Jokes about the harsh Chelyabinsk have filled not only the entire Internet, they are already being published in full in newspapers and quoted in serious publications. For a couple of years, no one thought that Chelyabinsk was especially harsh in comparison with other cities in Russia. This is a completely new phenomenon. How did it happen?
The history of the severity of Chelyabinsk
If you ask the residents of Chelyabinsk themselves, they shrug their shoulders. Indeed, although people love and know their city, they still do not see anything particularly harsh in it. Some even note that there are more severe places, it is enough to recall Siberian cities located in the permafrost zone, or settlements in the Arctic.
In fact, Chelyabinsk has become so "harsh" with the light hand of the authors of the texts for the humorous programs "Our Russia" and "Comedy Club". It was the guys from these TV shows who came up with and for the first time voiced several jokes about how harsh the city of Chelyabinsk is. The jokes were so successful that soon they were quoted not only by fans of humorists, but also by so-called Internet geeks - people who follow everything new and funny and actively participate in the formation of memes on the Internet.
Probably, the stars of humorous shows decided to joke about the Chelyabinsk severity, since it is an industrial center in which many are engaged in physical labor.
The severity of Chelyabinsk is a meme, not a stereotype
Now we should dwell in more detail on what this very meme is. A joke or some kind of funny feature of something becomes a meme, which is quoted many times until it is absolutely recognizable, while acquiring various details and details. So, jokes about the harsh Chelyabinsk are already so numerous that you can even download whole brochures with the best of them on the Internet.
Memes tend to include more than just text phrases. For example, a popular meme format: a photo or a picture in a frame with a caption. Sometimes there is no frame. There are graphic formats, where the meme itself is a seemingly unremarkable picture, to which numerous witty Internet users attach various signatures. There are even sites for creating memes.
Anything can become a meme, even a musical melody or a video. Memes do not live long, usually the peak of their "activity" quickly passes, and soon everyone forgets about them, switching to new memes. This is the main difference between memes and stereotypes: the latter are stable. It is on the basis of this sign that the severity of Chelyabinsk cannot be considered a stereotype, it is a one hundred percent meme.
About the fall of a meteorite in the Chelyabinsk region, they say that these are just severe Chelyabinsk women rehearsing a festive fireworks for men on February 23.
But the fate of the meme about the severity of Chelyabinsk was influenced by the fall of a meteorite, which in itself was an interesting and very unusual event. Thanks to the meteorite, the "severity of Chelyabinsk" has acquired numerous new jokes about the meteorite. But already now we can observe that the peak of the meme activity is behind. Statements about the harsh Chelyabinsk no longer cause such a violent reaction, so after a while this meme will probably be practically forgotten, like many others.
