I wanted to write on this topic for a very long time, but had very little motivation. Recently, I decided to write on whatever topic is in my head, and just follow the stream of thought.
Finally, I’ve got some motivation to write a couple of words on one thing I hate about Russia and Russian language: the language hypocricy.
There’s this tech forum, called 4PDA. I’ve been a memeber since a very long time ago, circa 2010 or earlier, when it was just founded. It’s having many discussions on various tech topics, and also is a warez heaven (meaning piracy). I have been active there in my late teens, from 15 to 20 years ago. And mostly inactive for the last ten-to-fifteen years. Since then, I’ve visited the forum like 20 times, once a few years, to explore some topic. The forum may be having some valuable info, if you don’t mind exploring some shitty idiot-like language they use.
E.g. I found the Orange Pi Zero thread to be quite informative!
I’ve been using the forum since the time it was under the .ru domain name.
I tolerated them for a very long time, simply because the Russian government attacked them, by trying to ban them. ‘Oh, they must be the rebels then!’ I thought. I have no idea whether they’re banned in Russia today. But obviously, all their users are Russians. (Did you know Russia considers anyone speaking Russian as the Russian?)
In general, their website (they started some news-like portal) is an obvious garbage, but I kept some loyalty to the forum. Simply not knowing any other better alternative for some topics, as XDA being also mostly shit, just in a different language.
Today, I found out I’ve been banned there! The reason for that was insulting, but also hilarious.
Recently, I’ve bought this new projector, Wanbo T2 Max. The decision was somewhat impulsive, and based on a very shallow research. After being overwhelmed with the sheer inadequate number of options, I just bought what was locally available and felt like the one I’ve bought is not so bad after all.
I’m mostly happy with the purchase. The price was twice-to-thrice higher than what I initially expected it to be, but since I set the somewhat low price of $30-to-50, I decided that $100 is basically the same.
Only then, I went to explore on my very model on 4PDA’s forum. I’ve gained some more understanding about them, and wrote a summary post in the Walter’s blog. And then one more. And one more.
The blog isn’t deployed at this time of writing, but it’s planned to be any time soon, hopefully this year.
While working on the drafts (notice, they’re not released 1.5 months later!), I tried to collect some thoughts on it to post there.
That post was meant to be in Russian, and that was an interesting experience that made me both cringe and become slightly more happy: I forgot how to write in Russian! I used a huge number of Ukrainian words, and have been editing the text like 20 times, or even more, re-reading it again and again. Basically, that’s an enemy’s territory, and I didn’t want to hint on my whereabouts to them. I treated that almost like a spy-novel level shit: make no mistake, don’t let the fuckers know I’m not one of them!
I believe there are many people from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other countries once-occupied by Russia. Yet, we can call them Russians. Yo, they speak their language!
That was cringe, and I realised, fuck it, I’m not even attempting at a thing like this. Yet, I posted the message, because I believe it’s still net-positive for everyone, especially the community. That was about a month and a half ago, the same week I’ve bought the device. I haven’t finished the Walter’s blog posts, simply because I’ve lost the motivation and many other things kicked into my life, including the all-to-familiar exhaustion.
Today, I noticed that I was banned, and the message was removed. Can you guess the reason? I used the obscene language somewhere! For you to get the idea, it was like me using a phrase like ‘Overall, it’s fucking great and I like this device!’ or perhaps even ‘it’s freaking great.’ The moderator’s message was that you cannot use ‘bad words’ even if they’re substituted or censored.
Like… the fuck? :)
I made an attempt to re-read the message, and found no ‘offensive’ words there. I didn’t try too hard, and I as I said there might be ones, just to have a more expressive post.
I don’t care about that account, not in the slightest. And it turned out I have two of them. I’ve written them with the request of removing the second account. That was about seven years ago! Seven. Years. What would you think? Of course they ignored the request. Turned out the account is perfectly active.
All that leads to the thought I was willing to formulate for a very long time.
Just the fact of that happening feels surreal. A fucking Russian bans someone on the use of the obscene words. If you’re unfamiliar with Russia and its culture, it’s a funny fact: they have two languages, a literature one and the real one.
