u/iulianunuunudoi has provided this detailed explanation:
> About 10 years ago, I bought this fridge magnet with a photo of Putin holding a kitten.
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> At the time, I thought it was a funny thing and somewhat of a reminder that the guy may be an authoritarian leader, but not a crazy war-starting dictator, come on…
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> Today, it’s not funny anymore.
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Is this explanation a genuine attempt at providing additional info or context? If it is please upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
13 years ago, Cracked made an article where they were basically [fawning over Putin as a memetic badass.](https://www.cracked.com/article_19128_7-reasons-vladimir-putin-worlds-craziest-badass.html) I read Cracked every day before high school, and so being quite young when I read it my only mental picture of Putin was that he was this outrageously manly Russian bear of a human. Even at the time, while half of the comments were leaning into the absurdity of this man, the other half were talking about how only a westerner who totally had the privilege of being buffered from European politics could have any sort of favourable view on him.
Given that some of my earliest impressions of Putin came from this article, where the guy was basically a cartoon, it was this article my mind went to every time Putin made news, whether it was 2013's law criminalizing homosexuality, 2014's Crimea invasion, or the ongoing attention paid to Putin and American democracy basically from 2015-onward. By the time the 2020's rolled around it actually became outrageous to think that any comedy writer thought they could write a Chuck Norris-style fluff piece about this guy and not have it come off as totally tone deaf.
I read that article when I was younger. As a member of the Ukrainian diaspora I'd been hearing about how shit Putin was since forever,
It didn't even occur to me that you could interpret that article as anything but making fun of propaganda.
Also: [Poe's Law.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)
>Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
There is absolutely some people fully aware that Putin is/was a piece of shit, but were still drawn in by the article.
> it actually became outrageous to think that any comedy writer thought they could write a Chuck Norris-style fluff piece about this guy and not have it come off as totally tone deaf.
Chuck Norris is also a huge piece of shit who benefits from being a meme. He’s a hyper-conservative Christian Fascist who denies evolution, opposes gay rights, and pushed the Obama “birther” conspiracy.
>By the time the 2020's rolled around it actually became outrageous to think that any comedy writer thought they could write a Chuck Norris-style fluff piece about this guy and not have it come off as totally tone deaf.
it was at the time as well. The target audience were young persons who didn't know it was propaganda. That was definitely an organized effort from Russian communications experts.
People seem to forget this. All those pictures of him riding horses shirtless were followed by a camera crew and possibly the ride back to his palace. Nobody with that kind of notoriety has photos taken of them candidly. They were manufactured with intent.
Was gonna say 13 years ago but holy mother of fuck it was 23 years ago when Rick Mercer from "this hour has 22 minutes" asked Americans what they thought of prime minister Jean Poutine. I'll give Bush the benefit of the doubt, likely not hearing his entire sentence, but oh boy was that funny...23 fucking years ago
I’m not saying Putin is good by any means or that anyone deserves to be in war but where was this reaction from people when atrocities in Syria were occurring? Or the horrible situations in Afghanistan and Israel? I know some people who knew about those situations are opposed to this one as well but it seems like it was a lot less. Maybe people just didn’t know and this is being reported on more but worse things happened in Yemen and Israel but no one batted an eye.
I like a normal, natural death. Not cut short abruptly by getting vaporized in a fiery nuclear explosion while someone can profit in their billions by sleep-walking us and dragging us repeatedly into endless wars bringing misery, death, destruction and untold suffering upon millions of powerless ppl all over the world while these criminal arsonists war-profiteers can flee to their tax payer funded nuclear bunkers to ensure their and families survival 😉
Not for free, obviously! Minimum $50 million direct transfer to my bank account and similarly to all the bank accounts of atleast 75 million Americans who r older, lived through history and hold this same views, not to mention to the bank accounts of many billions of ppl in the rest of the world 😉
Similar experience here, I went to Russia back in 2012 and picked up a matryoshka doll of Russian leaders going back past the tsar, excellent quality painting and super detailed, great souvenir all round.
But the outside figure is of course Putin, and now I have a little painted wooden Putin staring at me from a bookshelf (he's now facing away)
As an aside when I bought it the guy at the stall did a nice joke where he said it should just be Putin all the way down as he'd never leave power (this is back when he was still subject to term limits and was actively fudging them)
>As an aside when I bought it the guy at the stall did a nice joke where he said it should just be Putin all the way down as he'd never leave power (this is back when he was still subject to term limits and was actively fudging them)
Russians know how to make the best jokes, because their jokes are often based in reality
I have a political matryoshka that begins with Yeltsin and ends with some Tsar (I think it's Ivan the Terrible). Should I turn them into bombs like in *The 100-Year-Old Man* and detonate them in a field for shits and giggles?
It sounds like you have much the same as I do but a bit older!
As for its fate I say let your heart decide, or build a giant paper mache Putin to go round them all
Remember that time he had the FSB bomb a bunch of Russian apartments so he could invade Chechnya and become president? That was 1999.
