YouTubers I’m Currently Subscribed to: Elvira Bary – The Good Russian 🇷🇺

(This is a screenshot of Elvira Bary from her video on the moral decay of Russia 🇷🇺.) 

This is going to be quite a different post than what I usually write. I felt like writing about a YouTuber who I’m currently subscribed to named Elvira Bary. I had some things to say about her, some thoughts that I need to write down that have been bothering me about her. I may turn this into a series if I feel like writing more. I think I might do one on Huey Li, an awesome political YouTuber who I’m currently subscribed to. He’s made some awesome videos lately that I sort of want to talk about, and I want to talk about him because he is articulating things that no one else is really articulating besides Sarcasmitron, but he posts very infrequently, and hasn’t uploaded a new video since the 2024 US presidential election 🇺🇸🗳️. He posted a video on the day of the election 🗳️ called “The Wars of Donald Trump,” which was a video debunking the idea there were “no new wars” under Trump during his first term. If this does become a series, I may also talk about Sarcasmitron as well because I genuinely think he’s one of the best political YouTubers on the platform.

 

 

(This is a screenshot showing the logo of Elvira Bary’s website.) 

 

 

 

For those that don’t know, Elvira Bary is a small Russian-American YouTuber 🇷🇺🇺🇸, who mostly posts philosophical, psychological, and cultural videos about Russia 🇷🇺. She’s an author, she written poems, she’s written books explaining about her personality quiz, and an entire novel, a work of fiction called Russian Treasures 🇷🇺, which I’ll get to in a moment since it is one of the things that bugs me about her. She also has a website where she has a personality quiz that she created, and you can take to see which one of the personality types she created you are. Again, I’ll elaborate more on that later, since that personality quiz of hers does bother me a bit. 

 

She’s an immigrant, first generation I believe, and was born in Russia 🇷🇺, in the town of Nizhny Novgorod located in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, but currently lives in the United States 🇺🇸, specifically in California where she now makes content on YouTube in the English language. She has never stated exactly when she was born, but she did do a video talking about her love life ❤️ in the Soviet Union ☭ and Russia 🇷🇺, and she said that she was in her 20s during the 1990s, the “Wild 1990s” as she and other Russians 🇷🇺 put it. The 90s may be the favorite decade of Americans 🇺🇸, but it is the least favorite decade of Russians 🇷🇺, because the 90s were a chaotic and turbulent time for Russia 🇷🇺.

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Russia 🇷🇺.) 

 

 

 

It was after the Soviet Union ☭ collapsed, and there was increasing wealth inequality, inflation was rampant, there were food shortages, people were going hungry, people were getting poorer, and the rich were getting richer. The 90s was really when the oligarchs came into being because a lot of the oligarchs were people in the Soviet bureaucracy ☭, and when the Union ☭ dissolved, they used the positions they were already in to enrich themselves 🤑. There was also a lot of crime, the Russian mafia 🇷🇺 had come into existence, and they were running amok in the country, particularly in the big cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and there was rampant alcoholism.

 

So, Russians 🇷🇺 don’t particularly see the 90s as a particularly good time, even if it was time of renewal, and it was a time when the country was experimenting with democracy. An experiment that ended with the 1993 constitutional crisis as well as the First Chechen War. See Sarcasmitron’s NATO video to learn more. The Putin regime has even turned the 1990s into a perpetual boogeyman that they use to scare people and to justify their increasingly draconian and authoritarian rule. Given that she was in her 20s in the 90s, I’m going to guess that she was born sometime in the 1970s, which would put her firmly within the Gen X generation, or since Russia 🇷🇺 has a different generational system, she’d be apart of the Soviet generation ☭, the generation born during the time of the Soviet Union ☭, and before the time of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 in either the Yeltsin era or the Putin era. 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of the Soviet Union ☭.)

At some point, during her youth in the 1990s, she moved to the US 🇺🇸, to California where she met her current husband, and she’s been working as an author right up until she decided to start her own YouTube channel. A lot of the books she wrote early on were about the different personality types she came up with for her personality quiz which I’ll explain more later. So, she hasn’t lived in Russia 🇷🇺 proper for many years now, she has talked about how she trained other up and coming writers in Russia 🇷🇺, a lot of whom were Ukrainians 🇺🇦 according to her, so she has visited the country at least a few times after she moved to America 🇺🇸.

 

 

 

(This is the flag of the United States 🇺🇸.) 

 

 

 

But, after Russia 🇷🇺 invaded Ukraine 🇺🇦, she was unable to work as an author in Russia 🇷🇺 because her anti-war stance, and she’s said that that was the reason why she decided to make content on her YouTube channel and start building an online presence. I mean, she started posting in 2023, so the dates line up with that, but as I said before, she was already living in the United States 🇺🇸 by the time the full-scale invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 took place, so how exactly was her career as an author negatively affected by her speaking out against the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 if she no longer lived in Russia 🇷🇺? 

