**Kashchenism** (Russian: *Кащенизм*), is a distinctive form of trolling that emerged in Russian online communities during the 1990s. This style is characterized by provocative and mocking language, often cloaked in formal politeness.
Practitioners, known as **Kashchenists**, frequently employed medical and psychiatric terminology, adopting personas reminiscent of mental health professionals or patients. This approach served to satirize and challenge prevailing online discourses, particularly in forums related to mental health - wikipedia 
# Structure The name derives from the Kashchenko psychiatric hospital in Moscow, named after psychiatrist Pyotr Kashchenko, who became the ironic patron saint of this digital style. Kashchenists adopted the voices of doctors, patients, or “orderlies,” saturating their language with medical and psychiatric terminology.
Key traits include: - **Mock-formal politeness** – absurd statements delivered in the calm tone of professional expertise. - **Psychiatric role-play** – positioning other users as “patients” in need of diagnosis or treatment. - **Paradox and ambiguity** – statements that leave the reader uncertain whether the speaker is serious, joking, or simply deranged.
# Example 1 (mock diagnosis):
Уважаемый коллега, ваши высказывания демонстрируют классическую картину параноидального бреда. Рекомендуется немедленная госпитализация.
> Dear colleague, your statements demonstrate the classic picture of paranoid delusion. Immediate hospitalization is recommended.
# Example 2 (absurd politeness):
Дорогие товарищи, я вынужден сообщить, что ваш уровень сознания соответствует третьей стадии шизофрении. Поздравляю.
> Dear comrades, I am obliged to inform you that your level of consciousness corresponds to the third stage of schizophrenia. Congratulations.
# Example 3 (playful paradox):
Ваше отрицание болезни является важным симптомом, доказывающим её наличие.
> Your denial of illness is the key symptom proving that you have it.
# Comparison with Skoba - **Skoba** is minimalist, relying on brackets to signal ironic distance — one gesture is enough to invert a phrase. - **Kashchenism** is maximalist, building elaborate parodies of expert discourse, drowning readers in polite absurdity. - **Skoba** thrives on plausible deniability, letting dissent hide in punctuation. - **Kashchenism** thrives on ambiguity, leaving audiences unsure whether they are witnessing satire, trolling, or madness.
Where skoba whispers in parentheses, kashchenism shouts through the language of diagnosis. Both undermine official discourses, but by opposite means: one through understatement, the other through theatrical excess.
# Analysis Kashchenism can be read as a digital-age cousin of the Zen koan: a performance of paradox meant to disrupt ordinary thinking. Scholars of internet culture see it as an early form of Russian “trolling,” but one that relied less on direct insult than on ironic role-play and playful cruelty.
It also reveals how subcultures appropriate the language of authority. By mimicking psychiatrists, Kashchenists turned medical power inside out, transforming diagnostic speech into a carnival of mock expertise.
# Legacy Though the heyday of Kashchenism was in early forums and LiveJournal communities, its influence persists. Many features of Russian internet irony — deliberate ambiguity, excessive politeness, role-play as satire — trace their lineage back to these practices.
Together with Skoba, Kashchenism illustrates two poles of Russian digital irony: the silence of brackets and the noise of parody. One makes meaning vanish; the other drowns it in laughter.