Articulating a certain identity can be summarized as having recognizability as something or someone. Contemporary identities as 'patchworks'Īs the term ‘identity practice’ has been mentioned several times already, I owe the reader an explication of it as well. squatting slavs, and the global familiarization with it.
This is a theory which can be well-adapted to the topic of this paper, because we will see how a process of a seemingly local identity formation is taking place on a global level and its consequences might turn out to be influential for the revival of a cultural practice, e.g. Immanuel Wallerstein (2004) suggests that an essential tool for understanding every issue is to look at it from a global perspective that to really understand what is going in a specific part of the world, one has to see it as a part of a world-system. It has given the chance for many to identify as Squatting Slavs and be perceived as such.įor this reason, the sources for my research are not only images of the meme, but also YouTube videos discussing it and articles exploring the history and culture behind it, as well as its impacts on today’s society. The meaning of the meme therefore goes beyond the visual representation, to a whole identity practice evolving in a virtual context. They were called ‘gopniki’ in Russia and their other Slavic equivalents.
It is a contemporary online recreation of a particular subculture, which developed in the second half of the last century in the suburban areas of Eastern European countries. This elaboration is necessary, because the Squatting Slav is not just about being from Slavic descent and posing for a photo in a squat position, although this is the most commonly attributed feature to the meme. It can be somewhat altered, but its main concept remains the same, no matter how much it is reproduced. It is shared rapidly on all kinds of online platforms, because of it typically being humorous. For the general Internet user, the understanding of the essence of a meme ends with it being an image or a video, almost always accompanied by a piece of text. To illustrate the above, I am going to put forward the example of the Squatting Slav meme. This has resulted in, amongst other things, the appearance of a new way of identity formation and the need for new approaches to language and semiotics. The Internet and, more specifically, the emergence and subsequent popularity of social media platforms has given us the chance to connect and communicate with people all around the world. What is often seen as the most specific feature of present-day globalization, is that it is mainly about being connected online. Undoubtedly, this leads to new patterns of global social behavior and community formation and has large political and cultural impact. The term itself, as Blommaert (2010) has formulated it, is a ‘shorthand for the intensified flows of capital, goods, people, images and discourses around the globe, driven by technological innovations mainly in the field of media information and communication technology’. This explains why its current stage of development is indeed specific and is surpassing all of the previous ones in terms of intensity, scope and scale (Blommaert, 2010). Therefore, what we are witnessing now is a new phase of a process which began centuries ago. This may be true from a certain point of view, but there is nothing new about the phenomenon of globalization. There is a common feeling that in the 21st century we are more ‘globalized’ than ever before. It will also look at the meme's connection to globalization. This paper is going to analyze the emergence, the historical background and the popularization as well as the sociolinguistic and cultural implications of a widely popular meme among Eastern Europeans: Squatting Slavs.
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