"Shoot such as frantic dogs"

The authorities began to fight against the quadroers - now they are massively poisoned in social networks. Novyevropa found 170 thousand comments with insults and calls for reprisals against children

Six months ago, most Russians did not know who the quadrobors were. The children in thematic groups wrote about their hobbies in social networks. But in the fall, the Russian authorities began the campaign to combat the "destructive movement." After that, a wave of hatred spread in social networks: children are offered to evict to the taiga, beat with sticks and euthanize. Novyevropa studied posts in the pro-government media and hundreds of thousands of comments on VKontakte about the quadrober in order to figure out how the attitude towards them from society and the authorities changed.

In the past two months, state media is actively discussing quadro -workers. Quadrobica (also quadrobing or quadrobrota) is a hobby popular in children and adolescents (usually under the age of 14), in which they imitate the movements and habits of animals: for example, running and jumping on all fours. Quadrobors often wear masks of cats, dogs and other animals, as well as gloves similar to paws and tails. Quadrobik is called unprofessional sport.

This entertainment began to gain popularity in Russia in the spring of this year, as follows from the statistics of Yandex's requests. The surge of its popularity in the past one and a half months has been associated with increased attention from officials and media, which are increasingly required to prohibit quadrobics, as well as introduce administrative and even criminal liability for the parents of quadroers, up to deprivation of parental rights. Now interest in this topic, based on Yandex’s requests, is 8.5 times higher than at the end of August, before the start of her discussions by officials and deputies.

Now quadrobors are surprisingly a lot of attention in the system media: on some days in October, interest in this topic even exceeded interest in the topic of migrants, against which there is unprecedented tightening of legislation in Russia (the popularity of this topic has been growing steadily since 2023). We calculated this using posts from 83 telegram channels of Russian pro-government media. Over the past year, they wrote 472 castrs.

How quadrober began to hate

We downloaded 510 thousand comments on posts about quadrobik on VKontakte and analyzed how the attitude of users to this hobby changed, and how the statements of Russian officials influenced this.

Until mid -April 2024, the children in thematic groups themselves wrote about quadrors in VK: they were looking for friends in interests and agreed on gatherings. As a rule, only hundreds of views and units of comments, and the attitude of comments (which were usually the quadrobors themselves), was most often neutral (68% of 316 comments), were gaining posts about quadribika then, as a rule. Although even then there were quadrobica haters, the share of negative comments was only 16%.

As we thought

We unloaded all the posts from the open pages of the VK at the request of the Quadrober and the Quadrobik for 2024 using the API VK, then downloaded comments on them (only 48.5 thousand posts and 510 thousand comments). In accordance with the base of the Botnadzor project, which is monitoring bots in VK, the share of bots comments in our unloading does not exceed 0.5%.

To analyze the proportion of negative, neutral and positive comments, we took random 400 comments for each week (or less, if there were less than 400 comments in a week) and analyzed them using the GPT-4O Mini model. We did not take into account weeks, which were less than 20 comments.

We limited ourselves to 400 comments, because the analysis of a larger number of texts using GPT would require significantly large time spent, and by such a sample you can already evaluate the proportion of posts with different tonality. Due to the fact that the posts for analysis are selected by accident, conclusions about them can be distributed to the entire data array. The error of our assessments (according to the formula for the error of assessment of parameter P in the binomy distribution) is from 1 to 2.5 percentage points for different values.

We used the GPT-4O Mini model using the API. In Prompt, we first explained the models that quadrobica is a game for children where they imitate animals. Then we asked to evaluate whether the commentator’s attitude to quadrobica is positive, negative or neutral, and whether the language of hatred is contained in the commentary. The language of hatred we called the calls to kill such children, send them to a psychiatric hospital, prohibit quadrobic, as well as direct insults to the quadrober.