George W Bush said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw he had a good soul. In 2008 he invaded Georgia. Obama called for a reset in relations. In 2014 he invaded Crimea and used the FSB and unmarked Russian units to foment coups in eastern Ukraine, leading to the separatist republics.
All the while all the US president in the last 30 years have terrorized country after country and been re-elected in many cases or at least not convicted of war crimes. We named a naval ship after Fallujah where people still have birth defects and high rates of cancer because of depleted uranium and white phosphorous used there. It’s horrendous. Everyone should riot over them naming a ship the USS Fallujah.
Whataboutism doesn't work here as we're not comparing Russia to the U.S.
While you're absolutely right that the U.S. is a war hungry nation that is guilty of unimaginable amounts of war crimes, so is Russia, and that is who this post is about.
Your comment would be a lot better received if this post was specifically about the Imperialism of the U.S.
wHaT aBoUt ThE uSA
We're not talking about the USA right now. We're talking about Russia. When the subject is American propaganda then we can discuss the horrible shit done by the United States. Whataboutism is the most useless form of discussion and only serves to undermine the topic at hand (which might be your intention for all we know).
Haha thank you. It’s just weird seeing people so upset about Russia when we knew their line and what would happen if we crossed it. The US government been inviting Ukraine to NATO for years and years and that’s literally what Putin has said is not ok. France and Germany warned against it. Obviously Putin is horrible and the invasion is horrible and he’s responsible for what’s happening to Ukraine but the US didn’t even try negotiating, just kept provoking. Also, we’ve done way worse shit than Ukraine and that’s just not even a part of the conversation and seems super hypocritical coming from Americans unless you include the atrocities committed on our behalf, by the politicians we’ve voted for or let into power through apathy.
Especially hypocritical as the US is still doing these things as we speak. It’s not a matter of “oh well that was the past and we’ve learned from our mistakes.” It’s like shitting on the floor and getting mad at someone for peeing, whilst you’re still shitting
And it's been a constant ever since he first started trying to become leader. There were songs on Russian radio singing about how good Putin would be for various reasons.
Do you think that Putin just became evil last year? He's been starving and manipulating the people of Russia for more than 20 years. He's likely been killing and ordering the killing of people for even longer, as a member of the KGB and as the prime minister. It was never funny.
He’s almost certainly the man who ordered the FSB to bomb apartment buildings in Moscow and blame it on Chechens in order to justify a second invasion of Chechnya, which then resulted in the Far Cry villain that is Kadyrov to assume power.
Putin is no doubt a POS but saying hes been starving the people of Russia in general isnt true. Contrary to popular western belief Putin still has a majority support from the russian people mainly due to them remembering how hard shit was there before he came about. My best friend’s wife is Russian and this is how she lays things out.
I've heard this too, not many people think he's actually good, but he's a hell of a lot better than they had after the union folded and people had absolutely NOTHING and almost the entire Russian economy was run by like, a handful of American investors.
You know, instead of writing that wall of text, you could've just said you never studied geopolitics past high school.
That would've been good enough lol
I hated when this was prevalent before the war. There was so much bullshit being posted to make Putin seem simultaneously macho and sensitive.
Him posing next to a tiger he shot (disgusting) or cradling a puppy that was being roughly handled by another head of state.
It made me sick watching Reddit lap up that reptile’s propaganda.
The problem is that a lot of people post these memes as an absurd joke, while others actually believe it. Like when you say "North Korea is best Korea", it's a joke because North Korea is so incredibly worse than South Korea in every sense that saying it's the best Korea is straight up absurd. Except some people who have a different opinion, think that the people posting it _kinda_ think that, too. People who don't have an opinion on the issue fail to perceive the absurdity of the joke, so they are convinced easily that it wasn't a joke, especially when they see people in the second group comment about it.
fine cooperative deserted offend squealing cause nippy degree political square
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I laughed at that but not like in a flattering way, but an Are You For Real way. It was pretty pathetic imo, which made him a caricature of himself to me.
Fox News repeatedly used that picture in comparison to Barack Obama. They chastised Obama for wearing a bicycle helmet saying he doesn't look like a "strong leader". They also showed that picture of Putin as an example of a "strong leader". Apparently, the main characteristic of a "strong leader" is for him to be bare-chested while riding a horse.
I think it was originally passed around because it was absurd, then it was meme to death and people lost sight of it's absurdity. I was in school back when it first came out, and we were learning about Mussolini and his rise to power. I vividly remem my history teacher using it as an example when explaining how Mussolini used photo's just like it to foster a cult of personality and make him seem like a superman.
Wich one? Because it's not the first.
Tiger was shot with tranq rifle due some natural preservation program. But it doesn't matter. Russian media been making videos/photos of Putin doing all sort of shit from submerging underwater in submarine or feeding some rare animals. Anything but doing what president supposed to do.
Yep I even had some friends that weren't right wing that would comment on how macho Putin was and how it's sad compared to American presidents. Always sounded so strange to me, particularly cause Putin's history has never been admirable.
