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@jillshall.bsky.social
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This is about Putin’s Russia. Tell me it doesn’t ring a bell. slate.com/culture/2025...
When we watch a disaster movie, we savor the experience of knowing what’s about to strike before the characters do, tallying up their fatal missteps while we’re safe in our seats. But the people in My Undesirable Friends aren’t blithely going about their business as a storm gathers in the distance. They’re already in it up to their knees, and they just don’t know how deep the water’s going to get. As the laws tighten and the months pass, the characters, many of whom work for TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel, keep wondering out loud whether it’s finally time to leave the country. But it’s difficult to square their own increasingly fraught situations with the stubborn normalcy of the world around them. Even on the night that Russia started bombing Ukraine, Loktev says, she was waiting for one of her subjects at a café near TV Rain’s offices and realized that the people at the next table were on a Tinder date. “Part of the authoritarian attempt is this sense when you’re living through it that life continues to look normal around you, and you feel slightly schizophrenic,” she says. “You feel like you’re going crazy—like, Is this really happening? There’s still matcha lattes everywhere.”
December 9, 2025 at 1:29 PM