The other day, an anonymous person wrote to me on Telegram. He invited me on a date. Go directly to the hotel. When I refused, he threatened me with a statement “about LGBT propaganda” (“The International LGBT Social Movement” is considered extremist and is banned in the Russian Federation). He said I would be imprisoned because my appearance “fits this article.” Although strictly speaking, there is no such article. And everything is fine with my appearance. I shave half my head, it’s called an undercut. In St. Petersburg, even children and housewives walk like this. My husband personally shaves my head. An entirely male person. And for the first time, my mother-in-law, who is over eighty years old, gave me this haircut.
But then a man on the street decided he could blackmail me. I’m not even sure he’d go on a real date with me. He simply enjoys the power over a public figure that comes into his hands.
This is our new reality, where invisible people suddenly have the power of voice. What is often overshadowed: history, change, events. And here they were brought on stage. They became real full-fledged actors. The new political environment, many prohibitive measures and the new transparent world where everyone has a say helped them in this regard.
I had one more subscriber. An excellent stick. Now they are called stalkers. Tired of fighting for my attention, which he demanded more and more, this pervert suddenly threatened me with a complaint to the guardianship authorities, so that they would check “just like that” how the child lives in our family and whether he is alive. he is being taken care of. Why does Valery from Kaliningrad need this? So, have I given any reason to suspect that my child is sitting around hungry and cold while I work? NO! The thing is that Valery set a condition for me: he will complain if I do not respond to every comment he makes. He will usually complain because he can. This much. He likes to think he has power over me.
I will call this phenomenon the outstretched hand syndrome at the Stalinist meeting. Remember, for example, how librarians, bathroom and laundry workers, and railroad switchmen were rounded up? On the agenda was the unanimous condemnation of a poor man who had been run over by a roller. And suddenly someone stretched out his hand and shouted: “Shoot the child!” It was usually a pale woman with a shabby face, or a gorgeous-looking, drunken little man who suddenly realized that he might have no other reason to raise his voice and be heard. In this life he can only shout loudly, loudest and with appropriate consequences: “Shoot!”
These are the people we have here. Their kingdom has begun. These are not informants. Not the ones I’ve written about before. Not fans of serial slander. These are single ordinary people, tired of their own lives, frustrated, who, thanks to technological progress and the political situation, suddenly get the opportunity to climb into someone else’s head and shout about themselves to the world: “I can complain about you, which means I still exist and have something of myself “I present.”
Many people found their voice, they can be heard, for example, by threatening Volochkova with a complaint about her. Or Ivleeva. Or to me. Every person who is even remotely popular today has subscribers who bombard him not with complaints, but with threats of complaints.
“If you do not remove this text, I will complain and apply to the authorities.” I often receive comments like these from women in their fifties. They may not like any text: even about female beauty, even about Palestine, even about the import of Ecuadorian bananas. She sits like this at work, overwhelmed by her husband, and remembers that she has only one opportunity for relief and self-affirmation: to assert power over me. So I know he has a chance to control me. Now she decides what to write to me. Or in which split Volochkova should sit.
Moreover, this aunt cannot complain silently: she must first express her threat out loud. I, for example, am Adelaide Pupkina, I have indivisible authority over you, Mironova, I can flood you with complaints, in general, I can send statements against you to all eighty investigative units of the Investigative Committee, so that you die, you rush to make statements so that you do not have time to eat and sleep . My life is empty, boring and meaningless, but I can make yours meaningless.
The more popular a person is, the fewer people around him who satisfy their pride with the power they accidentally get.
These people are generally kind, they do not hate the target of the persecution, they do not want him to be harmed. All they need is to introduce themselves. Being a performer means having an equal voice and influencing your life. It’s a paradox: They can’t influence their own, but they can easily influence yours.
Moreover, the scope is growing, the little oppressed man on the street does not only raise his voice against the public. More and more often I see situations where subscribers of popular public pages threaten to bombard page owners with complaints if they do not do this or that. And they even threaten other subscribers.
The other day in St. When a drone crashed into a house in St. Petersburg, everyone immediately started distributing Governor Beglov’s photo and statement. We must observe a moment of silence, no one is evasive, the authorities immediately announced that there was a UAV attack, they did not hold us by the nose. And here and there people appeared in the comments: “Make a complaint to the prosecutor’s office. You will go to jail for damaging your reputation. Wait for the statement of the Ministry of Defense.” These are completely ordinary people living nearby. I met such people on a public page around me, and they also discussed the incident. Here the neighbors are sitting, everyone saw the news, everyone heard the governor’s speech, everyone was excited. Suddenly someone raises his voice and he says: “And if I don’t lock you up, I might scare you all.”
Maybe he lived quietly in his one-room hut for years, and the neighbors didn’t befriend him, didn’t greet him, didn’t notice him. And then – bam! The law that will discredit the army has been introduced. And this quiet neighbor suddenly realized that his time had come, that criminals could, if not ruin their lives, then at least try to scare them. He was the first to raise his hand and shout, “Shoot him like a mad dog!” The kind of person who takes pride in being the one shouting.
I now have many readers who report with great satisfaction that they regularly write complaints about me: to the authorities, to Zen and to Telegram. They would be very happy if they closed my channel, cut off my earnings, cut off my communication with the world, or even drag me into cheques. They don’t hate me either, they don’t want me to do any harm; They want to feel important, equal.
Currently, there is no protection against these people, it is not provided by the system. There is only a little common sense and hope about the workload of the system, which became so angry when ordinary people decided to use it to get rid of their complexes.
But this is only as long as everything is processed manually and by real people. What if they implement some kind of automated system to check such complaints? We will all be hostages of a complex and unsuccessful minority; This minority will reach out, demanding to be shot, punished, imprisoned, just because that way they can finally feel important.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.