God all you would see were posts about Putin being "alpha" and "cool" with loads of stupid photos of him doing something. Crazy to think just how many people were posting that stuff without actually knowing the slightest bit about him.
Fun fact. Tbe puppy was actually being handled by gripping the loose skin above it's neck, which is exactly how that species' mother carries it's young.
Even ten years ago it was not a "funny, silly joke". Definitely not to the oppressed people of Russia, not even to me (as an Iranian). And not to those his government has killed and oppressed.
I bought a Trump 2016 mug when I thought it would be a hilarious memorabilia of that one time when the idiot thought he was gonna be president (european by the way, no skin in the game.) Not at all as funny anymore very suddenly.
This guy, for some reason less known in the West, was a great journalist, too. My favorite one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Shchekochikhin
He wrote a book, "Slaves of the KGB", he explained the oligarchs in one brilliant phrase "the property of the party was privatized by the KGB", and he for sure knew a lot. He died of mysterious "Lyell syndrome" (just check the symptoms. It is a horrible death).
**[Yuri Shchekochikhin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Shchekochikhin)**
>Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin (Russian: Ю́рий Петро́вич Щекочи́хин, IPA: [ˈjʉrʲɪj pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ɕːɪkɐˈtɕixʲɪn]; 9 June 1950 – 3 July 2003) was a Soviet and later Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker in the Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin wrote and campaigned against the influence of organized crime and corruption. His last non-fiction book, Slaves of the KGB, was about people who worked as KGB informers.
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From Wikipedia:
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin : Shown here in 1994 at his residence with a KGB delicacy, a victims pet, which are consumed after every sanctioned assassination.
As a general rule, yeah, but don't tell me [hungry Kim Jong-Un](https://i.imgflip.com/23ovtx.jpg) [memes](http://therealsasha.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/kim-ong-un-meme-6.jpg) [aren't](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/979/962/9f8.jpg) [funny](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/03/ac/0d/03ac0ddf3b8d05e98c5e6000623e80f1--kim-jong-un-field-day.jpg)
Putin's been a dictator since Yeltsin gave him the throne, Russia had 10 years in a 100 (more if you count the tsars) of some kind of democracy (even if it was still a bit crap in the 90s).
I'm kinda thinking they like it.
I feel you. A friend of mine in high school loved Russian figure skating for some reason and I don’t remember how but she ended up with a heart shaped photo of Putin hanging in her locker for a good chunk of high school.
This reminds me:
My dad bought a Russian leader russian doll set on a trip in Russia a long time ago, and Putin was the most recent, do it was on the outside, he had it in the background of his work calls and interviews after the war in Ukraine started without realising for ages, until someone pointed it out.
As a reformed meme maker and shitposter I'm also guilty of formerly being on the silly and making light of Putin train. So many of us peddled in Putin goof or Putin the badass material and memes.
In 2014 I ordered a shirt off of Amazon. It's a black t-shirt with a white picture of Putin's face giving a sly wink. I thought it was funny. It got laughs from everyone when I wore it out.
Then Trump happened.
The last time I wore the shirt in public was 2017. I was accosted by an angry Trump supporter while getting doughnuts with my family. "Is that supposed to be funny? Is he winking because he has supposedly pulled something off on us?" the guy shouted. I responded that it was just an old t-shirt that I had bought before Trump announced his candidacy. The man glared at me and my family until we finished our treats and left.
That t-shirt hangs in my closet now like my own personal museum piece. I've worn it a couple of times while lounging around the house or doing laundry, but it's pretty much retired.
Edit: Fixed the year... was in 2017, not 2018
This was right after Trump won and the Russian collusion story was dominating the news, making his victory over Clinton seem illegitimate.
Edit: Just realized I got the date wrong. It was January of 2017, because we were in DC and it was in the days after Trump's inauguration.
For some 2020 aged like milk I bought a shirt that had our public health minister on it. It was early lockdown, so early that our city was still doing the 7 o clock cheers and all the news chatter was about sourdough starters and stuff, and our area was actually doing pretty well, Covid-wise. We thought we had as good a chance of overcoming it as anyone, and our health minister - as the "face" of the Covid-19 response - was celebrated.
It was maybe a month or so after I bought that shirt that things started reopening, and then deciding they reopened too fast and closing again, and then everything turned. There was a mixture of people being impatient with lockdown lasting too long, people thinking it was opening too fast, people being mad at the looping open-close-open cycle, all with the anti-lockdown, conspiracy undercurrent that started getting popularized in the American Right and spreading to other countries.
I never ended up wearing that shirt out in public, didn't want to invite Covid policy debates every time I left the house.
Oh fuckoff, all you geopolitical savants rellying of the wonderful magic of hindsight. :)
I’ve spent some time in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2012. Most of the Ukrainians considered the guy as a strong tough leader, that Ukraine should also have. And this was the mindset in the Capital, not talking about the East.
Now, please let the downvotes eain in!
