‘Who Has the Most Selfies?’ Council of Bloggers Meets for First Time in Russian Parliament · Global Voices
<PERSON> speaks at the first meeting of the Council of Bloggers in Russia's lower house of parliament. Source: YouTube.
Within days of announcing the creation of a “Council of Bloggers” in Russia's lower house of parliament, State Duma MP <PERSON> had put together an impressive guest list for the first meeting: <PERSON> extended invitations to 25 influential writers and videobloggers, including opposition leader <PERSON>, <PERSON> (<PERSON>), <PERSON> (<PERSON>), kamikadze_d (<PERSON>), and <PERSON> — it was a veritable who's who of the Russian blogosphere.
The only problem was that all of them RSVP'd “no” to the June 19 meeting. Indeed, none of the influential or controversial bloggers invited actually showed up to the meeting, which was instead attended by pro-regime or apolitical bloggers. (Watch the full meeting here.) The bloggers who did attend included <PERSON>, the author of the “Lisa Drives” car testing videoblog; firebrand Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader <PERSON>; and <PERSON> (the daughter of Kremlin Press Secretary <PERSON>), whose online presence quite limited outside of her Instagram feed, which features glam shots of her taken across Western Europe.
Unsurprisingly, <PERSON> made sure to ‘gram from the Duma:
Накануне, в прямом эфире РБК шла дискуссия о том, что власть не слышит молодежь, а несколько недель ранее я писала о том, что не понимаю, что наша Московская мэрия делает с тротуарами и с организацией движения в центре Москвы. Пускай, не со всем можно согласиться, но сам факт, что мне ответили меня поразил. Я хочу сказать СПАСИБО за ответ. 880
Все действительно зависит от нас и нашей способности вести диалог.
A post shared by nomade. Elizaveta. me cool (@stpellegrino) on Jun 19, 2017 at 7:48am PDT
Without opposition voices, the meeting's conversation frequently veered into the absurd: Instead of discussing popular blogosphere topics like corruption or nepotism, <PERSON>, for example, asked <PERSON>, the co-founder of the magazine “Selfie,” who in the room had posted the most selfies online. <PERSON> replied, “probably Elizaveta,” which <PERSON> objected to. “I generally take selfies only rarely. Two or three weeks ago I posed my first selfie in half a year.” Not to be outdone, <PERSON> joked: “I have more than ten thousand. Who has more than me? No one!”
<PERSON>, a popular blogger who declined to attend the event, speculated that the Kremlin had arranged the Council of Bloggers in response to the anti-corruption protests that have swept across Russia over the last three months, in part powered by influential bloggers posting on social media. 880