Thread: Sochi Olympics and the Law against Gays in Russia +

Originally Posted by Paul G.

Он имеет в виду, если кто-то улыбается без видимой причины.
Как известно, "смех без причины - признак дурачины" (proverb).

I would think that if one of your friends is pointing a camera at you and saying "Smile!", that bloody well qualifies as a видимая причина!!!

Unless it was an invisible CIA camera, I suppose...

P.S. To put it another way, Юрка's argument that "Russians don't smile on the street" would be very logical IF someone were claiming that these "From Russia with Love" photos were random, "candid" photos of random passersby, taken by automatic traffic cameras!

But I'm not claiming that the photos were "random", and neither is anyone else; we can all agree that the photos were posed.

The disagreement is whether these photos were posed by "ordinary LGBT Russians" as part of an инициатива снизу, or if they were the product of a professional PR agency funded by foreign money.

And I stand by my argument that nothing in the photos -- including the smiles -- suggests "expensive and foreign". Has Yurka never heard the word "flashmob"? This sort of инициатива снизу can be done very cheaply nowadays; all you need is a Facebook group, email access, some digital cameras, and perhaps one or two volunteers with free time to help organize it. In other words, everything needed is either free of cost, or very cheap.

The only thing I don't understand is this: Does Yurka have:

(a) A psychological need to believe in foreign conspiracies against Russia?

or

(b) A psychological unwillingness to believe that LGBT Russians actually exist? (I once read somewhere that during the Soviet period, there were some Russian linguists who argued that words like х*й and п**да must have been borrowed from a non-Slavic language like Turkic or Mongolian, because the native Slavic soul was (self-evidently) incapable of producing such filth! Of course, I'm not saying that MOST Soviet linguists believed such nonsense -- I'm just saying that there will always be certain individuals who are ready to believe any sort of stupid theory if it fits their worldview.)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

A psychological unwillingness to believe that LGBT Russians actually exist?

Я верю, что они на самом деле существуют в России. И что это меняет?

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

A psychological need to believe in foreign conspiracies against Russia?

В заговор не верю, так как всё давно делается открыто.
Вы в курсе, что в 20-ом веке была интервенция США на территорию России (города Мурманск и Владивосток), и там американцы строили для нас концентрационный лагеря? Короче, кого бы Америка ни поддерживала в нашем обществе, я автоматически считаю их иностранными агентами.

P.S. Видели проект, поддержанный США: Соединённые Штаты Сибири? Вроде чистое искусство, но платит Америка, а рисуют такое (явная поддержка территориального сепаратизма):

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