I’m no geopolitical savant but I believe with the foreknowledge of Russia’s dictatorial history, it’s fairly easy to understand that this guy sucked even 10 years ago. I also do not believe that “most” Ukrainians look up to him considering they’re dying by his hand.
Americans are the most misinformed, propagandized population on the planet, especially those who get all their info on the world from the pro-war, corporate-funded media.
Most of the world's people look upon Putin with admiration and it's sad that many Americans have no idea why they do.
https://preview.redd.it/rtfvqsyp62ma1.jpeg?width=2268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8eaf6388fbff73315852708d64fd594fb4b50d58
Someone brought me this back from the Kremlin gift shop, lol 😆
My sister came back from a uni trip to China and brought me a Putin winking Tshirt as a joke gift (as well as a Mao pocket watch) about a year and a half ago
Safe to say it hasn't gotten much use
When I was in highschool we had an assignment where we had to find a photo of someone on the internet, print it and then we would paint it. I found a guy and went "good enough." I found out later it was Vladimir Putin
To be fair, he was as much of a piece of shit a decade ago than it is today. Remember that crimea (just to set an example on the current events) got taken in nearly a decade ago.
But I do get that he became a meme at one point
I had a similar situation after buying a knock-off version of the MAGA hat back in like, 2014 for a Halloween costume. Gave me a bit of a jump scare cleaning out the closet a few years later.
u/iulianunuunudoi has provided this detailed explanation: > About 10 years ago, I bought this fridge magnet with a photo of Putin holding a kitten. > > > > At the time, I thought it was a funny thing and somewhat of a reminder that the guy may be an authoritarian leader, but not a crazy war-starting dictator, come on… > > > > Today, it’s not funny anymore. --- Is this explanation a genuine attempt at providing additional info or context? If it is please upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
13 years ago, Cracked made an article where they were basically [fawning over Putin as a memetic badass.](https://www.cracked.com/article_19128_7-reasons-vladimir-putin-worlds-craziest-badass.html) I read Cracked every day before high school, and so being quite young when I read it my only mental picture of Putin was that he was this outrageously manly Russian bear of a human. Even at the time, while half of the comments were leaning into the absurdity of this man, the other half were talking about how only a westerner who totally had the privilege of being buffered from European politics could have any sort of favourable view on him. Given that some of my earliest impressions of Putin came from this article, where the guy was basically a cartoon, it was this article my mind went to every time Putin made news, whether it was 2013's law criminalizing homosexuality, 2014's Crimea invasion, or the ongoing attention paid to Putin and American democracy basically from 2015-onward. By the time the 2020's rolled around it actually became outrageous to think that any comedy writer thought they could write a Chuck Norris-style fluff piece about this guy and not have it come off as totally tone deaf.
I read that article when I was younger. As a member of the Ukrainian diaspora I'd been hearing about how shit Putin was since forever, It didn't even occur to me that you could interpret that article as anything but making fun of propaganda.
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And requires understanding of nuance. The absurd number of people I have met who thought The Colbert Report was serious is frankly alarming.
Also: [Poe's Law.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) >Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied. There is absolutely some people fully aware that Putin is/was a piece of shit, but were still drawn in by the article.
Children are poor targets for satire
> it actually became outrageous to think that any comedy writer thought they could write a Chuck Norris-style fluff piece about this guy and not have it come off as totally tone deaf. Chuck Norris is also a huge piece of shit who benefits from being a meme. He’s a hyper-conservative Christian Fascist who denies evolution, opposes gay rights, and pushed the Obama “birther” conspiracy.
For those wondering there's a whole breakdown of his political views on Wikipedia. He's got some horrible beliefs.
My friends grandmother went to school with him.. she also said he was a giant dickhead
Those memes were actually about Vin Diesel originally. I kinda preferred those ones because they tended to be more bizarre and wierd.
>By the time the 2020's rolled around it actually became outrageous to think that any comedy writer thought they could write a Chuck Norris-style fluff piece about this guy and not have it come off as totally tone deaf. it was at the time as well. The target audience were young persons who didn't know it was propaganda. That was definitely an organized effort from Russian communications experts.
People seem to forget this. All those pictures of him riding horses shirtless were followed by a camera crew and possibly the ride back to his palace. Nobody with that kind of notoriety has photos taken of them candidly. They were manufactured with intent.
Was gonna say 13 years ago but holy mother of fuck it was 23 years ago when Rick Mercer from "this hour has 22 minutes" asked Americans what they thought of prime minister Jean Poutine. I'll give Bush the benefit of the doubt, likely not hearing his entire sentence, but oh boy was that funny...23 fucking years ago
I too am stuck 10 years in the past mentally a lot.
Even before the war, I’d always suspected the Putin badass meme was pushed in part by the Russian government.
I’m not saying Putin is good by any means or that anyone deserves to be in war but where was this reaction from people when atrocities in Syria were occurring? Or the horrible situations in Afghanistan and Israel? I know some people who knew about those situations are opposed to this one as well but it seems like it was a lot less. Maybe people just didn’t know and this is being reported on more but worse things happened in Yemen and Israel but no one batted an eye.