 

Was she selling her poems in Russia 🇷🇺? Because remember, she mostly wrote poems before writing Russian Treasures 🇷🇺, her first novel and first published work as far as I can tell. I am a little confused on that. Maybe she could clarify in the comments if she’s reading this. I doubt she is, I doubt she’ll ever find this. But, on the off chance that she is, hi, welcome to my blog, feel free to explore my blog if you’re interested. Don’t take any of what I’m about to say about your content the wrong way. I still like you, I still like your videos (for the most part), and I’m still subscribed to you. It’s that I’ve disliked a few of your videos, especially your most recent videos, and I’ve disagreed with some of your statements and aspects of your world view. Read more to find out what those issues were. 

She started her channel in 2019, and started posting content in 2023. Most of her early channel like self-help type stuff, cultural stuff, and reading her own poems. Her very first video was her promoting her personality quiz. Then, she made a video about what men ♂︎ don’t understand about women ♀︎ (ah yes, I reckon there’s a lot things men don’t understand about women, but there are also a lot of things women don’t understand about men, quite a conundrum we have here), then did a video about the three types of failures, did another video on personality types where she again promoting her own personality quiz, and so on and so on. 

 

She even made a video about Gen Z (my generation), specifically why Gen Z are happy because every YouTuber in the cultural space has to do at least one video ☝️ about Gen Z 😒. It’s almost as cliché as doing a video on Gen Alpha, or Gen Beta, the latest generation that the Internet 🛜 likes to pick on and say is ruining the world or that is already doomed before they’ve even really got started. Gen Betas are literally babies and toddlers now, they’re not in a real position to influence the culture of the United States 🇺🇸 or any country really. Anyone who makes videos picking on Gen Alphas, and especially Gen Betas, and blaming them for the world’s problems, all I got to say to you is pick on someone your own size. 

She made a huge shift in her content when she posted a video about the KGB called “The Dark Psychology Projects of the KGB: Childhood Traumas That Shaped Our Beliefs.” That was her first video about Russia 🇷🇺 and the Soviet Union ☭ specifically. She did a couple of videos that were her usual content prior to this, like a video targeted at women ♀︎ asking what it really means to be a “high-value woman ♀︎” and a video talking about knowing if you’re on the right path and overcoming slow progress. 

 

But since then, it’s been nothing but Russia videos 🇷🇺, every video she’s made since then has been about Russia 🇷🇺 or the Soviet Union ☭ in some way. Whether it’s talking about her own personal life living in the Soviet Union ☭ as a child, or whether it’s her generalizing and trying to give insights into Russian culture 🇷🇺 as a whole. Her most popular video by far is the video entitled “Russian Views 🇷🇺 on Morality Will Shock You” with a thumbnail that asks “Are Russians 🇷🇺 Amoral?” I don’t know, Elvira, you tell me. The video was talking about Russian moral values 🇷🇺 and how they differ from those in the West. 

 

 

 

(This is the cover of Elvira Bary’s book 📖, Russian Treasures 🇷🇺.)

 

 

 

She’s also promoted her book 📖, like in almost every video, she has to plug her book 📖 at the end, which is available on Amazon. It gets to the point where it’s kind of annoying why do you need to mention your book 📖 in every video? But I understand why she does it, I would probably do the same thing if I written a book 📖 and I want it to sell and for people to actually read it. From what it seems, Russian Treasures 🇷🇺 is a romance novel ❤️ of sorts, but it includes a lot of history and politics because it takes place around the time of the Russian Revolution 🇷🇺 (she didn’t specify which one if it was the February Revolution or the October Revolution, maybe both), and there’s something about Chinese mercenaries. 

 

It seems like the book 📖 is a blend of different genres, it’s a both a romance drama ❤️ and a political thriller, and it’s all set in Russia 🇷🇺 during the time of the Russian Revolution 🇷🇺, the transition from the Russian Empire 🇷🇺 to the Soviet Union ☭, which was just another Russian empire 🇷🇺 but under a different name and flag, pretending to a progressive multi-ethnic country where everyone is equal and equally represented and no one is persecuted or impoverished. The biggest lie ever told about the Soviet Union ☭, and one that communists ☭ here in the West still believe to this day. 

 

I hope she included the Russian Republic 🇷🇺 (later referred to as the Russian Democratic Federative Republic 🇷🇺 in 1918, it was only called the Russian Republic 🇷🇺 in 1917 to 1918, and then it switched its name to that) in there as well since that was the government in power in the months in-between the February Revolution and the October Revolution, and that government tends to be ignored or overlooked. The book 📖 is also the first entry in a series that she plans on writing, like this is Book 1 according to the cover. She already has two more books 📖 planned for this series, one called The White Ghosts’ Empire and one called The Prince of the Soviets ☭. 

 

Wanna bet that so-called “prince” is going to end up being Stalin? Or Stalin’s son? Who never ended succeeding his father as dictator of the Soviet Union ☭ as Nikita Khrushchev took power instead. Maybe, the “prince” is Lavrentiy Beria 🤷‍♂️. I’m sure she will turn this into a series if this book 📖 sells enough copies. Or maybe, she’ll write the other books 📖 anyway even if this one isn’t successful and hardly anyone reads it. I’ll show the exact plot synopsis that Elvira Bary (or whoever wrote this and runs the website) wrote about the book 📖, and you’ll see what I mean. I added to the flag emojis and communist symbol ☭.  

