To whom the pranker calls

On September 15, a message appeared in the news about the conversation of the famous musician and part-time fighter for the rights of the LGBT community of Elton John with Vladimir Putin
Before this sensation was refuted by Putin’s spokesman Peskov and its authors themselves, the prankers Vovan and Lexus, many leading media of the world and Russia managed to illuminate the topic. The participation of the state media in the spread of dubious news seems to be the most curious in the whole history and once again makes us think about where we are going.

Firstly, no one in state editions was surprised that Putin could take and call, at least Elton John. Given what Putin had done in recent years-it is really really difficult to be surprised at anything. Stephen Sigal, Gerard Depardieu, Mickey Rourke - why not Elton John?

Secondly, the news reported by the victim of the pranker draw was very to the court. In conditions of obvious isolation of Putin from the world elite of roads, each signal from the other side, each contact and each non -enormous review. In this sense, the conversation with Elton John could well seem to be the editors of the official media excellent news: the musician is a world star, Putin once again replayed everyone - since they do not want to communicate with him politics, he will communicate with the leaders of public opinion! Moreover, inspired by the conversation with the imaginary Putin, the musician was really quite complemented by the President of Russia and even managed to assure that Petro Poroshenko, whom he met before, used him without his knowledge. This is all the more in the topic: the studs addressed to Ukraine for many months have been almost a mandatory ingredient for the news distributed by state media.

Thirdly, Putin’s operational inaccessibility can be stated even for the largest federal media: it seems that no one dared to disturb the presidential press service with requests for the authenticity of conversation with Elton John and at first the decision to promote the news was made in the editorial offices.

In fact, all these are parts of one big problem - the degradation of the entire information space of Russia. On the one hand, the “opinions of foreign media” are drawn from marginal sites and just private blogs of crazy conspiracy therapists, and the nonsense published there is actively replicated by the most official and respectable publications of Russia. On the other hand, the characters of the Biker Surgeon, Hacker Hell, Prainer Vovan and others become internal newsmakers. This is not to mention the endless dentistry of the leaders of foreign states, oppositionists and all those who had the negligence of being counted, as well as about crowds of bots, which depict public opinion on the Internet around the clock.

Pradoxy paradoxically similar to imitational democracy: a citizen seems to be talking to Putin, with the authorities, but in fact - with pranker. As a result, everyone laughs at him, and he feels like an idiot. So in a sense we are all-the victims of the pranker Vova.

Photo: Evgenia Albats, YouTube.ru