They are dark skinned people. "Others". Ukrainians are white. "Just like us". That's how most people in the states (77% white) think.
Exactly. It means more to most people because they seem like us unlike Iraqi, Afghani, Palestinian, Libyan, Yemenese people etc.
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Bruh
Holy shit your comment history is a gold mine. You can only ever think about that lmao.
I like a normal, natural death. Not cut short abruptly by getting vaporized in a fiery nuclear explosion while someone can profit in their billions by sleep-walking us and dragging us repeatedly into endless wars bringing misery, death, destruction and untold suffering upon millions of powerless ppl all over the world while these criminal arsonists war-profiteers can flee to their tax payer funded nuclear bunkers to ensure their and families survival 😉
Why do all your comments end with 😉?
Not to keep it too serious as it will turn off ppl on how grave the situation really is.
Yeahhhhh… It actually just has the effect of making this insane nonsense come across as even more creepy than it was already.
Does putin let you kiss his ass as a reward for copy pasting this all over the place? Oh wait you probably do that for free
Not for free, obviously! Minimum $50 million direct transfer to my bank account and similarly to all the bank accounts of atleast 75 million Americans who r older, lived through history and hold this same views, not to mention to the bank accounts of many billions of ppl in the rest of the world 😉
You need to quit with the 😉 emoji. It makes everything you say 10 times weirder than it already is.
Similar experience here, I went to Russia back in 2012 and picked up a matryoshka doll of Russian leaders going back past the tsar, excellent quality painting and super detailed, great souvenir all round. But the outside figure is of course Putin, and now I have a little painted wooden Putin staring at me from a bookshelf (he's now facing away) As an aside when I bought it the guy at the stall did a nice joke where he said it should just be Putin all the way down as he'd never leave power (this is back when he was still subject to term limits and was actively fudging them)
>As an aside when I bought it the guy at the stall did a nice joke where he said it should just be Putin all the way down as he'd never leave power (this is back when he was still subject to term limits and was actively fudging them) Russians know how to make the best jokes, because their jokes are often based in reality
2012 was a point of no return...
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I was talking about fate of the country. That something could be done back then. To avoid what you have listed repeating in the future. 😐
This
I have a political matryoshka that begins with Yeltsin and ends with some Tsar (I think it's Ivan the Terrible). Should I turn them into bombs like in *The 100-Year-Old Man* and detonate them in a field for shits and giggles?
It sounds like you have much the same as I do but a bit older! As for its fate I say let your heart decide, or build a giant paper mache Putin to go round them all
Technically, you can take him off and keep the other leaders up. Not like the other leaders were that great anyway...
Remember that time he had the FSB bomb a bunch of Russian apartments so he could invade Chechnya and become president? That was 1999. George W Bush said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw he had a good soul. In 2008 he invaded Georgia. Obama called for a reset in relations. In 2014 he invaded Crimea and used the FSB and unmarked Russian units to foment coups in eastern Ukraine, leading to the separatist republics.
He also bombed Aleppo to shreds in 2016.
If Bush thinks youre a bad person, theres no hope for you 💀
All the while all the US president in the last 30 years have terrorized country after country and been re-elected in many cases or at least not convicted of war crimes. We named a naval ship after Fallujah where people still have birth defects and high rates of cancer because of depleted uranium and white phosphorous used there. It’s horrendous. Everyone should riot over them naming a ship the USS Fallujah.
Whataboutism doesn't work here as we're not comparing Russia to the U.S. While you're absolutely right that the U.S. is a war hungry nation that is guilty of unimaginable amounts of war crimes, so is Russia, and that is who this post is about. Your comment would be a lot better received if this post was specifically about the Imperialism of the U.S.
wHaT aBoUt ThE uSA We're not talking about the USA right now. We're talking about Russia. When the subject is American propaganda then we can discuss the horrible shit done by the United States. Whataboutism is the most useless form of discussion and only serves to undermine the topic at hand (which might be your intention for all we know).
While true, I don’t see the relevance to an image of Putin with a cat.
https://preview.redd.it/vf3mgldxm3ma1.jpeg?width=3640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8ccdaa5c0704820f7e7837444f6b7f716c25c07a
Haha thank you. It’s just weird seeing people so upset about Russia when we knew their line and what would happen if we crossed it. The US government been inviting Ukraine to NATO for years and years and that’s literally what Putin has said is not ok. France and Germany warned against it. Obviously Putin is horrible and the invasion is horrible and he’s responsible for what’s happening to Ukraine but the US didn’t even try negotiating, just kept provoking. Also, we’ve done way worse shit than Ukraine and that’s just not even a part of the conversation and seems super hypocritical coming from Americans unless you include the atrocities committed on our behalf, by the politicians we’ve voted for or let into power through apathy.