Not all negative comments contain hatred: for example, there is a condemnation in the commentary “The World”, but there are no insults or calls for violence. In some cases, the differences between the presence and absence of a language of hatred are less obvious and more subjective. We checked several hundred comments marked by ChatGPT, and became convinced that although there are errors and inaccuracies, in the vast majority of cases the tonality and the presence of a chepping were determined correctly.

On April 18, 2024, the head of the “safe Internet League” Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of the “League of Safe Internet, drew attention to me:“ Many wrote to me that posts appeared in social networks in which they urge the quadrober to beat. This is bad, ”she said. The original post also contained a clarification: "PS: I propose to ban anything." On September 5, at the beginning of the wave of public attention, she edited the post, removing this phrase from there.

After her, the children's ombudsman Irina Volynets attracted the attention to this hobby on April 25. Then she urged to punish "for involving minors in the destructive movement of Furri."

Furri and quadrobic are different phenomena that are often identified in the media. Representatives of the Furri community dress in anthropomorphic animals and focus on the personalities of the character and costumes, without imitating the movements of real animals. Quadrobors, unlike Furry, emphasize physical exercises based on animal movements. The differences between the quadrabers and Furri regularly pay attention to the quadrobors themselves.

Volynets called Furri "sabotage against the population aimed at the disconnection of people, turning them into animals." After that, she gave comments several times to the pronounced media, where she explained the danger of quadrobics. These statements, like the post of Mizulina, did not cause a noticeable public outcry.

After the statement by Mizulina, and then Volynets, posts about children engaged in quadrobics on the streets of Russian cities, began to appear in regional publics in VK. Some of them looked neutral , others contained obvious condemnation . Such posts have already gained tens of thousands of views, but attention to this topic can hardly be called mass: until September, only 10-100 posts a week about quadrabers on open pages usually appeared in VK.

The attitude of most VK users towards this hobby, however, even then became predominantly negative.

In the week from April 15 to 22, the share of negative comments increased to 58%, and on average from late April to late August, it was 66%. The share of positive comments decreased to 12%, and neutral comments - to 22%.

Often one could see direct calls for violence against quadroers, insults and another language of hatred: such were 27% of comments. Users proposed sending such children to the taiga and a psychiatric hospital ( hereinafter, the quotes are given with the preservation of spelling and punctuation. - Approx. Ed. ):

• “Together with the parents to evict to the taiga, let the forests conquer the forests, there will be relatives, there will be fun!”

• "Where are you, Soviet" punitive "psychiatry?"

And some urge to beat and even kill children:

• "Give me a couple of pieces to scoop, I really wanted to"

• "They did not try to beat them with a stick?"

• “Who will go with me to shoot such dogs on September 1? Perhaps some of the euthanage? "

6 out of 10 comments with the language of hatred are left by men, their median age is 37 years old. Such calls for violence, apparently, are not punished either by social network or public administrators.

Hatred poured into the real world. So, on August 1, a group of adolescents attacked a quadrober girl in Lipetsk, reported telegram channels with reference to the mother of the victim. The initiator of the attack, according to the mother, was wrapped in the flag of Russia and shouted: “Go to Ukraine”, and also threatened to beat the child with sticks - then the girl managed to escape. On August 7, in the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, the participants of the gathering attacked the pepper can, after which two teenagers were taken away on the ambulance, the media wrote with reference to the Novosibirsk Chat Quadroberov.

How hate became mass

The quadrobors found wide public attention on September 2. Then, at the concert of the singer Mia, the boys on the stage brought a 8-year-old girl in a mask of a cat and a tail. The box publicly asked the girl if she was a quadrober, "God forbid." After an affirmative response, the audience began to shout “fu”.

The girl’s mother filed an application with the police, claiming that the words of the boyfriend publicly insulted her daughter. According to the mother, after the incident, the girl is afraid to go outside. The child was supported by Ekaterina Mizulina, Yegor Creed, Klava Coca and Ksenia Sobchak . Interest in the quadrabers against the background of this event, according to Yandex's search queries, increased more than four times.

