cronaca vera is a facetious exercise in narrative possibilities of text and image in the digital age. the title is a word play on the italian cronaca nera which is, quite simply, the crime section of the news. for the italian public opinion however la nera is something akin to a national mindset, a lowbrow philosophical outlook on existence, almost a metaphysics of evil tailored for the masses. the title is also a quote from lucian of samosata’s true history (Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα in the original), which in italian is translated as storia vera. lucian’s work was intended as a parody: besides telling a story the writer’s end was criticizing those "historians" passing off myth as historical truth. in this case, the situation is almost reversed, reflecting on true commonplace events and making them absurd enough that little about them can be identified as anchored to reality anymore.
these are not strictly "crime" stories, but they have a common character in their being openly preposterous and in attempting to appeal to a certain irrational side that revels in the dubious narratives that for the longest time have been stuffing cronaca nera’s columns.