Speaking of that tweet featuring the “Get drunk and go to war” Russian recruits. That was my gimmick in a late 1990s early 2000s browser war game called Utopia. I don’t want to imply anything, but my character was an Orc (they were cool back in the wake of Warcraft 2 and 3)!
I was a Monarch of a “War Kingdom” as we called it - which is a Kingdom that was built specifically to win wars rather than the norm - Kingdom’s geared toward peace and prosperity and engaging in combat with agreed rules of conduct to prevent much damage to each kingdom. In contrast, our Kingdom was built to inflict the most possible damage to the opponent, using “black ops” which were spells and thief operations that were in the game but were deemed too destructive - and most alliances felt “black ops” were justification of alliance action to intervene in Kingdom vs Kingdom wars… So yes, we were villainous :D
We’d role-play getting ridiculously drunk in our forum Tavern, or on ICQ/IRC, example:
*Cracks open a barrel of fortified ale with an axe, lifts it up, and chugs it down! Starts rolling out the barrels, kegs, and casks*
(Insert passionate 2-3 paragraph speech to amp up everyone for war)
The difference is we were a bunch of teenagers and 20-somes playing around in early online casual games (before the iPhone, even before Animal Crossing and Brain Age). These Russian soldiers are doing it for real. I picture these sorts being much like that Pure Pwnage guy from 20 years ago: “I should join the army. War is basically FPS. But there’s no respawn; so if I get lag in RL, I’m dead!”
I know there’s not a lot of sympathy for these young Russian men, but this is sad. We were allowed to be stupid in our youth, they’re not. These guys are ignorant of the consequences and what they’re going to lose: their lives will be ruined or ended. And everyone is going to remember them as disgusting villains because there’s little chance history will be kind to Putin, the invasion, and the invaders - and that’s within Russia. Outside Russia, that’s already the narrative, and there’s no chance of redemption except from the likes of some of the most repulsive trash-bag Marjories known today.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
