The story of blogger Sergei Kosenko, who threw his little son into the snow, caused not only scandal and investigations by the Investigative Committee. Suddenly, the phenomenon of public condemnation manifested itself in full force. It would not be wrong to say that the values of a new era in society are currently being formed. And we are all tuning this “moral tuning fork.”
The abundance of information, ease and speed of absorption has led to clip thinking, superficial attention, nervous breakdowns and anxiety. Psychologists and sociologists have been writing for several years that the modern generation cannot watch “old movies” because there are long shots, long dialogues, and the main character passes without saying a word for three minutes. The man walks for three minutes, keeps silent and thinks. Now in these three minutes there will be fighting, explosions and unhappy love, and there will still be time for the main character to progress. A TikTok video retelling “Anna Karenina” lasts 30 seconds, “War and Peace” – 35, Sholokhov – 40 seconds.
That’s why you have to be Gagarin to be at the top of the news. Every day. First day in space. Second day – to the moon. The third is to Mars. What? Don’t they fly there? Find where they fly and fly there! If you want to be at the top, attract attention. If there used to be a principle: If any news survives a day, today the morning news does not survive until dinner.
It was this principle of rapid news exchange that saved many celebrities from scandals. If a star did something unusual, the “freeze” mode would kick in.
Anti-crisis management looked like this: Get through this day quietly, let the scandal die down, and then no one will remember. And this principle worked.
After all, bloggers didn’t start creating crazy things yesterday. In 2020, a girl died during the broadcast of blogger Stanislav Reshetnyak. Before that, the blogger and the girl were drinking on live broadcast, then Stanislav beat her and kicked her out of the house – all without stopping the broadcast. A few hours later, the blogger dropped the girl off at home; The girl’s condition was already serious and she died in front of the audience. In Sadovoy, accidents for the sake of excitement, fights for the sake of likes, scandals to attract attention – all these are the constant tools of blogging.
So what happened now? Why did the alleged video of the child being thrown into the snow cause such protests? After all, the child didn’t even catch a cold! Why are we all suddenly acting like a collective Ekaterina Mizulina?
There’s a lot going on here. And people are tired of the antics of bloggers and stars after Anastasia Ivleeva’s “naked” party. And throwing a little child into the snow is not funny to any normal person. And Kosenko’s later apology made everyone even more angry with him when he started making excuses. It was this kid in funny overalls who became the point of no return, when all the “public outrage” suddenly became not some kind of temporary, but very visible.
You have some things at your fingertips; feeling of the moment, justification for actions, appropriateness. Nearly two years have passed since the Russian and world agenda changed fundamentally. And during these two years, many laws were adopted, thanks to which the protection and support of people became not just words, but reality. And it is impossible not to feel and understand this.
Many people write: What did Kosenko do? This is how we throw our children into the water!
And here we come to the point. Blogger’s popularity has a certain duality: constant attention gives rise to the need to take into account the moment and relevance.
And if a blogger cannot understand this, then he gets not popularity and money, but a call to the Investigative Committee. This is a two-way street. When a random person does life-threatening things, everything depends on the consequences. If everything goes well and no one dies, good. If it goes badly, you will be subpoenaed. But a hundred million people will not repeat this.
What does Kosenko’s example teach us? Understand your audience matrix. Respect him. While, as before, the scandal might have been expected to be resolved, it will no longer be so.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.