Over the weekend, a TN video made the rounds: a journalist asked an older woman what her “news of the day” was. The retiree responded bluntly that, as such, she could not live, and that her main anguish was the medicines, which she could no longer afford without asking her children for money. When asked about her work history, the woman acknowledged that she had not worked in a dependent relationship: she had been a housewife.
Before that video, Marcos Galperin, the richest man in Argentina and founder of Mercado Libre, reacted in X with a smiley face emoji. The gesture, seemingly small, unleashed a storm on the networks that had him as the center of repudiation throughout Sunday.
Among the voices that were raised the loudest was that of the streamer and YouTuber Martín Pérez Disalvo, known as Coscuwho did not mince words. “But, how, being one of the people with the most money in the country, are you going to laugh at a retiree?” he wrote, and added a nuance that Galperin himself had overlooked: “Those were other times, perhaps back then she supported a family as a housewife.” In a second tweet, Coscu was even more direct: “When they ask you if money makes you happy, remember this example: the richest person in our country laughing at a retiree who can’t afford medicine.”
The repudiation spread quickly. Journalists, economists and human rights organizations added their criticism, and Galperin’s name became a trend on the platform.
The businessman’s response arrived the next day, and it was not a rectification. Galperin reposted a phrase attributed to the French writer and playwright Jean Cocteau: “Being hated by idiots is the price you pay for not being one of them.” The hint was evident, and the networks responded again with the same intensity as the previous night.
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