I’ve signed up for VKontakte — Russia’s Facebook. I figured the KGB FSB would be just as interested in my birthday photos as the CIA. It’s also my best chance to receive an unsolicited sexually explicit message from a desperate middle-aged Belgian named Hugo trolling cyberspace for a slavic sex-slave.
The name VKontakte roughly translates to, “In Touch” in Russian. As you can see from these screen shots, VK is essentially an old cloned version of Facebook. Several countries have a similar knock-off. In The Australia they have StudentFace, The India has DesiMartini and in former Nazi-Germany they have StudiVZ.
Yeah…I’ll be referring to all countries in this manner until people stop saying ‘THE Ukraine.’ I’ll also be referring to Germany as ‘former Nazi-Germany’ until people stop calling Ukraine, ‘former Soviet Union.’
As the most popular website in Russia, VK is pretty much how we remember Facebook two years ago. Remember Facebook two years ago? Damn. Those were the days weren’t they?
There are some differences though.
Most VK users here in Lviv only really add their friends. Friend rosters rarely have more than 50-60 people. They have no trouble declining requests from people who aren’t good friends. As you can see I have 11 Ukrainian friends… pretty accurate really.
Thankfully the site is available in English so I can navigate easily. The America and The Canada are popular locations for users. The site also has some cute differences in the personal information section. For instance, under political preferences, Communist, and Monarchist are options. Adorable!
In true Russian style, intellectual property rights are completely ignored on VK. With a decent stripped down audio player VK users can upload, download, and stream any song they care to. Kinda handy in an illegal way.
Probably the biggest difference between Facebook and VKontakte is the search function. It doesn’t exactly work like a dating site, but it does offer the ability to search users relationship status with their age, location, likes, dislikes yadda, yadda, yadda…
A byproduct of this search-ability is that it exposes Ukrainian girls to a foaming, panting, poetry writing all-star team of international losers. Horny foreign dudes can zero in on single 18-year-olds by selecting the ‘single’ and ‘actively searching’ status fields.
This one's for you Hugo!
Compounding this cyber-stalking is the Ukrainian pastime of taking sexy pictures of oneself. In front of fountains, castles, churches synagogues, stray dogs, trees, opera houses anywhere in Ukraine really… you’ll find giggling groups of girls posing, pouting and puckering for the camera. It’s like tossing hunks of bloody chum in shark-infested waters really.
These sexy photos invariably end up on VK pages, and onto the screens of eager Make It Rainers all over the world.All of my female friends here have countless stories of dudes sending them messages with everything from descriptions of their genitals to lengthy poems.
I’ll actually stop here because I think these guys deserve their own post.
Nice one.
In a similar but less interesting vein, I stumbled on the Jewish Google a few days ago (thanks to the Utne Reader): http://www.koogle.co.il/English
Anyway, keep ‘em coming…
[...] Russian Facebook: “If you hate VKontakte so much why did you join? Also, none of my friends have sexy pictures on for their profiles!” True… most of the profile pics are pretty much what you would expect from a social networking site. But there are more provocative photos than you find on Facebook, from both men and women. I think some of this has to do with the fact that beauty is held in high regard here and there is pride in showing it off. Also, I am not laying blame at the feet of girls here for attracting Internet prowlers; I am simply saying that VK is an easy avenue for these sleaze bags. [...]
former nazi-germany…. bad taste, bad taste. don’t pull the robots into the mess, they’ve since been reprogrammed.
It’s all in good fun. You know I love Ze Germans, and staunchly believe that there is no longer any need to bring up that nasty business from the past… unless of course I need to crack a joke… then all bets are off. As a fellow man who made it on the train, you should agree.
[...] Soviet nation.” Do you see what I mean? It’s been nearly 20 years since communism!!! Guess we won’t be spending next spring break [...]
This is an informative and interesting entry. Thanks for sharing it.
[...] information of local women. Their sites of choice are Slavic Brides, Couch Surfing, Facebook and Vkontakte. This is usually accompanied by pointing at photos and using phrases like, “man, I gotta hit that [...]