does tumblr know that goncharov made it into empire film magazine ?

Congrats goncharov tumblr, you made it onto the frontpage of a big German newspaper:

im listening to my discover weekly and i went wow this one’s really cool whats the title and

(wakes up in a cold sweat) ga, ga, goncharov, member of the russian mob

there was a man who did so much crime

ga ga goncharov, italy’s most famous slav

he really thought he had enough time

Goncharov (1973) - variant poster 2

[link: variant poster 3]

Goncharov (1973) - variant poster 3

As of this writing, Goncharov has been added and removed from the Martin Scorsese filmography Wikipedia page 7 times.

martin scorsese is a real person??????

This is officially the funniest Gonchpost.

Your time is over, my love

Hey, I’d just like to add a link to a really insightful and informative piece written by someone who both personally and professionally understands psychosis, which hopefully will help explain why some parts of this post don’t sit well with some of us who experience being untethered to reality on a regular basis. (:

So @hussyknee tagged me in on responding to this reblog because I happen to also have a degree in psychology - a terminal one, in fact, I got my PhD a couple of years ago.

I generally do agree with the OP of the post linked above. The grand old Tumblr tradition of internet peer pressure for a "good cause" can be immensely and horrendously damaging to people who are mentally ill and traumatised. It is genuinely imperative to extend all possible grace to other people on this clownsite. Because most of us are at least a little bit fucked up and the impact we can have is often disproportionate to the actual words we say on here.

It is my understanding that the "tag as unreality" request comes directly from people who have psychosis who have been triggered and distressed by the Goncharovia that has taken hold of Tumblr. When people who suffer from a debilitating and immensely distressing psychiatric disorder ask to be accommodated, it is deeply unkind to refuse to do it. I generally don't tag my posts and I have zero interest in Goncharovia so I haven't needed to think about the tagging, but if I did reblog something I would, because it's just the kind thing to do.

It is also deeply unkind to harass folks who have not tagged their posts as the Great Tumblr Consensus has decreed they must, for whatever reason. At most drop people a kind reminder, and then let them be. You do not need to amplify them or get on their case or tell the entire internet they are an ableist asshole - which they probably aren't! most people are ableist out of ignorance/lack of critical reflection! - because they didn't use the specific tag you saw someone else whose post they may not have even seen request.

And with all due respect to the OP's education and lived experience - their experiences and their understanding of their disorder do not negate the needs and requests of other people who also have the same disorder. They make some very valid points, and tagging or not tagging is an individual choice, but let's not dismiss other people's needs because their requests for accomodation do not fit with our own experience or understanding.

⬆️ This ⬆️

As of this writing, Goncharov has been added and removed from the Martin Scorsese filmography Wikipedia page 7 times.

Y'all also need to understand that Goncharov is a simulation of a public disinformation campaign. People aren't harmed not because it's "just a movie" but because we let each other know that it's fake. It's what makes the gaslighting non-malevolent. If we learn nothing else from this, let it be:

1. Never trust images

2. Always look for primary sources and follow citations and cross-reference, never accept things from exerpts, secondhand sources or just because you hear the same thing over and over

3. Be desperately grateful that free collaborative databases like Wikipedia, Letterboxd and IMDB are staunchly defending their integrity no matter what. If we stop being able to trust any of them for any reason, no matter how small, a key if rudimentary verification tool gets compromised and a knowledge community destabilised. If we can't trust the small stuff, we can't trust the big stuff.

Not being able to rely on the protection of community ethics is how we devolve from a mutually co-operative community into a pit of voles out to eat each other.

-----

Edit 1: Someone pointed out that "non-malevolent gaslighting" is a contradiction in terms. But what we're doing isn't harmless and as you can see it's easily veering towards disinformation and abuse. It always had that potential. So a better term would be "harm-reduced gaslighting". The willingness to bring others in on the joke, tagging unreality and regular reality-affirmation and legitmate databases defending their integrity are all harm reduction mechanism essential to keep this from going from an intra-community meme to malicious disinformation and abuse of neurodivergent people.

Edit 2: "Misinformation" is merely wrong or inaccurate information. "Disinformation" is conspiracies, hoaxes, phishing, media manipulation, propaganda. Disinformation is deliberate manipulation of info to serve someone's agenda. This is why there are Disinformation experts and entities both local and international to help fight it. The two terms aren't interchangeable.

Edit 3: Turns out I've been misled about voles. They're just as harmless and social as other rodents, and smaller and shier too. Idk why FF.net was called Pit of Voles in the 2000s then. 😂😂 I always associate the the term with blood and teeth. Sincere apologies for the vole slander.

I’m glad SOMEONE is pointing out that this fake movie is a disinformation campaign that is deliberately gaslighting people for a laugh. I can appreciate that most people are content to let others in on the joke, but it’s been legitimately frustrating to see some people with large platforms only indicate with their tone that they’re playing along with a big inside joke. 

Tone is incredibly hard to convey while typing and interpret while reading, more so by autistic people, people with intellectual disabilities, seniors, people with chronic or temporary psychosis, etc. etc. 

I hope someone does a serious analysis of this “mostly harmless” disinformation campaign and how easy it was to convince a large number of people with various talents in content creation, with large and small followings, to participate in a mass gaslighting event for a laugh.

And use that to look more critically at the massive disinformation campaigns that led to over 1 million COVID deaths in the US alone (and still counting) along with the incredible shared delusion that is the US GOP and its even more malicious subsets, including the cult of Tr*mp that tried to overthrow the government by force.

There's been quite a few academics and teachers I've seen who want to do an analysis of this meme. It really is fascinating as a simulation exercise, if rather unfortunately lacking in harm reduction protocols. But then it's not like a protest where there are leaders who can establish boundaries and strategies at the outset and take accountability for the actions of the actors. It's entirely dependent on community ethics, information sharing and consensus.