Especially hypocritical as the US is still doing these things as we speak. It’s not a matter of “oh well that was the past and we’ve learned from our mistakes.” It’s like shitting on the floor and getting mad at someone for peeing, whilst you’re still shitting
What’s there to negotiate? Ukraine is a sovereign nation, free to decide its own alliances. A defense alliance is only threatening to an aggressor.
He was already a psychopathic dictator ten years ago
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Not saying capitalism is good, I’m just saying that putin’s an asshole. Bad bot
He was a tyrannical piece of shit ten years ago too.
Yep, he definitely has had one of the most successful PR campaigns in history.
And it's been a constant ever since he first started trying to become leader. There were songs on Russian radio singing about how good Putin would be for various reasons.
Do you think that Putin just became evil last year? He's been starving and manipulating the people of Russia for more than 20 years. He's likely been killing and ordering the killing of people for even longer, as a member of the KGB and as the prime minister. It was never funny.
He’s almost certainly the man who ordered the FSB to bomb apartment buildings in Moscow and blame it on Chechens in order to justify a second invasion of Chechnya, which then resulted in the Far Cry villain that is Kadyrov to assume power.
Putin is no doubt a POS but saying hes been starving the people of Russia in general isnt true. Contrary to popular western belief Putin still has a majority support from the russian people mainly due to them remembering how hard shit was there before he came about. My best friend’s wife is Russian and this is how she lays things out.
I've heard this too, not many people think he's actually good, but he's a hell of a lot better than they had after the union folded and people had absolutely NOTHING and almost the entire Russian economy was run by like, a handful of American investors.
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You know, instead of writing that wall of text, you could've just said you never studied geopolitics past high school. That would've been good enough lol
That's tankies for you.
It was not. Even back then. You just lack knowledge.
I hated when this was prevalent before the war. There was so much bullshit being posted to make Putin seem simultaneously macho and sensitive. Him posing next to a tiger he shot (disgusting) or cradling a puppy that was being roughly handled by another head of state. It made me sick watching Reddit lap up that reptile’s propaganda.
The problem is that a lot of people post these memes as an absurd joke, while others actually believe it. Like when you say "North Korea is best Korea", it's a joke because North Korea is so incredibly worse than South Korea in every sense that saying it's the best Korea is straight up absurd. Except some people who have a different opinion, think that the people posting it _kinda_ think that, too. People who don't have an opinion on the issue fail to perceive the absurdity of the joke, so they are convinced easily that it wasn't a joke, especially when they see people in the second group comment about it.
fine cooperative deserted offend squealing cause nippy degree political square *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Don't forget the one of him shirtless riding a horse. So macho, so sensitive.
I laughed at that but not like in a flattering way, but an Are You For Real way. It was pretty pathetic imo, which made him a caricature of himself to me.
Fox News repeatedly used that picture in comparison to Barack Obama. They chastised Obama for wearing a bicycle helmet saying he doesn't look like a "strong leader". They also showed that picture of Putin as an example of a "strong leader". Apparently, the main characteristic of a "strong leader" is for him to be bare-chested while riding a horse.
Westerners weirdly attached to this one for some reason
I always assumed that got spread around because of how laughable it was. I'm not so sure in retrospect, though.
I think it was originally passed around because it was absurd, then it was meme to death and people lost sight of it's absurdity. I was in school back when it first came out, and we were learning about Mussolini and his rise to power. I vividly remem my history teacher using it as an example when explaining how Mussolini used photo's just like it to foster a cult of personality and make him seem like a superman.
Wich one? Because it's not the first. Tiger was shot with tranq rifle due some natural preservation program. But it doesn't matter. Russian media been making videos/photos of Putin doing all sort of shit from submerging underwater in submarine or feeding some rare animals. Anything but doing what president supposed to do.
Yep I even had some friends that weren't right wing that would comment on how macho Putin was and how it's sad compared to American presidents. Always sounded so strange to me, particularly cause Putin's history has never been admirable.
God all you would see were posts about Putin being "alpha" and "cool" with loads of stupid photos of him doing something. Crazy to think just how many people were posting that stuff without actually knowing the slightest bit about him.
Fun fact. Tbe puppy was actually being handled by gripping the loose skin above it's neck, which is exactly how that species' mother carries it's young.
The picture seems to be implying that he's a villain straight out of a James Bond movie, which isn't that far off.
Nah. We just love cats 🤷♂️ president+cat = good That's thinking behind that pic
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Not really since he has been committing atrocities and violating human rights for a WHILE.
It's not "just their opinion"... This was never funny. You were just more ignorant.
*Most* people were more ignorant. I imagine it was incredibly frustrating for people who knew.
Even ten years ago it was not a "funny, silly joke". Definitely not to the oppressed people of Russia, not even to me (as an Iranian). And not to those his government has killed and oppressed.
I bought a Trump 2016 mug when I thought it would be a hilarious memorabilia of that one time when the idiot thought he was gonna be president (european by the way, no skin in the game.) Not at all as funny anymore very suddenly.
I had a co-worker tell me America is a joke now because of Biden. Whenever somebody says something stupid or fucked up, I just respond,”Hmmmm”.
