Russian monstrations Archives - Reading the End https://readingtheend.com/tag/russian-monstrations/ before I read the middle Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:53:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://readingtheend.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cropped-reading-the-end-with-words-2-32x32.jpg Russian monstrations Archives - Reading the End https://readingtheend.com/tag/russian-monstrations/ 32 32 53371782 The best thing I learned from my book about internet dissidents https://readingtheend.com/2015/07/10/the-best-thing-i-learned-from-my-book-about-internet-dissidents/ https://readingtheend.com/2015/07/10/the-best-thing-i-learned-from-my-book-about-internet-dissidents/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2015 10:00:07 +0000 http://readingtheend.com/?p=6437 Sometimes, people in Russia hold these things called monstrations (like demonstrations without the de), which are like protests, but instead of protests they are performance art. And instead of protesting real things, they march all around with billboards that say things like No to colonization of Mars! and You are too boring to talk to! and WET PRIESTS. Ahahaha, Russia, you’re so weird! What a weird thing to do! Protests get stifled in Russia, so Russia has performance art protests instead. Ugh, that wasn’t fair. Sometimes Russia has real protests too. But they also have these fake performance art protests, and I think this should…

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]]> Sometimes, people in Russia hold these things called monstrations (like demonstrations without the de), which are like protests, but instead of protests they are performance art. And instead of protesting real things, they march all around with billboards that say things like No to colonization of Mars! and You are too boring to talk to! and WET PRIESTS. Ahahaha, Russia, you’re so weird! What a weird thing to do! Protests get stifled in Russia, so Russia has performance art protests instead.

Ugh, that wasn’t fair. Sometimes Russia has real protests too. But they also have these fake performance art protests, and I think this should be a safe space to make fun of performance art even if it is happening in a country where Putin is in charge and there’s no cheddar cheese and it’s always winter and never Christmas. (Please do not fact-check this post, it will not stand up to scrutiny, I don’t know anything about Russia.) (The cheddar cheese thing is true though.)

The book was Emily Parker’s Now I Know Who My Comrades Are, and it is a very interesting look at the stifling of internet dissidents in China, Cuba, and Russia. The Russia section is the weirdest. Russia is so weird. I ascribe it to the climate. And not having any cheddar cheese. Poor old Russia. I would protest too.

(Y’all, I know I made fun of Russia just now for doing performance art, and I do truly find performance art overwhelmingly ridiculous/annoying in the great majority of cases, but secretly I find Russian monstrations extremely charming. SO weird. But charming.)

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