Vincent Plicchi commits suicide on Tiktok. In Bologna a mural against the ‘keyboard lions’

The message of the mural is "stop cyberbullying, starting from the drama that happened to Vincent"

BOLOGNA – A mural against the ‘keyboard lions’ to remember Vincent Plicchi, who committed suicide on TikTok, and to raise young people’s awareness of the harmful effects of cyberbullying, complete with an invitation to ask for help because “it’s not for losers to do it”. It was created by four writers from Bologna on the wall of the Pepoli middle school gym, inside the Lunetta Gamberini park, in memory of the 23-year-old from Bologna who took his own life last October 11th while he was ‘live’ in live on Tiktok. An extreme gesture that revealed how Plicchi, very popular on the Chinese social network, was the victim of insults and negative comments from other web users. The work, created by Bolognese writers Alessandro ‘Dado’ Ferri, Massimiliano ‘Rusty’ Landuzzi, Riccardo ‘Draw’ Raviola and Elvis ‘Mambo’ Pregnolato, is part of aproject promoted by the Municipality of Bologna together with Vincent’s family Plicchi, and was inaugurated this morning in the presence of the artists, the mayor Matteo Lepore and Vincent’s father, Matteo Plicchi, in front of the approximately 400 students of the school, who were involved in the process and also created a drawing inside the courtyard.

“This mural is a warning against bullying– explains Matteo Plicchi- not to end up in a net caught in the hatred of people who with great superficiality, but also with premeditation, can do damage ”. Parents can monitor their children’s online activity, but sometimes it’s not enough, and therefore they need to turn to the kids themselves. “I myself opened a profile to check, even though he was already an adult, so there was no need, but unfortunately it’s impossible to always check, so kids have to understand who they’re talking to, with who are they talking about, what is the level of confidence to give or not to be misled by defamations or opinions of people who don’t even know them personally”, is the thought of Vincent’s father. For this reason “the location is beautiful because the park is alive, full of young people, lots of parents pass by”.
The message of the mural is “stop cyberbullying, starting from the drama that happened to Vincent”, explains the writer Rusty . Thus the clichés are intertwined: there are “the keyboard lion, the sheep who all look insistently at their cell phones, the tempting snake”. The work is divided into two, on the one hand the “negative one, with the excess of negative information”, on the other “a heterogeneous company, with the message that ‘asking for help is not for losers'”, which addresses a heart for Vincent, in the center of the drawing depicted in the form of his favorite animal, a Siamese cat crying due to the insults of haters.

The meaning is “very clear: we shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for help, none of us must remain alone – underlines Mayor Lepore – it can happen that we remain alone because we are a victim of bullying or cyberbullying . But you can ask for help and so let’s deliver this message to the kids.” The school does its part too. “We have a group of teachers who have trained on policies, netiquette, how to behave online and who support both teachers, parents and students – recalls Ombretta Pavoni, head teacher of Ic 21 – we also have a psychological help desk and we have activated a collaboration with the postal police and the carabinieri to combat these phenomena which produce deleterious effects”.