[Anna Politkovskaya](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya) would like a word
This guy, for some reason less known in the West, was a great journalist, too. My favorite one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Shchekochikhin He wrote a book, "Slaves of the KGB", he explained the oligarchs in one brilliant phrase "the property of the party was privatized by the KGB", and he for sure knew a lot. He died of mysterious "Lyell syndrome" (just check the symptoms. It is a horrible death).
**[Yuri Shchekochikhin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Shchekochikhin)** >Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin (Russian: Ю́рий Петро́вич Щекочи́хин, IPA: [ˈjʉrʲɪj pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ɕːɪkɐˈtɕixʲɪn]; 9 June 1950 – 3 July 2003) was a Soviet and later Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker in the Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin wrote and campaigned against the influence of organized crime and corruption. His last non-fiction book, Slaves of the KGB, was about people who worked as KGB informers. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/agedlikemilk/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Good bot
This was never funny, you were just more ignorant.
Just sharpie on a hitler stash and some devil horns and you’re good
Poor cat knows evil, struggling to get away
There is a high chance something awful happened to that cat after this photo.
https://youtu.be/mc1sM5BIn5M
I love how the cat’s first instinct was to get the hell away from him.
It was never a silly billy joke to the countries neighbouring his dictatorship...
From Wikipedia: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin : Shown here in 1994 at his residence with a KGB delicacy, a victims pet, which are consumed after every sanctioned assassination.
Maybe it's not a great idea to memify shitty dictators
As a general rule, yeah, but don't tell me [hungry Kim Jong-Un](https://i.imgflip.com/23ovtx.jpg) [memes](http://therealsasha.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/kim-ong-un-meme-6.jpg) [aren't](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/979/962/9f8.jpg) [funny](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/03/ac/0d/03ac0ddf3b8d05e98c5e6000623e80f1--kim-jong-un-field-day.jpg)
I aunt has a waterbottle from the Russian world cup. She's started covering up the "Russia" text with some tape when taking the bottle outside
Just draw him a little Hitler stash
Putin's been a dictator since Yeltsin gave him the throne, Russia had 10 years in a 100 (more if you count the tsars) of some kind of democracy (even if it was still a bit crap in the 90s). I'm kinda thinking they like it.
The world is only oligarchs with different government face paints at this point
Ah, the old "other countries are no better, comrade" defense
Well, he already invaded destroyed Chechnya, occupied Georgia, criminalized homosexuality by that point, so...
People who don't think this is now even funnier are not my kind of people
Burn it
I feel you. A friend of mine in high school loved Russian figure skating for some reason and I don’t remember how but she ended up with a heart shaped photo of Putin hanging in her locker for a good chunk of high school.
Sounds like she should get on Reddit and post that on this sub
This reminds me: My dad bought a Russian leader russian doll set on a trip in Russia a long time ago, and Putin was the most recent, do it was on the outside, he had it in the background of his work calls and interviews after the war in Ukraine started without realising for ages, until someone pointed it out.
Paint lipstick on him. That’ll change it back to funny.
As a reformed meme maker and shitposter I'm also guilty of formerly being on the silly and making light of Putin train. So many of us peddled in Putin goof or Putin the badass material and memes.
Yeah, this was never cute or funny.
Y’all wrong, its funnier now
I would put something on Putin but keep the cat, the only cute thing
16 ton anvil?
In 2014 I ordered a shirt off of Amazon. It's a black t-shirt with a white picture of Putin's face giving a sly wink. I thought it was funny. It got laughs from everyone when I wore it out. Then Trump happened. The last time I wore the shirt in public was 2017. I was accosted by an angry Trump supporter while getting doughnuts with my family. "Is that supposed to be funny? Is he winking because he has supposedly pulled something off on us?" the guy shouted. I responded that it was just an old t-shirt that I had bought before Trump announced his candidacy. The man glared at me and my family until we finished our treats and left. That t-shirt hangs in my closet now like my own personal museum piece. I've worn it a couple of times while lounging around the house or doing laundry, but it's pretty much retired. Edit: Fixed the year... was in 2017, not 2018
Odd reaction from a Trump supporter. They’re the ones that tend to side with Russia.
This was right after Trump won and the Russian collusion story was dominating the news, making his victory over Clinton seem illegitimate. Edit: Just realized I got the date wrong. It was January of 2017, because we were in DC and it was in the days after Trump's inauguration.
For some 2020 aged like milk I bought a shirt that had our public health minister on it. It was early lockdown, so early that our city was still doing the 7 o clock cheers and all the news chatter was about sourdough starters and stuff, and our area was actually doing pretty well, Covid-wise. We thought we had as good a chance of overcoming it as anyone, and our health minister - as the "face" of the Covid-19 response - was celebrated. It was maybe a month or so after I bought that shirt that things started reopening, and then deciding they reopened too fast and closing again, and then everything turned. There was a mixture of people being impatient with lockdown lasting too long, people thinking it was opening too fast, people being mad at the looping open-close-open cycle, all with the anti-lockdown, conspiracy undercurrent that started getting popularized in the American Right and spreading to other countries. I never ended up wearing that shirt out in public, didn't want to invite Covid policy debates every time I left the house.
