Global networks with English-language interfaces connect peers all over the world according to a platform of openness, cooperation, and, occasionally, pirated access to knowledge; yet, quite the opposite is the case in Russian-language networks (technically segments of Runet) such as Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Moi Mir. These social networking services attempt to construct a floating (currently lacking) national identity by means of immersion in an entertaining environment. While the principal task of global networking in general is to discover the most desirable versions of the future, networking in the Russian Internet, in contrast, aims for the invention of an alternative past built on the Net in a smooth and less traumatic manner. I treat the new political and cultural identity which emerges in Russian social networks as the result of the overlapping of branding, marketing, social negativity, and other disturbed dimensions of social life in contemporary Russia, which is semi-globalized and searching for its own exoneration in a non-networked stability.
Language of contribution: Russian