Hey everyone.
I'm from Ukraine, and I'm honestly tired of staying inside both the Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking internet.
I know English well enough (learned it in school), but I've never really lived in the English-speaking internet. Like, sure, I know who PewDiePie, IShowSpeed, and Asmongold are, but I don't actually understand the culture around them or the wider online space.
I want to start consuming English-language content properly, but I have no idea where to begin. I want to understand the memes, the drama, the ongoing discussions, the personalities basically the whole ecosystem.
The problem is... I don't even know how to define what I'm looking for. If I knew exactly what I wanted, I'd probably be able to find it myself. Since I don't, I'm asking here. Sorry if this is kind of vague.
For anyone willing to read a wall of text, here's why I'm looking to leave the internet spaces I'm used to.
The Ukrainian internet is extremely focused on itself. Most discussions revolve around domestic politics, the war, or urgent social issues. That's understandable, of course, but it also creates a very tense atmosphere. It feels like almost everything is political. Most of our biggest YouTube channels are political channels, and there's relatively little entertainment content. Living in that constant state of tension gets exhausting after a while. I also just want to get outside of this relatively small cultural bubble.
The Russian-speaking internet has almost the opposite problem. It's largely apolitical not because politics don't exist, but because most people seem to actively avoid talking about the country's crises, the war, or domestic problems. That's true for everyone, from average users to huge creators. There are political bloggers, sure, but in my opinion they're usually terrible. One group keeps saying Russia is about to collapse any day now, while another mostly talks about Ukrainians as a way to distract from internal issues. And people who seriously discuss politics often end up being treated like weird fringe figures.
There's a ton of entertainment content in Russian, but there's another problem: mainstream internet culture is absolutely saturated with far-right "edgy" humor. Endless jokes about feminists, Black people, minorities, etc., along with a constant stream of misinformation built around those topics. The whole environment just feels incredibly toxic. It seems eager to sneer at almost everything. That general misanthropy has seeped into almost every corner of entertainment, and I've reached the point where I just don't enjoy being around it anymore.
So... where should I start if I want to get into the English-speaking internet?
P.S. One thing I've struggled to find is something similar to what I used to watch in Russian. There were Twitch streamers who'd casually talk about philosophy, history, politics, literature, or other "intellectual" topics, but in a very informal and funny way. Not university lectures or serious debates.
More like: "lmao, did you know Nietzsche supposedly drank his own urine out of a boot?" That kind of vibe. Half entertainment, half genuine discussion. The intellectual part came from all the references and the fact that serious ideas were mixed with jokes instead of being presented academically.
Does that kind of content exist in English? If so, who should I check out?
Well this is an ok start, I hope? Hexbear is chill and funny while handling very serious topics. Otherwise the English internet is pretty much reddit, Twitter, and the other major social media like tik tok. And those are pretty annoying, if you ask me. If you find anywhere else, I'd love to know too.
Yeah, I figured as much. It's just that the internet in post-Soviet countries is kind of unique in that sense. It's really isolated, but at the same time incredibly dense. These days, pretty much all online life revolves around Telegram. The thing is, it's almost impossible to get into it if you weren't born here. Not because you wouldn't understand what's being talked about you just wouldn't know where to even start looking.
Blogs are actually still alive here. Pretty much everyone I know has a personal Telegram channel where they just post about their life. It honestly feels a lot more like the early internet. Those channels have everything, and the biggest reason is that Telegram has very little moderation, so you can find literally anything there.
If you're interested, I can give you an example. In Ukraine there's this guy named Sasha Fokin. When he was a kid, he appeared on a Ukrainian TV show that basically tried to help struggling families. I'm sure every country has some version of that kind of show. Back then he became known as a "problem child" I won't get into the details. Fast forward something like nine years (I'm not exactly sure how many), and now he runs a Telegram channel where he talks about his favorite transgender adult performers, posts coprophilia, and argues about politics. Stuff like that is actually pretty common across the post-Soviet internet, especially in Russia. If you're curious, I can name a few more people.
My point is that there's very little moderation, so you end up with a lot of fringe personalities, but also a lot of genuinely interesting subcultures and discussions. If all you read is Facebook, I feel like the biggest news you'll see is that firefighters rescued another cat from a tree. I'm not saying I'm specifically looking for fringe content in the English-speaking internet, but I do want to see the kind of stuff people actually talk about. It just so happens that people in the post-Soviet internet are really into weird, fringe content, so over here it's basically mainstream.
Lmao never expected to see Sashko mentioned on hexbear
What was your first thought when you read my post?
I'm from Russia and I'm almost in the opposite situation. I've been using English-speaking internet for so long that I don't engage much with Runet (besides scrolling telegram and sometimes watching random youtube videos). People sometimes find it weird when I don't know about the latest viral thing that some content creator did
You might enjoy leftist podcast space - Chapo Trap House, TrueAnon, Deprogram and such. These people can be quite knowledgeable and eloquent when speaking about a topic but also be super vulgar at the same time. Some video essayists can have a similar vibe - try watching hbomberguy.
edit: oh, there is a streamer named "livagar" who kinda fits the bill. She knows a bunch of stuff about philosophy and marxist theory but is also a huge shitposter