I also really think that we should do a post-mortem of the last week. I'm fascinated by the things that the construction of the lore revealed about Tumblr users, both good and bad, but also I think we can use greater awareness about triggers, tagging, detecting disinformation and where the lines need to be drawn. I have like 3 Gonchposts still racking up notes and from what I see, people are predisposed to be kind and helpful, they just don't know how. The assholes are very much in the minority (and they're noted assholes. Like a couple of times I searched a blog before blocking and beefing with people was clearly a lifestyle choice for them. And then there was also a nest of covid truthers which...we should probably keep an eye on that). It's just that it's quite hard to reach enough people. Hopefully if something like this happens again we can reduce the collateral somewhat.

I think one of the funniest Goncharov things so far, is the fanartists and tumblr movie theorists being contacted and interviewed by news reporters.

Screenshots of NYT article + image description (this post, different reblog, scroll down).

Last edited: 28th Nov

Last compilation. Post-Scorcese TikTok:

The NBC and Mashable articles I've mistakenly edited into the earlier reblog were also released after Francesca's TikTok. But honestly it's everywhere now.

This Mary Sue article from the 23rd belongs in the earlier reblogs

Goncharov in international news

Spain

Italy

Indonesia

France, France 2

Netherlands

Hungary

Egypt (Arabic)

South Africa

India, India 2

Pakistan

Jordan

I'm sure there's more but these were the front page Google results.

Final edit: Nov 28th.

The most interesting thing to me thus far about this whole goncherov thing is that Tumblr has collectively constructed some pretty convincing side characters for this movie. Katya leaps off the page as this frustrated woman caged by her lack of autonomy, Sofia coyly plays both sides and acts above it all when really she's desperate for the same freedom Katya is. Ice Pick Joe is a less developed character who nonetheless acts as a stand in for the inescapable nature of cycles of violence. andrey, loyal to a fault, gets pulled deeper and deeper into goncherov's orbit until there's no way for him to make it out alive

and yet with all that I have ZERO sense of who goncherov is supposed to be himself. i've see a lot of stuff suggesting that the film is theoretically about loss, including the loss of one's identity, shown primarily through the way goncherov becomes unrecognizable to himself by the time of his death at the end of the film (seeing himself in a fractured mirror is a common motif). it's very interesting to me that we have a fine time coming up with a group of collective blorbos based on mafia movie tropes, but somehow the main character feels unknowable, to the degree that we had to make that one of the core themes of the film.

goncharov

wish the goncharov fandom would talk more about how scorsese’s blending of mafia genre conventions with plot beats typical to a tragic structure poses questions about how goncharov intervenes in conventional notions of the modern tragic hero, or how the presentation of goncharov as somewhat akin to a messianic figure could tether the piece back to scorsese’s broader directorial concerns with christian sin and redemption that manifest across his body of work. but you all only care about shipping goncharov with andrey i guess 🙄

I KNOW RIGHT like im not super well versed in scorsese’s work and my engagement with Goncharov never went much farther than a fairly surface level analysis of contrasting how it drew from post v pre christian ideals of heroism as divorced from/connected to morality (eg, the odyssean notion of heroism as opposed to a messianic notion) as it manifests in the ambiguous ending that abruptly denies the audience of catharsis while questioning the assumptions we were given about the central conflict throughout the third act, but i can still tell it’s a work that sheds a lot of light on scorsese’s overall canon, so i was pretty disappointed when i came to tumblr and all the analysis was about the fucking anchovy scene

right, and like. if you’re going to talk about the anchovy scene then at LEAST talk about the ichthys motif … but you guys are just horny. as ever.

@killyfromblame ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[tags reading: I say this as a gay person: shipping goncharov with andrey is so misogynistic. yekaterina and goncharov are so in love but the fandom only cares about male characters. yekaterina svetlana goncharova is such a complex and human character and you’re more concerned with andrey? all he did was show penis and die. i know this movie was subversive for how much penis it showed. but andrey’s penis scene was the shortest in the entire movie. end tags]

I mean. my reading of this–and the most cursory analysis of the visual cinematographic language used throughout their scenes will back this up–is that goncherina as a relationship existed to subvert the concept of “love” as sufficient or relevant in the landscape of economic violence that goncharov was constrained to act within and across. the myth-making business of heterosexuality is laid bare within these scenes–the sheer perfection of them (the acting out of being “in love,” the relentless symmetry of the shots, the consistent showing of a character bound within a frame) is not aspirational but stifling. the most subsersive connotation the film supplies us with, I would contend, is the similarity of these shots with some of the most ‘obviously’ violent in the film–thus connecting the quotidian violence of heterosexuality with the more salient violence of the streets. andrey’s presence is powerful because it appears so briefly–it offers goncharov a vision of a world outside, a world beyond (and yet, contradictorily, still tragically bound up within the world of the mafia).

now of course you could argue that it’s misogynistic that a woman represents a world of stifling order and repressed play-acting, while a man represents a (however ultimately fallacious) world of freedom and openness (and, yeah, the narrative’s takes on heroism, however subversive otherwise, are pretty uniformly male). but the fans are just responding to what they see in the text. and I think it’s kind of elitist of you guys to just assume that popular criticism (and fanworks and meta do represent popular criticism) must be misunderstanding or over-simplifying the text, rather than responding in the very ways that the text calls for response! the erotics of the anchovy scene do call back to the broader point considering the inevitability of tragedy, and this is what is consistently emphasized across fanfic and meta that references this scene. so why is an erotic response not an “appropriate” response? who gets to decide that?