Meme Magic: Advertising, Politics, and Early Runet Culture

• In Event: The Post-Soviet Public Sphere: Assembling a Digital Multimedia Sourcebook of the Russian 1990s

Abstract

This paper is part of a lightning round, "The Post-Soviet Public Sphere: Assembling a Digital Multimedia Sourcebook of the Russian 1990s." By the late 1990s, the phantasmagoric nature of the post-Soviet advertising landscape was somewhat of a cliché, its real-life machinations barely distinguishable from fictional depictions like Victor Pelevin's Generation П (1999). This paper explores the connections among television advertisements for financial products (especially for Bank Imperial and the pyramid scheme MMM) and Internet-based political activity (especially the so-called "Black PR" of sites like "Kogot'"), arguing that the phenomenon that came to be known as "meme magic" in the global 2010s had its origins in Russia's "wild 90s."

Author

• Maya Vinokour, New York U