Translated material
Roman Leibov. Checkers out!
On November 30 , 1999, at the end of the 20th century, on Tuesday, Alexey Tolkachev wrote in his diary: “Is it even possible in Russian? Well, finally.”
The next Russian entry, made a month later, read : “It’s been a while since I picked up checkers.”
As far as I know, these are the first entries in Russian in LiveJournal diaries.
It would be strange not to talk to Alexey.
Alexey, what is it like to be the father of such a strange but talented son as LJ?
What is "father"? A father is the one who watered and fed, and not the one who, excuse me, “does not remember the hour of conception exactly.” I am a prodigal father who accidentally found out that he, it turns out, has an adult son. And now he is touched, proud, and claims some rights.
But still, what was it like with the hour of conception?
5 years ago, I heard the following problem from an American student acquaintance: “You are standing at a railway switch. In the distance, three people are walking along the bridge, strangers to you personally. A train is rushing towards them at full speed. According to the conditions of the problem, you cannot shout to them, and they will probably die under the wheels of the train. The only thing you can do is move the switch. The trouble is that there is also an innocent person wandering along the siding, who will die if you save those three. Will you move the switch?" Students were required to choose an answer and justify it in writing. A friend of mine received a C - I don’t know by what criteria the answers were assessed. I was interested in the dilemma, and I decided to bring it up for discussion in my then Russian-language club - a forum for regulars of the site Anekdot.ru. Not even the site itself, but its guest book. You probably know how such circles were and are folded? On Anekdote.ru there were already three of them (intended by the owner of the site for completely different things): “Live broadcast” (where I went), “Your opinion” (where snobs went) and “Discussion club” (which I didn’t go to, so I don’t know who went). When our “Live Broadcast” began to be littered with unwanted characters, we, the regulars, left our homes without a scandal and opened our own forum based on UBB: Ultimate Bulletin Board with the beautiful name “Almira”. It was there that everyone brought their problems, joys, mysteries and discoveries. I think that at least half of us lived in the USA and Canada, the rest - in Israel, Moscow, Siberia, in general, geography standard for the web in 1999. I posted my problem in the philosophical section of the forum and decided to provide it - for clarity - with an automated voting system. Then, if you remember, all these forums and boards were poorer, voting was done manually or through external sites. This is the site I found. It was called www.freevote.com I filled out my problem there, gave alternative answers, and inserted the link where it was needed.
I don’t remember the results of the vote, but I well remember the agony that the dilemma caused among the most conscientious, including the story of how one of the participants (who answered third) chose “Yes” and, seeing the statistics “66.6% in favor,” took it for a sign from above. Having calmed down, he soberly reasoned that if he had voted “no”, the numbers would still have been the same, only in the opposite direction. I then went to freevote several more times, trying to come up with interesting votes, but no one answered them. One fine day, the site's author, Brad Fitzpatrick, advertised his new project LiveJournal.com. It seemed that he liked compound domain names, and maybe simpler ones were already difficult to score at that time. I went in, registered, left a couple of entries and abandoned the couple years old When they told me about LiveJournal as a phenomenon, I was pleasantly surprised.
It turned out that I, as an early adopter, am entitled to many benefits available only to paid users. In particular, I immediately had 15 invitation codes in my piggy bank, of which I spent only half in three years. And freevote.com, I checked, rested in God (see also http://www.livejournal.com/users/at/867.html ).
How did you think of poking at Russian letters?
It would be strange if he didn't poke. In those years, the Internet was my only outlet, my Russian social circle. Since then, it has turned from an outlet into a habitat and even threatens to give me a second profession. And then it was necessary to immediately test the new toy for compatibility with the Russian language. Computers, operating environments, browsers and websites were different then; we did not accept Russian fonts and keyboard drivers as given.
Why didn’t the Russian environment in LJ develop then? After all, in 1999 there were many Russians who were quite fluent in writing (or what do they know now?). And LJ's progressiveness was quite obvious.
The project was not advertised at all - certainly not on the RuNet. LJ, in my opinion, is a unique phenomenon - a snowball that turned into an avalanche. Like any good avalanche, it began gradually. I don’t remember other similar sites in the history of the Internet. Somehow it looks like lycos.com started, but where is it now? Wednesday happened, but not in the month when I came across LJ, but when exactly - I was not notified, and I did not check later. When two years later the environment was alive and thriving, I joined it. In 1999, I had about two dozen regular online interlocutors; if I had shared my find with them, who knows, the birth of LiveJournal could have happened a year or a month earlier. I don’t know how long I delayed the arrival of LJ, but just in case, I’m ashamed. However, even my inertia did not stop the wheel of history.
But you still didn’t continue writing in Russian then. Why?
Because he latently understood what LJ is valued by millions today: this is not just a diary, but a way to interest the world in oneself. Therefore, all the early, naive, semi-literate notes were made, although quite sincerely, but with the expectation of someone who would read and say: “Hello, who are you? Let’s be friends.” I don’t think there were many Russians among the 720 LJ users at that time. At the same time, I did not advertise my recordings among my friends from “real life”. I wanted a mysterious stranger or stranger from a neighboring neighborhood to come out to me.
