A Moral Panic has set in in Russia and other post-Soviet states over the internet-lead youth craze of Quadrobics.
When the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met up with his Armenian counterpart last October, he opened the discussion with a mention of what he called `one of the most important news items`. The bespectacled man-of-substance was not referencing the demographic ruination of his own country nor the imminence of an exchange with the West in which atomic weapons could be in use. He was lamenting the rise of quadrobics among Russia’s youth and asking whether Armenia was suffering the same disgrace.
Mad or fad?
Quadrobics – or Kvadrobika – consists of a portmanteau word fusing `Quad` (four) with aerobics and is a New Age unofficial sports subculture. This has been promulgated online, via Tik-Tok in particular. The game constitutes a player running and jumping on all fours. A mask of a fox, cat, dog or wolf may be worn and animal behaviours imitated.
Its origins can be traced to one Kenchi Iko, otherwise known as `Tokyo’s Monkey Man`. This cleaner turned athlete made it into The Guinness Book of Records for achieving the fastest 100 metre run – on all fours (The Independent, 12/11/15).
This innovation, supplemented now with a bit of animal cosplay, found adherents in America and Germany. Following that, a key source called Introduction to Quadrobics was posted online by Iridescent in 2015 before going viral five years later.
The demographic for this craze is made up of 7 to 14-year-olds. For reasons we can but only speculate on, quadrobics has taken particular root in Russia, Ukraine and the CIS countries as of last spring.
A Subject of Scandal and Concern.
The catalyst for the backlash arrived last summer. It did not come at first from Duma deputies and Church dignitaries but from a pop starlet.
Twenty-seven-year-old Mia Boyka was playing at an open-air concert in Nadym, north-east of Moscow, when an 8-year-old girl, being lost, came onstage to locate her parents. Boyka, seeing that the girl was donned in quadrobic gear, used the occasion to lambast the child for her hobby. This brusque behavior became a cause celebre with other pop singers, like Egor Creed, coming to her defence (even wearing a cat mask as he did so). Other celebrities, like Ksenia Sobchak also chimed in in support of the girl and her past-time. The battle lines had been drawn.
Some of the ensuing quadrophobia issued from those who – either with sincerity or to score a point – joined the dots between this new fad and other wilder subcultures. Therians, for example, are those who believe themselves possessed of an `animal soul`. Furries, on the other hand, like to take on the roles of anthropomorphised animal characters. Neither of these trends have an inherent link to quadrobics and nor, for that matter, does the LGBTQ+ community.
Apocryphal tales have also helped to ramp up the panic. It is said that in Odessa a pack of quadrobers attacked an elderly lady and in Omsk a woman walked about with her child on a leash. Meanwhile, in Serpukhov, a town in the Moscow oblast, a mother took her 12-year-old to the vet to be vaccinated (these stories came to me – unsourced – from the blogger Setarko, 20/10/24).
Among the politicians to lambast this youth craze was none other than the Ombudsman of Children’s Rights in Tartastan, Irina Volynets. As someone who argued for the decriminalization of domestic violence, her objection to the `removal of boundaries` in this sport comes as no great shock. Deputy of the 8th State Duma Tatiana Butskaya went further in characterizing quadrobics as `satanism` last July.
The Russian Orthodox Church seems to concur. One berobed eminence suggested that young quadrobers should be deprived of the use of toilet paper, as `what use does a cat have of toilet paper? ` (Belsat: East European Review (Vlog), 29/10/24).
Another prominent nay-sayer is Nikita Mikhailkov the grandfatherly Slav Nationalist head of the Russian Cinematographers Union who is a familiar talking head on the Rossiya 24 T.V channel. His take on is predictable: it is a Western LGBTQ+ plot.
This stance, however, is not unanimous. Ekaterina Mizulina who heads the League for a Safe Internet opposes banning it (Gazeta.Ru, 3/10/24). Even the arch-conservative Vitaly Milonov, a State Duma Deputy, has also said the same (Life.Ru, 27/04/24).
It remains to be seen whether the Kremlin will take action against this craze. However, kindergartens and schools are already holding cautionary pep talks with their charges about it.
The kids are all right.
I have spoken with a number of teenage ethnic Russians and Kazakhs about quadrobics. The subject elicits a little embarrassment. Most deny personal involvement in it but know those who partake. There have been quadrobic events held in the central park in Karaganda, Kazakhstan (where I am based). The motive for the sport is boredom and a desire to stand out, they have told me, but it is in decline, possibly due to ridicule. The one middle-aged mother who I have asked about this refers to it as a `perversion`, citing its Japanese origins as evidence of this, yet without much strength of feeling.
My own feelings are ones of relief that some members of Generation Alpha have torn themselves away from their chatbots, got offline, are meeting each other in person and are `touching grass`. The videos it has birthed are sometimes works of acrobatic art. Besides internet crazes are nothing new: we have had bitch slapping, geolocation treasure hunting, the `ice bucket challenge` and many other such fads come and go before without the sky falling down.
The moral panic in Russia about quadrobics just seems to be another facet of the cancel culture which has befallen Russia since 2022 in particular. The pulling of Empire V from the cinemas, the slamming of `propaganda for childlessness`, the reported banning of Halloween celebrations from some schools and the recent curtailing of a tour by the rock-band Kis-Kis (for which I had tickets) are all similar examples.
However, the game Dungeons and Dragons is still with us after all these years (for better or worse) and there were those in the West who tried to outlaw that when it first began.
Lead image: Pinterest.com