About Russian media. My impression is that it works like that:
Everybody knows that it lies all the time. But it’s the main example of media most Russians have for a majority of their life. So as a result lots of people assume that every other media lies just as much. This leads to the golden mean fallacy. Which Russian media manipulates by spreading even more outrageous lies.
There is also a lot of motivated scepticism. Very strong effort is made to find every mistake that every foreign media has ever commited (or just claim that they did) to preserve the “don’t trust anybody” narrative.
I am from Russia, it will be quite problematic to find specific fragments, but this is not hidden or denied by them themselves. Russian government media does not just create an average effect, they directly say that everyone is lying, you will never know the truth, so it does not matter, look for who benefits, there is only your homeland propaganda and propaganda from foreign agents funded by the State Department. And many of my relatives (not just old people or those who do not have access to the Internet) really think so.
I don’t know how i need to write to don’t have negative karma. I already read Hpmor and The Sequences.
Edited: Apparently, I really just got into an unfortunate percentage of statistics, as stated in the answer below, if three times my comments went into minus immediately after publication and never into plus. Now everything is in order, my karma has ceased to be negative, so I even understood why the double voting function is needed (with high karma, it really gives a larger vote).
Just accept that there is a certain amount of noise in the votes. Unless the karma is −5 or lower, chances are than in an hour it will be positive again. Complaining about −1 karma (or whatever was the value) only increases the noise.
Also, a certain small fraction of perfectly reasonable and true comments is going to get downvoted for stupid reasons. We are fallible humans, no matter how much we may believe otherwise. As long as it only happens rarely, it can be mostly ignored. Sucks when that happens in one of your first comments.
Also, for the opinion “we will never know the truth” in the state media, there was an undermining of trust in science: films about the fact that water has a memory, about the dangers of GMOs and its ban, the dangers of vaccinations and chipization through them (which unexpectedly became a problem when it was necessary sell your own covid vaccine to people), terrible radiation from microwaves, phones and calling a red indicator on the TV a dangerous laser, homeopathy in official state recommendations for medicines, a battle of psychics that is presented as something documentary, not fiction. Not to mention the fact that the TV channel, where there was a film about the fact that the Earth is flat, was awarded an award for education.
Since the reaction is positive, I will continue to write my “view from the inside.” Many in Russia support what is happening, because they really believe that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, who are also called Russophobes, so the Jewish president does not bother anyone. When asked where these Russophobes are, they usually refer to the presence in Ukraine of someone like gopniks who can make you “explain for gear / Russian numbers.” Reports of bombings only reinforce this opinion, because if there are no Nazis, then who is bombing their own people? They also refer to 8 years of shelling of the Donbass, and if you were silent then, and now you are against the war, then you are a hypocrite, although given the uniformity and inappropriateness of the messages, there is a suspicion that these are bots. The fact that Russia unleashed the conflict in the Donbass is denied on the grounds that if the Russian troops wanted to, they would have captured the Donbass in a matter of days, not years, but now the Russian army is moving as carefully as possible, so it will take a month to reach Kyiv, and not 96 hours, so they don’t fight at night to let civilians sleep.
This point about Ukrainian neo-Nazis is very misunderstood by the West.
During the Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014, neo-Nazi groups occupied government buildings and brought about a transition of government.
Why are there neo-Nazis in Ukraine? Because during WWII, the Nazis and the USSR were fighting over Ukraine. Ukraine is today quite ethnically diverse, and some of the ‘western’ Ukrainians who were resentful of USSR rule and, later, Russian influence, have reclaimed nazi ideas as part of a far-right Ukrainian nationalism. Some of these nazi groups that were originally militias have been incorporated into the Ukrainian military.
I’m not sure if this is a relevant/necessary/new addition, but I’ll say for testing that according to the Russian media, any reports of civilian casualties are either fake, or Ukrainian neo-Nazis are bombing their own citizens in order to denigrate Russia, and the destruction of tv towers and other own infrastructure due to the stupidity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
And in the Russian media they say that Zelensky threatened Russia with nuclear weapons that he can produce, and if Russia had not invaded Ukraine, then NATO would have attacked Russia, Yugoslavia is cited as an example.
There is also this isolating effect when the media tells a lie, e.g. denies some true fact X, and most people don’t buy it, but they decide “this is what we’re all conspiring to tell our enemies”. And while you’re busy trying to “convince” your opponent that X actually happened, you never get to discuss whether X is the right thing to do.
About Russian media. My impression is that it works like that:
Everybody knows that it lies all the time. But it’s the main example of media most Russians have for a majority of their life. So as a result lots of people assume that every other media lies just as much. This leads to the golden mean fallacy. Which Russian media manipulates by spreading even more outrageous lies.