Did it work out, by the way? Or did the strangers never come out?
Not a single comment.
This attitude lasted for about a month. When I returned to LiveJournal two years later, I did so at the invitation of a distant Moscow friend, and therefore the posts from then on were in Russian. Except for a few related to American politics.
Do you often read other people's diaries? How much does LiveJournal appeal to you in general?
I read it from cover to cover once or twice - our man went, say, as a semi-savage to America to earn money, and every day he found 15-30 minutes to write down sensations and experiences. This is interesting. It is unrealistic to read the entire journal of one of the thinkers - even in a week. Too much and too smart. I appreciate posts like this when they appear on my friend feed. I read the feed, sometimes I read the comments, sometimes I read the friend feed of friends, do you know about such a service? I haven't logged in for so long that I don't remember how to do it.
Yes, www.livejournal.com/users/username/friendsfriends/ - but it only works for paid users.
A great way to kill a couple of hours and replenish your clip of quasi-friends. Now I have no problems with extra time, and virtual friends have been replaced by real work and new hobbies. Although, when I need to quickly select a translation option, I go there, to ru_translate. The quality is not the highest, but the speed of response and friendliness are unrivaled. There are (there were) times when I foamed at the mouth to prove to someone that they, all of humanity, needed LiveJournal, that their lives would change irreversibly. It is quite possible that these people are already on LiveJournal, but I don’t read them.
Do you differentiate between LJ and LJ? That is, despite the perfect identity of technology, these are different cultural phenomena? Why? And how does this difference manifest itself?
Hard to say. I don’t perceive the non-Russian-speaking part of LJ/LJ at all, for me it is a purely Russian phenomenon, so whatever you call it, the essence will not change. Our people talk about “false cats”, “false crashes”, “false users”, hence the Latin abbreviation is well known. Last year, I left an ironic entry in my LiveJournal: “And here, it turns out, they write in English,” and asked my friends to share links to interesting English-language diaries. Nothing good came of this. By the way, here’s the difference for you: we have “friends” and “crushes,” while “they” have “friends” and “crushes.” We understand and appreciate the difference between virtual and real and use English terms to highlight it. I have never seen American LJ users have 500-1000 friends, friends, whatever you want. Perhaps because they take the term literally. And I have never seen them publish mathematical and language riddles, make news digests or entries in other people's magazines, etc. Perhaps because I wasn't looking. Bisons, monsters, giants of thought and fathers of Russian democracy have entrenched themselves in LiveJournal, and spears are breaking around him in the press. I didn’t notice any of this in connection with LJ. Here are the tests "Which Pokemon are you?" - they can do that. As we can, by the way. It’s good that we haven’t lost our sense of humor yet and don’t take ourselves and LJ too seriously.
Brief autobiography
Alexey Tolkachev was born in 1970 in Moscow. In 1977, he was sent to special school number 26 and for the next ten years he resisted attempts to teach him English. In 1985, he discovered computers and decided that he would be a programmer. In 1987 he entered the Moscow Aviation Institute named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics. In 1988, I read James Michener's book "The Drifters" and decided that I would see the world. In 1991 he entered the business school of the Russian-American Independent University. He worked as a translator and guide for visiting American businessmen. In 1992, he was sent to a summer internship at the University of California at Irvine, where he continued to study the laws of supply and demand. When asked what he missed most, he answered that money and offered his services. In 1993, he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences and went to California to finish his studies. In 1994, as an American student, he went on an exchange trip to Belgium. On September 24, 1994, I discovered Stella Artois beer. He traveled around Europe for four months, locking himself in train toilets from ticket inspectors. On November 24, 1994, while in Paris, I experienced a special feeling. In 1995, he received a master's degree in business administration and met a nice girl with whom he still lives. He worked (and for some reason still works) as a programmer in various offices. In 1997, he discovered Runet, where he has been disappearing ever since. In 1998 he sent best joke of the year on anekdot.ru. He translated Joe Dassin and Jacques Brel , and was going to sue Kortnev over the song “If There Were No You,” until he realized that only the first line was the same. On November 30, 1999, he founded LiveJournal, the Russian branch of LiveJournal. Also in 1999, he acquired a DVD player and became a movie fan. He wrote for the film portal film.ru , fought for the correct translation into cinema. Compiled a database of complex, witty and misunderstood film titles as part of the Interpreter project. In November 2000, he came up with the quiz “ Quotation Game ,” which is still being played to this day with the help of a group of enthusiasts. Collected 13,717 quotes from domestic and foreign films. In November 2003, he decided to become a sports journalist and offered his services to a respected newspaper with the funny name " Soviet Sport" ". Since then, he has been covering the game and life of Russian hockey players in the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and other NHL clubs. On February 3, 2004, I spoke by phone with Phil Esposito and now does not know what to strive for next.