Just like Norwegian, Bokmål and Nynorsk.
Lol, of course not, I’m joking.
Everyone speaks the orcs version of the language, throught out my life I’ve met just a few people who don’t use offensive words in their everyday speech. Nobody speaks the language you’d find in the literature, especially if that’s something to export for stupid Westerners to believe in the mysterious Russian soul™.
Yet, in their culture is to teach kids to never swear. Only if that was ‘teach,’ in reality that’s punishing kids for cursing, and nothing more. The kids parents usually grunt like fucking orcs, yet they the kids aren’t allowed to repeat parents. Somehow, they’re expected to speak like Leo Fucking Tolstoy out of thin air.
Same was for me, and for some mysterious reason, I’ve managed to speak like a fucking Leo Tolstoy sometimes. It felt like I’ve been too haughty, arrogant prick with superiority complex. Even my once-girlfriend mentioned this to me. And I thought ‘fuck, girl, why, just speak like a normal person, why won’t you?’ She spoke (and I bet she still speaks) like a fucking orc.
Pronouncing any ‘bad’ word was an extreme taboo in both families I’ve been to, when being a kid, and it was traumatising experience. I swear before my kids, and I don’t care for them fucking swearing. The point is, you can do that, and nothing wrong with it. That’s a legitimate part of the language, and if you’re too stupid you don’t understand it. But when you’re not, you just understand that you have to minimise the use of these words, for them to be effective and actually look beautiful in the written form. Well, and verbal too. It’s like seasoning, if it’s too much, it’s too much. If it’s limited, it’s good. You have to be intelligent enough to understand it.
At some point, when I was over 30, I guess, I started use obscene language with my relatives. Here, I mean my mother’s side of Russian-speaking relatives: obscene language is a very minor insignificant part of the Ukrainian language, while being a major part of Russian language, with their prison culture. Swearing felt liberating, as if I stopped being child and suddenly got to be an adult instead. For the context, I have to mention that I’ve been swearing when I was very very young, like 5 or 6 years, or so. A neighbour (in Russia) was swearing like he spent all his time in Russian jail, and I was mimicking him, thinking that was cool. Parents of all sorts, including my older cousins (also kids), tried to explain me it’s not OK to speak like that all the time, I simply couldn’t comprehend that complex concept. And so there was a period of time nobody could tame me: I just spoke like I’ve been born in the Russian prison, and everyone around me was a criminal, so I didn’t know any other language to speak.
There was this major event. One day, the said neighbor had his cows vaccinated. I’ve been spending lots of my time with him. And he didn’t tell me ‘get the fuck out of here, boy!’ I guess he just ignored me being there very often. So, the cows were there, the veterinarian arrived. Perhaps some of them joked about something towards me, I won’t even recall, I was too little. But I’ve got really scared of these huge syringe the veterinarian had, I thought they’re going to vaccinate me from swearing with that! I haven’t been speaking like that since then. Until, perhaps my late teens, when I was rather trolling someone.
I still can speak like that, but these days it’s just very hard trolling. And you have to be familiar with some major part of Ukrainian culture (of the 20th century), to get the real references. E.g. in the book Tiger Trappers the author uses two languages, the Ukrainian one as the primary one, and the Russian one to mock the Russian so-called ‘culture.’ I have no idea how they got translated that to English, as that’s the major part of the book’s style. Friends knows my style as ‘Va-le-ra!’ and it got so good after I stopped speaking Russian, with the only downside, sometimes I can simply forgot words, and use the Ukrainian substitudes, not even noticing. Not something I regret, though. Laughing at Russians is still doing great.
The conclusion I’d come to, it’s really weird, this hypocricy. All of the Russian culture is about apperance: to appear, not to be. They don’t care if they are really this or that, they care only if they appear this or that. That’s what matters to them. And I’m 100% sure all Russian so-called ‘elite’ speaks like fucking prisoners at home, with trying to speak like a normal person on public. That’s just something everyone is used to. That’s especially weird when your country wages a genocide, but you still care about someone in the internet using the word ‘fuck’ — ‘Oh, what a tragedy! Someone used the F-word on the internet! Can you believe it?!’
Fuck the four pda, and fuck ruzzianz.