The Apology Trend
Hair up, broken voice. Chiara Ferragni's video to apologize for the Balocco case and the antitrust fine for her Pink Christmas Pandoro. Some will say it made things even worse, some that it takes courage to apologize. In any case, on the Internet, no forgiveness is possible.
During the Christmas period of 2022, Chiara Ferragni and the Balocco food company created a special “Pandoro”, a traditional Italian sweet bread eaten during the Christmas holidays. This was sold at a very high price compared to traditional Pandoros. However, Chiara Ferragni and Balocco said that a certain percentage of the money from these Pandoro sales would go to charity, specifically to the Regina Margherita children’s hospital in Turin. A couple of days before Christmas of that year, however, the truth was revealed. A fixed amount before the selling of the Pandoros was going to the Regina Margherita hospital as charity, so it had nothing to do with the sales of the Pandoro. Chiara Ferragni admitted to a communicational mistake with an Instagram story, as she was fined over 1 million euros. However, this is not the first time that big companies or influential people have made mistakes and have apologized in this way.
Back in the fall of 2018, designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana released an apology video to be broadcast worldwide. Symmetrical setting, gold and burgundy damask wall, composed proxemics, two matching black sweaters to express sobriety, fixed framing. The cause of this mea culpa? A commercial for the Asian market in which a woman tries to eat Italian food with chopsticks, without succeeding. Nothing out of the ordinary, until the highlight comes, a huge cannolo that you just can't eat, as a voiceover asks the girl of Asian origins, dressed in traditional Chinese clothing, "It's too big for you, isn't it?". Apologizing is never easy, especially when a lot of money is involved, as in the case of the Asian market for Dolce & Gabbana designers, or as in the latest affair in Italy involving the influencer Chiara Ferragni.
In the era of overexposure, for influencers and influential people, it is really hard to exempt oneself from this commitment on which the algorithm feeds. Gaffes and mistakes, after all, are our bread and butter, all in the name of entertainment and trending topics. This time, however, Chiara Ferragni found herself with a particularly hot potato in her hands. The case is that of Balocco and the antitrust fine for its Pink Christmas Pandoro, and the aftermath has predictably been a cascade of opinions, from those of her husband who on Instagram asks if the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has nothing better to do than worry about the affairs of an influencer after she has said to not trust them during a political event, to those who instead ask for an account and reason for a similar mistake – both sides being relevant. After forty-eight hours or so of chaos, Chiara Ferragni decides to go public on her flagship network, her Instagram profile. The digital entrepreneur shows herself in all her makeup, hair up, voice broken, and gray sweater.
Twitter users slammed rapper Travis Scott online following the Astroworld tragedy. Credit: Getty Images
There is no right way to come out of this clean, in the age of the Internet and hyper-communication. “Communication,” a word Ferragni uses a lot, in fact, during her apology monologue any piece added to a storm of comments, also known as a shitstorm, is gasoline on the fire. A fire that, clearly, can also serve to rekindle the fuse of relevance when we get dangerously close to oblivion. This is not the case for Chiara Ferragni, but the algorithm basically works for everyone the same way. Some will say that this just made things worse, while others will say that it takes courage to apologize. Someone else might point out that it is not really a "miscommunication" but a scam, however, others might be moved by a gesture of sincerity. Travis Scott, in the aftermath of the tragedy at his Astroworld festival in 2021, where ten people died when crushed by the crowd, opted for a black-and-white direction. He offered condolences to the victims' families in a story on Instagram and immediately became a meme. YouTuber Colleen Ballinger, after being accused of inappropriate behavior toward her fans, responded with an apology video sung on a ukulele. Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher apologized for supporting a colleague accused of rape somewhere in their backyard, with disheveled outfits and sleep-swollen faces. The same look as Drew Barrymore. The more natural the look, the more sincere the apology seemed.
None of these videos produced the desired result of unanimously receiving forgiveness from an audience that feels betrayed for whatever reason, whether serious or less serious. And there is nothing strange about that; it is the rule of the Internet, the engine that keeps it alive day after day, controversy after controversy: to receive pardons and absolutions there are courts and churches. If anything, the point is that the moment your name becomes a brand, whether it is Ferragni or D&G, it is difficult to distinguish where the fear of affecting one's "brand reputation" ends and where the person begins.
But even for that, the Internet will never have a final ruling, as there will be millions of them and they will all last little more than forty-eight hours, about the same as a pandoro at Christmas.