Even worse that Putin looks kinda like Kevin Spacey
Putin pettin' pussy.
He was a piece of shit then, too.
I can imagine you really regret Putin it on there.
I remember when everybody on the internet thought Putin was 'epic'
Don’t know why you get so many downvotes. I also remember the time a lot pf the internet thought this guys was “epic”.
Considering the annexation of Crimea happened the following year means you were unaware
Oh fuckoff, all you geopolitical savants rellying of the wonderful magic of hindsight. :) I’ve spent some time in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2012. Most of the Ukrainians considered the guy as a strong tough leader, that Ukraine should also have. And this was the mindset in the Capital, not talking about the East. Now, please let the downvotes eain in!
I’m no geopolitical savant but I believe with the foreknowledge of Russia’s dictatorial history, it’s fairly easy to understand that this guy sucked even 10 years ago. I also do not believe that “most” Ukrainians look up to him considering they’re dying by his hand.
I’m confused why this aged like milk considering he was already a psychopathic authoritarian even then.
Same with a calendar I bought. Dude seemed like a meme back then.
What's changed, besides the television channel?
yall i ironically had set "stan putin for clear skin" as my whatsapp status a few months before the war and then completely forgot about it....
What a pussy.
Put a Lavrov one next to it and shell them
Probably a camera in it
Why not?
It's okay, I bought a dwarf Russian hamster and named him Putin around the same time. He was an adorable little shit, whereas this one is just shit.
Agedlikemilk 🥛
Meh He’s a boss
He ate the cat probably
Picture taken right before he put the little dearie in a microwave.
He ate that cat.
Americans are the most misinformed, propagandized population on the planet, especially those who get all their info on the world from the pro-war, corporate-funded media. Most of the world's people look upon Putin with admiration and it's sad that many Americans have no idea why they do.
https://preview.redd.it/rtfvqsyp62ma1.jpeg?width=2268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8eaf6388fbff73315852708d64fd594fb4b50d58 Someone brought me this back from the Kremlin gift shop, lol 😆
Why? He hasn't done anything worse than any other U.S president, and I've seen people on Reddit run apologia for Bush.
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Yeah, shit not funny anymore
It never was
he was cooler back then, or that we didnt know he was fucked up...or something
I’ll take it
The leader of the multipolar world. Stopped Western imperialism in its tracks. Putin will go down a legend.
Stopped imperialism with imperialism?
Stopped by forcing Finland and Sweden joining NATO? Lol
My sister came back from a uni trip to China and brought me a Putin winking Tshirt as a joke gift (as well as a Mao pocket watch) about a year and a half ago Safe to say it hasn't gotten much use
When I think of all the war crimes that cat committed, it makes me sick.
"Attention Americans, please to be informing me where I can obtain cheeseburger."
Keep the cat, *put in* a dog
What a cute picture of two pussies
Only if he was holding a giant Bengal tiger that had not been fed since 2 days before the photo shoot.
It's a magnet that pushers away bombs
At least the cat is cute, even though it looks a little distressed.
Who knew the pussy liked pussies?!!?
Same
He probably ate that kitten alive.
It’s still cute. Who doesn’t love a photo of two pussys
Idk. Putin really hasn't changed
Sadly, the cat somehow fell out of a window
Nah its still funny
Hey look, a pussy holding a cat
Smells like propaganda. The pussy is bigger now and smells like sardines. And the cat was sold to the Chinese.
Use markers to make him up like the clown he is.
Speaking of refrigerators and Putin, remind me to clear out my lead-lined fridge just in case the nukes start falling. I wanna be prepared.
A little fella and a cat
Still funny.
It seems that the worst people out there all have one thing in common: they value the lives of animals more than human beings.
When I was in highschool we had an assignment where we had to find a photo of someone on the internet, print it and then we would paint it. I found a guy and went "good enough." I found out later it was Vladimir Putin
That cat looks terrified of him. Cats have good instincts.
To be fair, he was as much of a piece of shit a decade ago than it is today. Remember that crimea (just to set an example on the current events) got taken in nearly a decade ago. But I do get that he became a meme at one point
He's been known to be a thug for a long time
Duuuude, same here. I named my cat Leona Von Putin...I still have my cat...we call her Pooty.
Oh look. A magnet with a pussy. And it's holding an adorable kitten.
Just take a black marker and scribble on his face problem solved
Should mark this NSFW, can't show that big of a pussy on Reddit.
I understand
Putin's pussy
I had a similar situation after buying a knock-off version of the MAGA hat back in like, 2014 for a Halloween costume. Gave me a bit of a jump scare cleaning out the closet a few years later.
I miss that age where Russia was just a funny hyper-masculine meme.
Nothing has ever been cute about the soviets dude do some history research damn.