We've read as far as snails

Once again about the unpredictability of censorship and the non-obviousness of truth

One of my acquaintances, after graduating from school, served his military service and went to work in the police (at that time we still had police, not police). He had a special mark: he was a man with a complete lack of sense of humor. When someone made fun of him in front of him, he thought long and hard and quietly asked those around him what the point of the joke was.

Having stood guard over order and the rule of law, my friend suddenly said:

- How I love jokers! Adore!

- Why did the jokers fascinate you so much? — I asked carefully, trying to make my question not sound ironic.

“You see, a person makes a joke, and that’s it, a ready protocol,” the young police officer explained seriously. “We don’t need to strain ourselves or invent anything at all.” Was he joking? Well, take it warm! Our whole plan rests on such jokers.

That was a parable, and now let's talk about snails, censorship and a sense of humor. And at the same time about whether there is a place for jokes in our wonderful state.

The other day, the information space was rocked by the news that a certain publishing house demanded to censor a book about the sexual life of animals, which was being prepared by the scientific and entertainment magazine Batrachospermum, because of “LGBT* propaganda.” The messages abundantly quoted the magazine's editor-in-chief, Viktor Kovylin, who wrote in the telegram channel, in particular, the following:

“...neutral scientific descriptions of homosexual behavior, without disgust and criticism, now fall under the propaganda of non-traditional relationships! Hermaphrodites have also fallen victim to censorship: snails, slugs and planarians will now have to apologize in turtlenecks and switch to dioeciousness in order for the book to be published!

The variety of genital organs is also prohibited: only penises and vaginas according to GOST can be discussed without condemnation, and pedipalps, aedeagus, hectocotyls and phallosomas with gynosomes are propaganda of non-traditional genitalia!” According to him, the text analysis for the publishing house was carried out by AI.

Personally, I learned a lot from this post. For example, to my shame, I did not know that planarians are hermaphrodites. To be honest, this was the first time I heard about planaria, as well as about aedeagus. I heard about pedipalps somewhere. The word is beautiful and sounds stylish.

In general, this text began to be cited as the most absurd example of censorship to date, so widely that Kovylin had to explain that this was actually banter. “In connection with the wild spread of our sobs about censorship on the Internet, let us clarify that this paragraph is an artistic exaggeration, a half-joke, brought to the point of absurdity in the traditions of “Batrachospermum.” All scientific information in the book will remain without distortion, despite the quirks of the AI. The publishing house did not oblige us to anything, we are talking about “wishes” on the part of the AI, which the publishing house and I are jointly opposing. So the news feed was made up out of thin air,” he wrote.

Now it’s a shame for the snails. Does this mean our Russian snails will remain hermaphrodites?

But in general, it seems that we don’t have to worry about animals: they will continue to reproduce their species as it is more convenient for them, and not as required by the RKN. But I beg to differ about the fact that the news feed was made up out of thin air. Alas, the news story is just worthy of discussion.

It breaks up into several parallel lines. The first is the topic of using AI in censorship, and it is truly “both sad and funny.”

The fact that publishing houses, unable to cope with the onslaught of demands from supervisory authorities and the absolute uncertainty of legislation, were involved in censoring AI was discussed last fall. Now, probably, the vast majority of publishing houses use AI in this way in one way or another and, in general, do not hide it.

Immediately, examples of what AI suggests censoring began to pour in. EKSMO General Director Evgeniy Kapyev amused his telegram subscribers in October with the fact that, it turns out, “AI testing persistently includes beer in the list of drugs”

(I immediately remembered the hero of “The Tale of Troika” by the Strugatsky brothers, the monumental Lavr Fedotovich Vunyukov: “Beer means drinking”). The comments immediately provided other examples: AI perceives “heroines” as “heroin”, does not distinguish the gender of Asian characters, etc. Since then, a lot of this has accumulated, and I see the positive side of it: this

a) it can be really funny,

b) perfectly emphasizes the absurdity of what is happening.

Or is it not?

And here we move on to the second storyline. Its essence is that the story of the snails clearly showed how much fiction and reality are now mixed. I am sure that just a couple of years ago no media would have seen an information feed in Kovylin’s text. This would be perceived as a joke - whether it was successful or not, let everyone decide for themselves. I would smile.

But now it never occurred to anyone that this was banter. They laughed at the censorship of “non-traditional genitalia”, and they laughed rightly; they should laugh at it. But they presented it as a fact!

And go figure out where the fake is. After all, in the end it may turn out that a fake is a refutation itself. You never know, the publisher didn’t expect such a response and decided to somehow give it back.

Such confusion is inevitable in our conditions. You can’t check every message of this kind—the insanity has become too strong. And, for example, Ursula Le Guin’s book “The Left Hand of Darkness” with a description of the “androgynous” community is being withdrawn from sales quite seriously, and the fines for it are not at all humorous.

So why not believe that the RKN got to the bottom of the snails? What, snails shouldn't obey the law? Publishers definitely should.

But the main thing in all this is that we are no longer able to understand where the joke is. It can be funny, but overall it's not funny at all.

This is one of the results of the experiment that the authorities are conducting on society, constructing a parallel reality. The pillars of this construction are manipulation of facts, lies and propaganda. In this parallel reality, an illusion of normality is created for what cannot possibly be normal: military operations with their victims, rising prices, blocking of major messengers, repression and censorship. In this reality, everything is turned upside down. This reality itself is one huge fake.

But the present bursts into our kingdom of distorting mirrors, destroys the pretentious picture, and chaos begins, in which reality is more absurd than any fiction. As a result, no comic “Panorama” is capable of making a news feed laugh: if you remove the warning that it is a fake, you will not be able to distinguish it from some news agency. Probably, jokes should now be warned in advance, and every banter post should be marked with the “sarcasm” tag.

All this is aggravated by the fact that the attitude towards jokes in Russia today is harsh. The state does not approve of irony. In times like these, everything should be extremely serious—only enemies of the people, “foreign agents,” are officially allowed to make jokes.

For example, comedian Artemy Ostanin made an unsuccessful joke about a disabled person. It seems that jokes should not be punished, but in our reality this is a crime, and Ostanin received almost six years in prison. For a joke. Well, once upon a time people were imprisoned and even shot for telling jokes, so there is room for improvement.

Our state is vulnerable and sensitive. It does not forgive a lot of things, but it is especially sensitive to a situation in which it considers itself humiliated. The state cannot afford to look stupid—everyone around them must look foolish.

You can’t joke about “traditional values” because it devalues ​​them, although no one understands what they actually are. You can’t joke about the heroes of the Northern Military District, it belittles their image. And you really shouldn’t make jokes about the authorities - because the fear of losing won’t last long, and then a protest won’t be far away.

But humor is in great demand among people, who nowadays become depressed after their first trip to the store. People need to be distracted and entertained. Therefore, I would not be surprised if the Kremlin soon tries to monopolize the right to humor, so that jokes carry the correct ideological and political charge. And there will be no confusion, everyone will immediately understand where is fake and where is the crystal clear truth.

So things are complicated now with humor throughout the country. No, of course, humor prolongs life, but, as the depressed Baron Munchausen from the film by Mark Zakharov said, “it prolongs life for those who laugh, and shortens it for those who joke.” And you have to keep in mind that every joke can be taken seriously.

And draw up a protocol on this matter.

* The so-called international movement is recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation and is prohibited.