its corresponding caption: "my first portrait".

She tried uselessly to contact him by WhatsApp and by telephone. Three days now... Uneasy, she contacted the parish so that they would be interested in the case. From there they approached, although they did not manage to get in with so much garbage and junk. It was the firemen who removed Angeliño's body. The autopsy confirmed the natural cause of death. He was buried, anonymously, in a charity grave, with the shocking company of two mourning ladies and without his Facebook friends and without his friends from the town, which he did not have.

Everything suggests that only Dori Macia sincerely mourned her death. Dori, with painful lamentation, launched in journalistic interviews this lacerating, humiliating and incisive question: "If she lived in those conditions, why didn't any neighbor alert the Social Services...?"

I know that a single case does not validate a theory... However, I believe that the story of José Ángel Taboada deserves some time of sincere reflection on how we personally use the Internet universe. It should not be forgotten that the Global Loneliness Syndrome is looming on the horizon... And whoever wants to think should think, because topic gives food for thought...