Slashdot Mirror
Russia Is Investigating Fidget Spinners After Reports Claim They 'Zombify' Youth (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: In a recent report, Russia-24, a state-owned news channel, suggests that fidget spinners are being used by Russian opposition parties in order to recruit young people. As reported by The New York Times, the reporters in Russia-24's initial story say, "It is a mystery why it has become so popular in Russia right now. Who is promoting this to the masses so actively?" The video segment says the toys were being distributed at a rally for opposition leader Alexei Navalny and in online ads that direct viewers to YouTube channels that promote opposition politicians. The reporters said that while the toy's popularity was declining in the West, fidget spinners are more popular than ever in Russia. "As you can see here there is only writing in English, on the other side there is not a word in Russian," says one of the show's anchors during the report, presenting a new spinner in its packaging to the camera. According to Newsweek, a second report on Russia-24 also aired on July 12th, directly saying fidget spinners were an "object for zombifying" and a form of "hypnosis." The program featured a report from psychologist Svetlana Filatova, claiming that the spinners could help dexterity in children but otherwise "dulls" people's minds. The reports spurred Russia's consumer protection agency, Rospotrebnadzor, into action, saying on Tuesday they would launch an investigation into the toy.
I'm worried too!
Donnie T.
Imagine a country where all the media is basically Breitbart
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Don't worry, Chief. I'm always on duty!
'Fidget spinners' are basically toys that would captivate someone who is stoned, so what do you expect? It's right up there with things like Candy Crush.
when you've got unlimited resources and no morals you can do petty crap like this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
All dictators try keeping their people as stupid as possible.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Aren't these the folks that gave us Tetris?
a second report on Russia-24 also aired on July 12th, directly saying fidget spinners were an "object for zombifying" and a form of "hypnosis."
So do you smoke or snort them?
... sleepy ...
You want to meet the U.S. president's son ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Gyroscopes... How do they work? What the hell are they really up to?
https://xkcd.com/332/
Another evidence for the complete bias of the capitalistic West against Russia.
They are investigating the Fidget spinners after Reports claim that they gayify youth.
The legitimate threat of the homofication of a whole generation prompted our dear and belived Czar Putin to act on behelf of this glorious nation.
Repeat slowly until it sinks in: STATE. RUN. MEDIA. SOURCE.
Fucking hell, Russia, keep up. No one plays with Fidget Spinners anymore, those were last term's toy, and now it's the Summer holidays.
By the time you publish your report, it'll be September and the kids will be back at school obsessing over the thing that starting trending during the break.
Personally my money's on the app that lets you link loads of phones together do you can all play a massive game of Simon Says.
Summation 2
Two takeaways from TFA: (1) Russia has junk news too. (2) Glad to see J Wraps found somewhere to dump their excess product.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm surprised that here in the U.S. people haven't been doing the same since January.
In post-Soviet Russia, The East has moral panics.
I heard that if you spin them backwards, they play Stairway to Heaven.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
An innocent-seeming toy leading to mind control? Sounds like "the game" from ST:TNG that hypnotizes many of Enterprise's youth (and some adults too) into sabotaging the ship's defenses. Fiction before, fiction now. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, eh Russia-24?
The reports spurred Russia's consumer protection agency, Rospotrebnadzor, into action, saying on Tuesday they would launch an investigation into the toy.
That's who. Right there in the summary, should you have read the whole thing. A government body, hence "Russia." Just as when they refer to U.S Navy manouevres by saying "U.S. moves warships to Japanese waters," or what have you.
This is a perfectly cromulent use of the name of the country to refer to the activities of its government or part thereof.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Actually it's referring to the government consumer protection body.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's the decadent west trying to corrupt the youth. It's that rock and roll problem all over again.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Our hacker elite have figured out a way to hack into the fidget and surveil the average Russian. Also spinning it in front of Russian ATM's will drain the cash from them. So in Russia you don't spin fidget, it spins you.
We all know extremes are bad but the fad is already dying down and people will probably lose interest as individuals at least in the current capacity
Why is this seen as a crisis?
Twinstiq, game news
Smelling fish, that's been in the sun for 3 days.
Pretty damn obvious when a post saying "one should read them all" gets moderated troll, and the name calling posts against Breitbart get moderated +5 insightful. Facts may hurt on occasion, but they are facts.
All of media today lies, plain and simple. CNN, and NBC have both been caught repeatedly fabricating, staging, and editing content to promote a narrative instead of performing actual journalism. Watch either of those 2 stations and you hear the half a set of fact they need to support the narrative they want you to hear and believe. Nothing more. Not unique to them, just the most obvious offenders.
It is the information vacuum which gives rise to sites like Infowars. They lie too! If you want to see how bad US media has become with propaganda, just read about the same topic on NYT and Breitbart and compare. Watch CNN and Fox and compare. Same subject, two separate sets of facts being discussed, and two completely different opinions being presented. Amazingly, they both tend to favor the leftist agenda.
Journalism in the US is dead, and has been for quite a while. The only difference between today and 10 years ago is that it's easier to see media caught in the act. Trust in Journalism is the only thing lower than approval for politicians.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What could be better at doubling as a listening device than a fidget spinner? It could even generate its own electricity, and nobody would be the wiser about that innocent looking toy the guy at the end of the conference room table is playing with!
