“Damn, why am I writing this?”: Why the telegram “Former” is not so harmless
alexander savina
The future of Telegram is under threat, but so far it only contributes to the popularity of the messenger: yesterday he headed the top Russian App Store, and new channels continue to appear almost every day. The most discussed among them - "The Former" - appeared a couple of weeks ago, and during that time managed to collect more than 39 thousand subscribers and even acquire native advertising.
The “former” imitates the messages of a girl who is experiencing hard parting, is looking for new reasons to talk to her boyfriend and is trying to return it - the answer to the messages, of course not, because of which the girl is even more angry. The author of the "Former" Artur Chaparyan - a comedian who became famous for the TNT show "Stand Up" and the "Evening Night" YouTube show - described it this way: "There the former type sends messages, where after parting you came out the winner." Most of the messages are short ("we then both talked too much. Especially I," "did you block me?) Very manly," like you didn’t notice me today?)) "), But there is also a long confession (" I know you will not forgive, and even if you say that I have forgiven, I will not believe in it, because I know you. I know you too well. I wish you happiness and find the very ... for now "), and the photograph of the" former "in linen, taken from Instagram blogger Ekaterina Zueva.
This is not the newest technique - for example, Twitter "Quotes of ordinary people" is built on the same principle, in which everyone sooner or later recognizes himself. True, the difference between them is still felt: there is no snobbery in the Quotes of Ordinary People, and the “Former” pretty quickly passes the line from irony to ridicule. Phrases of the "former" are built on typical ideas about how a woman behaves after a break: while a man is happy that he is finally free, the girl cries, eats ice cream with a spoon from a can and remembers the happy time spent together. It is believed that a woman is more dependent on relationships, more invested in them, more often seeks to control the partner and "chokes" him with her attention (hello "overly attached girlfriend"). In reality, of course, everything is more complicated: each person experiences a gap in his own way, and while some cannot stop crying, others are angry with their former partner or are altogether relieved. A study by Binghamton University, for example, showed that women are harder to experience an emotional break, but men generally find it harder to recover from it: according to scientists, they often don’t manage to completely withdraw from the gap - they simply decide to "move on."
It’s not worth holding on to relationships that have become obsolete, but it’s not so simple: a woman and a man can be an “obsessive ex”
Here one could take advantage of the eternal argument “Yes, you simply have no sense of humor” - but not everything is so simple. Of course, the channel “Former” is a joke, but it is built on the popular stereotype, which is reproduced by numerous jokes about separation. Both men and women can hardly survive the gap (remember the popular phrase “It is snowing. On the first day of winter!” From the film “What Men Talk About” - the final “bitch” parodies already male sufferings). Both those and others often can’t immediately and completely break off close relationships, from time to time they try to talk with a former partner or at least spend hours on Facebook looking for new details from his life. But if for men this behavior is considered a romantic gesture, then for women it is condemned. As a result, the latter try to hide their feelings and hold back - not in order not to hurt themselves again and recover from the gap faster, but in order not to be considered “hysterical” and remain “normal”. The rapid popularity of the "Former" - another confirmation of this: in the same male channel "Former" is almost a hundred times less subscribers.
All this, of course, does not mean that one cannot laugh at the "former" - the question is how to do this and on what ground the joke lies. For example, the CW serial “Crazy Former” is devoted to the same topic: the main character Rebecca decides to change her life abruptly and moves to Josh's hometown of her first love, hoping to reunite with him. Rebecca was played by the creator of the series, Rachel Bloom, and the show itself is partly, albeit very conditionally, based on her personal experience, so everything that is happening is perceived primarily as self-irony: we see what is happening through the eyes of the heroine, we recognize ourselves her actions, we understand it and can sympathize.
In the Russian context, everything is perceived differently, and the Former Channel produces a different effect: teasing, mocking the weaker. In addition, it does not leave the feeling that someone is watching you through the keyhole, or simply reading intimate correspondence without asking. Laughing at the channel are men who believe that they had just such an “ex”, and women who are willing to maintain a misguided stereotype about obsessive “exs” in order to look “more advantageous” than others. Those who are openly ready to recognize themselves in the "former" are much less. Instead of laughing at the situation in which everyone happened (who did not write another SMS under a false pretext, he did not live!), We laugh at emotions and at the fact that we do not always manage to restrain them. Of course, it’s better to give up the habit of holding on to relationships that have become obsolete, but this is not so simple: there can be anyone in the role of an “obsessive ex” simply because we can’t turn off feelings when the relationship ends. The path to this simple thought will be even longer, while we seriously believe that there is a “winner” and a “loser” in parting and that there is a single “right” way to survive the gap.