Thread by @KevinRothrock

With this tweet, I think I’ve managed to trigger more people than with anything else I’ve ever written on this network. Russian chauvinists, anti-American edgelords, anti-consumerists, and everything else, in between and side to side.

https://twitter.com/kevinrothrock/status/1505942013837033473

A lot of the mockery assumes that I personally think these brands are essential components of freedom. No, except for a free press. But the rest are important in the Russian context for specific reasons.

Disney matters least on my (certainly incomplete) list. I see it as a stand-in for Russia’s inclusion in Western mass culture. Disney partnered with Russian film companies to make movies like the immensely popular Poslyedniy Bogatyr. (Earned $30 mil on a budget of $8 mil.)

Disney movies are very popular in Russia. MCU properties like Spider-Man earn tens of millions of dollars. Raya, Free Guy, Cruella, Black Widow, Eternals — all top earning films last year in Russia. They like Disney content there. Like in most places.

A LOT of people laugh about McDonald’s being on the list. After all, any self-respecting person knows it’s pig food, right? Well, the chain is so popular in Russia—and such a vital employer—that the govt has threatened to nationalize it. Mocking Micky D’s is a Western trope.

People also laugh about sugar, since they see the word and assume its only use is candy or pastries, & won’t everyone be so healthy and un-American without sugar? Russians use sugar to create fruit preserves. If sanctions cause food shortages, these supplies could be important.

The mockery of Facebook and Instagram is also framed as bashing American parochialism, when in fact people fail to grasp that these networks have been essential information platforms amid the Kremlin’s control over the traditional mass media. Instagram especially.

And then there are naturally people who see the phrase “free press” and instantly go into shock, choking on their own condemnations of the MSM evils and Soros and so on. These people have no idea what a truly authoritarian mediasphere is.

Others have rightly pointed out that consumer products like iPhones are too expensive for most Russians. Absolutely, but it doesn’t take “most Russians” to exert themselves and change the domestic political situation.

Stanislav Belkovsky used to theorize about the “percent” threshold for this stuff. Opposition protests throughout the Putin era have typically been biggest in affluent urban areas. The unspoken social contract used to trade material well-being for loyalty. Anyway, think it over.