Not really. Marxist dictatorships generally had very strong literacy campaigns (Cuba went from about 60% literacy to almost 100% in 30 years, USSR went from 25% to almost 100% in about the same time, China also had something similar) and tried to train as many engineers and scientists as possible. There was a good reason why the GDR national symbol had a technical drawing instrument on it.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Why do you confuse literacy with intelligence?
Also look up "functional illiteracy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Because literacy is a large part of human intelligence. Also your "functional illiteracy" is a non-sequitur. I grew up in such a Marxist dictatorship, functional illiteracy wouldn't do there. Matter of fact, current German schools are quite a bit weaker on education than GDR schools have been. Science and education have generally been quite important in Marxist countries - basically one of the few good things about them.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Imagine a future where fidget spinners have been largely forgotten about by the rest of the world, while in Russia they are a highly valued, illegal tool for political opposition. Smugglers bring them in at night. Police arrest and imprison people for "subverting the state" via fidget spinners...
Avatar of the God(s) Random
i'd wager that a fair number of people do not read the news to stay informed, but to reinforce the views they already hold.
That means exactly what I said above, that Journalism is dead. Journalism isn't supposed to be just presenting your opinion, or the opinion someone wants you to present. Journalism is supposed to be primarily obtaining and presenting the fullest set of facts possible so that the reader/listener can make up their own mind about an opinion with all of the facts journalism made available.
Even in the age of the video recorder everywhere catching people in media lying, we have very little real journalism. We have liars, and people catching the liars as the story. The truth is not present in either of those situations.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Let's not get into the "I know more than you because I lived such times". :)
I'm Romanian. You would lose horribly
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
CNN had to make a major retraction and had 3 journalists resign over the most recent retraction, but they have had numerous retractions and have numerous lawsuits pending for libel and slander. This is not including those that have been settled out of court, and resulted in other "journalist" resignations. CNN repeatedly quote stories from NYT and WAPO which have their own long list of retractions, and libel/slander cases.
CNN has also staged election questions, self admitted promoted politicians they like, and fed a candidate they liked election questions ahead of time so that they could prepare answers ahead of time (at least 1 that we know of).
CNN has been caught openly gatekeeping (Cuomo telling people it was illegal for them to read information from Wikileaks), Staging fake scenes of protests, staging fake crime scenes, lying about reporter locations and green screening "live" reports.
Funny that "Snopes" lists the most recently reported staging of a protests false because CNN claimed if was false. No bias in Snopes right?
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., and you can google the others. Just make sure you omit "cnn.com" from the results. Google "cnn lies" and the links mostly point to CNN stories denying that they lied. No collusion involved, I know.. Google isn't part of the charade either...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I hope this doesn't cause the governments to forget the other pretend problems they are solving.
You know like the NEA helping with the problem where people don't know how good the Affordable Care Act is.
And the NSA helping with the problem of not enough people reading our emails.
And the IRS helping with the problem of people participating in the wrong political organizations and having incorrect prayers and all that.
And the problem where researchers don't understand why lesbians weigh more on average than straight women.
Hopefully tax payers have enough left that the government can address some of these other urgent pretend problems without letting up. What would people end up doing with that money in their pockets? Probably something frivilous that doesn't help anyone. If they don't have it, sure, let's borrow more money from China until our credit score declines, our interest rates go through the roof, and the treasury has to declare bankruptcy. Because that would be so much better than kids having fidget spinners.
> Repeat slowly until it sinks in: STATE. RUN. MEDIA. SOURCE.
I was born in communist and grew up in post communist country (albeit it has nothing to do with Russian or Chinese communism), and the state run media channel(s), specifically HRT 1,2,3 which translates to Croatian Radio Television was the best media source you could wish for. I understand what you mean, but this is not exclusive to state run media.
Your media, Leftist CNN is total brainwashing BS, same as Right wing Breitbart, and as a news source it cannot be even compared to the HRT from the 80s or late 90s. While there was a lot of bullshit on these local state run TV channels when it comes to news and politics, the rest of the programming was extraordinary, and it was tailored to the people and not whoever pays for the ads.
They had rules such as limitation (of 30 seconds) on how long the AD can run on the TV, and how often (once an hour).
Best documentaries and children programming on state run TV at the right time of day.
Family friendly movies and tv shows
Music and art programming, both local and foreign
List goes on... (list of things that you cannot literally find a channel like this anymore, anywhere in the western world)
I understand that you're brainwashed to think that every "state" is or should be treated as an enemy, but there are cases when the state is not trying to screw you. Can you imagine that ?
Where I'm from, TV was from the people FOR the people.
These crap private TV networks that exist now, that most of you think is normal to have... holy mother of god, kill me now.
So they're different from other news organizations how?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Wait a second. Sorry I'm super tired because i work 40 hours a week and take care of my dad 40+
Lets talk about your post. You dump a bunch of very specific accusations out there and the only sources you provide are two very generic wilipedia articles that doesnt help with any of it. Sorry but I have neither the time nor the interest in doing all the leg work on this.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
If you look for other posts in this thread, they are different because they have been caught more.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Then you aren't fucking having them.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Hack our elections, will you?!
Well, take this - fidget spinners!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
See my other post about accountability. I have to interest in doing all the work for you.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.