Slowly but surely, 6.86 is coming to an end. The supply of meaningful topics to discuss is also depleting, leaving little potential for high quality original content. However, in this time of need and desperation, a new form of creativity always arises.

Memery is an integral part of Dota. It knows no boundaries, does not care about nationality, race, gender or age, and makes us a truly international community, kappa. This blog post will be dedicated to sharing some of the best memes from the Russian region. Without further ado—Dotabuff’s Shitpost, from Russia with Love.

“Everything into ArtStyle”

V1lat is probably one of the best hype-casters, not only in Russia but also internationally. Think Tobi on steroids. It is also not a secret that in more important matches his hype-casting can take the better of him, since he will vehemently support CIS teams, making for a very emotional and colourful cast.

This clip is one the highlights of his casting career and has already transcended into memery. It roughly translates into:

“EVERY BOAT, EVERYTHING INTO ARTSTYLE, MINUS ARTSTYLE, KURONITY REMOVES ARTSTYLE, GOBLIN IS ULTYING, THEY NEED TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE DOWN, WALL IS GOING DOWN, OHOHOH WHAT A NICE WALL FROM THE FAT BASTARD, THEY ARE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING, KILL NO ONE, PHOBOS IS ULTYING, TAKES DOWN NO ONE, LOST’S CREEPS ARE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING INSTAKILLED BY KUNKKA! THEY ARE ALL IN A TORRENT ALL 4 OF THEM, DENDI TPS OUT, THEY TAKE DOWN LOST, TAKE DOWN PHOBOS, TAKE DOWN GOBLAK, JUST LEAVE, THIS IS NOT EVEN A FUCKING GAME, THIS IS JUST... FUCK THEM”

There are countless versions of this meme, yet the better ones have surfaced around the time of the switch to Source 2 and Dota 2 Reborn.

“EVERYTHING REBORN, EVERYTHING INTO CLIENT, MINUS SOURCE 1, REBORN REMOVES SOURCE 1, GABEN IS ULTYING, THEY NEED TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BUG DOWN, FIXES ARE GOING DOWN, OHOHOH WHAT A NICE UPDATE FROM THE FAT BASTARD, THEY ARE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING, FIX NOTHING, GABEN HATERS ARE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING, INSTAKILLED BY COMMUNITY, THEY ARE ALL DISCONNECTED FROM A BUG, ALL 4 OF THEM, SUPPORT IS USELESS, BETTER TO TP OUT, THEY TAKE DOWN SOURCE 1, TAKE DOWN USABLE UI, TAKE DOWN MY CONFIGS, TAKE DOWN MY 2007, JUST DELETE, THIS IS NOT EVEN A FUCKING GAME, THIS IS JUST... FUCK THEM.”

“v1lat it is me, your mother”

“V1LAT IT’S ME, YOUR MOTHER. I HAVE WAITED A LONG TIME TO TELL YOU THAT, BUT I CAN NO LONGER HIDE THE TRUTH. YOU ARE A FAILURE. ALL THOSE TWITTER SUBSCRIBERS AND TWITCH VIEWERS IS ME AND AS A PROOF I AM GOING TO SPAM THIS MESSAGE FROM EVERY SINGLE ACCOUNT, JUST WATCH”

“[caster] is beyond god(2gd)-like, someone fire him!”

A more recent copy-pasta that has been getting more momentum. For the most part it is an outcry from the community about some questionable casters on dota2ruhub team. However, it is rarely more than an innocent joke and is generally spammed only at times of noticeable blunders by inexperienced Russian casters.

“how to counter Barathrum”

A random question presented to the Russian Minister of Mass Communications during a live interview: “how do you counter Barathrum?”. The answer was surprisingly on point: “why counter him at all? Easily dealt with by spiders”.

Nicknames

Unlike in China, there are only a few unique nicknames given to players by the Russian audience. Most of them, however, require too much background knowledge to be relevant as a separate entity.

That said, there are nicknames given to certain heroes and some subsets of players which could be of interest.

For example, we tend to call bad players either “Rак” which translates into “Crayfish” or “Dno”, which translates into “Bottom”.

The history behind the nicknames is completely lost, and there are only speculations available at this point. The first one might be related to the non-Dota related meme of Putin being a crab (misheard string of words). The second one might have originated on iCCup back in Dota 1 days, where the lowest division was denominated “D”, which has later transformed into “Dno”.

There are several interesting nicknames given to heroes. For example, it is not uncommon to hear people refer to Tidehunter as Watermelon, Slardar as Herring, and Skywrath Mage as Rooster. Undying is often referred to as “Bomzh” (Hobo), mainly for the way his model looks in both Dota 1 and Dota 2.

Not fully related to nicknames, there are also several misconceptions about the gender of heroes among the Russian players. For example, Enigma and Pugna are believed to be female, despite their appearances. This misconception mainly comes from how female Russian names generally end in a short “a” sound (think Katya, Masha, Natasha etc.).

This is a Russian Channel!

DotaWTF channel was among the most popular channels in the Russian region, ever since it started in 2013, and it is not uncommon for the YouTube comment section for its videos to be filled with Russian comments.

It is unclear whether there was ever a misconception about the channel’s origin, but the meme has grown big enough for many people to actually believe it was a Russian channel.

“Run, Goblak, Run!”

Probably one of the more obvious memes, the “Run, Goblak, Run!” is nonetheless interesting due to its persistency. The Shanghai Major has a created a lot of questionable “content”, but Team Spirit’s introduction is probably one of the best things coming out of this tournament.

Final Thoughts

Translating memes is a complicated task. The amount of cultural background related to and required to understand memes is immense. That said, hopefully this blog post has provided some insight into what memeing is like in Russia and the CIS region. There are a lot of genuinely funny gems in every region—share yours!