There is also a lot of motivated scepticism. Very strong effort is made to find every mistake that every foreign media has ever commited (or just claim that they did) to preserve the “don’t trust anybody” narrative.
I am from Russia, it will be quite problematic to find specific fragments, but this is not hidden or denied by them themselves. Russian government media does not just create an average effect, they directly say that everyone is lying, you will never know the truth, so it does not matter, look for who benefits, there is only your homeland propaganda and propaganda from foreign agents funded by the State Department. And many of my relatives (not just old people or those who do not have access to the Internet) really think so.
I don’t know how i need to write to don’t have negative karma. I already read Hpmor and The Sequences. Edited: Apparently, I really just got into an unfortunate percentage of statistics, as stated in the answer below, if three times my comments went into minus immediately after publication and never into plus. Now everything is in order, my karma has ceased to be negative, so I even understood why the double voting function is needed (with high karma, it really gives a larger vote).
I think you are doing it okay.
Just accept that there is a certain amount of noise in the votes. Unless the karma is −5 or lower, chances are than in an hour it will be positive again. Complaining about −1 karma (or whatever was the value) only increases the noise.
Also, a certain small fraction of perfectly reasonable and true comments is going to get downvoted for stupid reasons. We are fallible humans, no matter how much we may believe otherwise. As long as it only happens rarely, it can be mostly ignored. Sucks when that happens in one of your first comments.
Your writing is fine. Keep it coming, we want to hear what it looks like to Russians.
Also, for the opinion “we will never know the truth” in the state media, there was an undermining of trust in science: films about the fact that water has a memory, about the dangers of GMOs and its ban, the dangers of vaccinations and chipization through them (which unexpectedly became a problem when it was necessary sell your own covid vaccine to people), terrible radiation from microwaves, phones and calling a red indicator on the TV a dangerous laser, homeopathy in official state recommendations for medicines, a battle of psychics that is presented as something documentary, not fiction. Not to mention the fact that the TV channel, where there was a film about the fact that the Earth is flat, was awarded an award for education.
Since the reaction is positive, I will continue to write my “view from the inside.” Many in Russia support what is happening, because they really believe that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, who are also called Russophobes, so the Jewish president does not bother anyone. When asked where these Russophobes are, they usually refer to the presence in Ukraine of someone like gopniks who can make you “explain for gear / Russian numbers.” Reports of bombings only reinforce this opinion, because if there are no Nazis, then who is bombing their own people? They also refer to 8 years of shelling of the Donbass, and if you were silent then, and now you are against the war, then you are a hypocrite, although given the uniformity and inappropriateness of the messages, there is a suspicion that these are bots. The fact that Russia unleashed the conflict in the Donbass is denied on the grounds that if the Russian troops wanted to, they would have captured the Donbass in a matter of days, not years, but now the Russian army is moving as carefully as possible, so it will take a month to reach Kyiv, and not 96 hours, so they don’t fight at night to let civilians sleep.
This point about Ukrainian neo-Nazis is very misunderstood by the West.
During the Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014, neo-Nazi groups occupied government buildings and brought about a transition of government.
Why are there neo-Nazis in Ukraine? Because during WWII, the Nazis and the USSR were fighting over Ukraine. Ukraine is today quite ethnically diverse, and some of the ‘western’ Ukrainians who were resentful of USSR rule and, later, Russian influence, have reclaimed nazi ideas as part of a far-right Ukrainian nationalism. Some of these nazi groups that were originally militias have been incorporated into the Ukrainian military.
This is all quite well documented:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Euromaidan_regional_state_administration_occupations
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
One of the regiments most well known to have Nazi ties was defeated at the Siege of Mariupol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Regiment
Naturally, this history is downplayed in presentations of Ukrainian nationalism targeted at the West, and emphasized in Russia depictions of Ukraine.
I’m not sure if this is a relevant/necessary/new addition, but I’ll say for testing that according to the Russian media, any reports of civilian casualties are either fake, or Ukrainian neo-Nazis are bombing their own citizens in order to denigrate Russia, and the destruction of tv towers and other own infrastructure due to the stupidity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
And in the Russian media they say that Zelensky threatened Russia with nuclear weapons that he can produce, and if Russia had not invaded Ukraine, then NATO would have attacked Russia, Yugoslavia is cited as an example.
There is also this isolating effect when the media tells a lie, e.g. denies some true fact X, and most people don’t buy it, but they decide “this is what we’re all conspiring to tell our enemies”. And while you’re busy trying to “convince” your opponent that X actually happened, you never get to discuss whether X is the right thing to do.