THE SHOW MUST GO ON Self-immolation at Raiffeisen Bank Iaşi

A man set himself on fire, on Friday, at the headquarters of Raiffeisen Bank of the center of Iaşi, after shouting "You took my children's money and you took my home!", according to a report by www.bzi.ro, which also posted a movie, with him being carried away by the SMURD doctors in an ambulance.

At the bottom of the video, as the doctors were putting the man on a stretcher, the following commercial appeared: "A stressful life becomes a right life with the DIVERS loan [followed by the name of the bank]. You've got the best offer to be all you want to be".

Of course, nobody actually wanted to make such a horrible joke, this macabre sarcasm is the result of computers, which, regardless of "content", are programmed to display ads, according to an algorithm.

But this incident is evidence of our automatic way of life.

The man who set himself on fire has not achieved anything for himself (in fact, after being left broke and having lost his home, he is also disfigured and hospitalized), nor for us, he has just disturbed the public peace briefly and created some small inconveniences: the female branch director used a fire extinguisher to keep the flames from spreading; the SMURD and the firefighters went to the location, causing an increase in the GDP; passers by would turn their heads to look, without stopping; and none of us is going to side with the man at the end of his rope.

Lending goes on.

Just like the passers-by.

At the time the man was setting himself on fire, the Governor of the NBR was launching a commemorative coin, to celebrate 25 years since the creation of the Romanian Intelligence Service.

I haven't seen any recording from this event.

Had it been posted on the web, then perhaps the computers' algorithm, would have programmed the display of an ad such as: "In the Romanian banking system you can do anything! Scammers from all over the world, come over here, we've only got 20% left to sell!"