From this moment on, officials began to speak massively about the destructive influence of this children's hobby. On September 5, Ekaterina Mizulina wrote that she does not support quadrabers, but against persecution of children. On September 10, Senator Natalya Kosikhina called for prohibiting the quad culture. On September 14, in the Russian Orthodox Church, the ROC was called "the propaganda of return to barbarism and the wilds of paganism."

On October 3 reached a new level of discussion: then the deputy Kolunov proposed to bring to the administrative and criminal liability of parents who encouraging children-quoters, as well as to deprive them of their parental rights. Later, the initiative was also told by deputies of Lantratov and lead . From this moment on, the popularity of the quadrober request in Yandex increased by 2.5 times.

The initiative of the ban on quadrober, however, did not support some deputies and officials. For example, deputy Vitaliy Milonov claimed that he was not ready to “artificially warm up interest in this strange movement” through prohibitions. Deputy Anatoly Wasserman agrees with him: “The ban is the most effective way to popularize,” he said. The head of the Family Protection Committee Nina Ostanina opposed the bill and stated that she did not know the victims of quadrobing.

On October 8, the discussion of the quadrobera rose another level higher: the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked Armenian colleague Ararat Mirzoyan, is there any quadro -workers in Armenia: “Do you have quadrobors? Children dress up in dogs. This is one of the most important news. They walk like animals. " Mirzoyan said that he knew about the movement of quadroers, and called him new. From this moment on, the number of views that gain posts about quadro -workers in state media has become close to the popularity of migrant posts.

On October 9, the representative of the Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova called Quadrobing a “destructive phenomenon” and noted that such children probably lack love.

On October 11, the State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that “people are pushed to refuse not only gender, but also human identity,” but Washington and Brussels are behind this.

Of the 472 posts about quadrabers, published in 2024 by the prosperous media, 60% were written in October and 30% in September. More than 70% of them contained a condemnation and more than 40% - allegations of the need to ban, punishment or treatment of quadrober.

After the surges of interest in quadroertia in the fall, the activity of commenting on this topic also increased sharply: in the first week of October, 13.5 thousand posts about quadrabers and more than 105 thousand comments were published in the VK, and on the second - 18.4 thousand posts and 166 thousand comments; This is 2 times more comments than for the whole summer. According to the VTsIOM, now 58% of Russians know or heard about quadrabers.

Among the commentators there are people who support children engaged in quadrobics, although over time there is less such an attitude - now there are no more than 6%of them:

• “Leave the children !!! Parents themselves see and know that their children just play! "

• “You read comments and think, these people seemed to play animals as a child. At all times there were all kinds of subcultures. These will also play and calm down, why prohibit? "

• “They just play, they are children. We were also once children, and there were no games. And now they have a panic "

In three quarters of cases, women write such texts, their median age - 30 years.

In general, against the backdrop of numerous statements by officials, the attitude of users towards quadders worsened even more, and the number of hatred increased: if at the time of the scandal with Mia Boyka the share of comments with the language of hatred fell slightly and was 21%, then in the second week she reached 40% - this is an absolute record. The share of negative comments from an average value of 66% rose to 80%.

According to the data from October 7 to 13, VK users publish almost 10 thousand comments per day containing insults and calls for reprisal against quadrober. Here are examples from last week:

• "In cells and in animal receivers, although for a month, and there you look and change their minds"

• "Plant. And the quadroberes - to the shelter. "Relatives" - deprive of rights to children "

• "Well, if you can shoot such as frantic dogs"

• "Put and piss"

• "And if you knock these unnecessary ones in a car, will have to be responsible for the cat?"

Russian officials and pro -government media continue to operate the theme of quadrober. On September 15, deputy Denis Maidanov confirmed that work on the draft ban on the ban on quadbind is underway, and on October 16, deputy Nina Ostanina, who had previously expressed against the ban on the quadrober, invited schoolchildren to shoot them on video and ridicule.