 

Drawing on meticulously researched archival sources, including hidden memoirs, forgotten manuscripts, and private collections from around the world, Russian Treasures 🇷🇺 reveals the complex dynamics that led to the fall of Imperial Russia 🇷🇺 and the emergence of the Soviet Union ☭. This novel presents a unique historical narrative, told through the perspectives of unlikely figures—displaced aristocrats, anti-Bolshevik resistance fighters, black market traders, Chinese mercenaries, and British military advisors 🇬🇧. Each character plays a crucial, unseen role during this pivotal moment in history.

I started watching Elvira Bary’s videos when her channel was still pretty small, I mean, it is still pretty small but when I started watching her, her channel was even smaller than it is now. Like, I believe when I started watching her, she only had 5,000 or 10,000 subs (written as 5K and 10K subs respectively), maybe something in-between those two numbers, or something lower than those two numbers, but her channel has really grown since then. She currently sits at 16,005 subs (written as 16.5K subscribers), and is gaining more each day. Her channel currently has 897,299 views and rising, and this is all just from 212 videos. I haven’t been able to get anything like that from a 100 or so videos when I still did YouTube videos. 

 

I only gained about 300 or so subs on my The Sci-Fi Dragon channel, which I deleted after I started my JeditheScribe channel, which is the one I currently. She also gives you the option to donate to her PayPal account, donate to her Buy Me a Coffee ☕️ account (Buy Me a Coffee ☕️ is a subscription based donation service where you can donate creators money 💵 ranging from $25 💵, $50 💵, and $100 💵, maybe even more), and join her YouTube channel, like become a channel member which also means you donate her money 💵 basically. She calls it her “think tank,” but it’s not a real think tank, it’s just a fan club for channel members. Elvira Bary’s Think Tank is as much of a think tank as PragerU is a university. 

I think the reason why she’s blown up and gained so much popularity in the past few months is that people are really craving for what I like to call “good Russians 🇷🇺,” Russians 🇷🇺 that are not pro-war, or pro-Putin, or anti-Ukraine 🇺🇦. People still want to believe that there are Russians 🇷🇺 out there who are good people, who are not hateful or imperialistic, and Elvira Bary fits that mold. It’s the same reason why people like Vlad Vexler (who is very similar to Elvira Bary except he’s a lot more overtly political and lives in the UK 🇬🇧 rather than the US 🇺🇸), The Russian Dude 🇷🇺♂︎, INSIDE RUSSIA 🇷🇺, Natasha’s Adventures, Victoria Terekhina, Depressed Russian 🇷🇺, Dasha Reacts (formally known as Dasha of Russia 🇷🇺), and NFKRZ. 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Ukraine 🇺🇦.)

 

 

 

Of course, Ukrainian YouTubers 🇺🇦 don’t really believe in the idea of a “good Russian 🇷🇺.” To Ukrainians 🇺🇦, every Russian 🇷🇺 shares moral responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦, regardless of whether they personally support it or not, because a lot of Ukrainians 🇺🇦 believe that Russians 🇷🇺 lie when they say they don’t support the war or they aren’t imperialist. They mostly cite the annexation of Crimea, and the overwhelming support for that annexation amongst the Russian populace 🇷🇺, even so-called “Russian liberals 🇷🇺,” as proof that Russians 🇷🇺 are incapable of shaking off their imperialist mindset. They will always be imperialistic to some degree, they will always be nationalistic, they will always be orcs. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Crimea.) 

 

 

 

 

Like, a lot of Ukrainians 🇺🇦 disliked Navalny and didn’t feel sorry for him when he died because he openly supported the annexation of Crimea, and said that it was Russian territory 🇷🇺. He wasn’t being coerced to say that, he said of his own free will. So, all of Ukrainians 🇺🇦 see such Russian YouTubers 🇷🇺, so-called “good Russians 🇷🇺,” as inauthentic and potential wolves in sheep’s clothing 🐺🐑. In their minds, the only good Russian 🇷🇺 is a dead Russian 🇷🇺. Like, I highly doubt Anna from Ukraine 🇺🇦 would be too impressed with Elvira Bary or any of the “good Russian 🇷🇺” YouTubers I mentioned here. The only real exception she made was with Vlad Vexler. But, Elvira Bary? I don’t particularly think she would like her all that much, like I could see an interaction between Elvira and Anna going really badly. 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Iraq 🇮🇶.) 

 

 

 

I personally don’t believe Ukrainians 🇺🇦 for feeling this way. They have every right to hate Russians 🇷🇺, just as Iraqis 🇮🇶 had every right to hate Americans 🇺🇸 for invading their country. Afghans 🇦🇫 especially have the right to hate us because we failed them, we invaded and occupied their country for 20 years (we spent $2.3 trillion 💵 in that war), and gave them nothing, we failed to bring them a stable government, we failed to rebuild their country, we failed to give them a strong democracy, and we failed to stop the Taliban from regaining control and re-establishing their regime. We wasted lives and money 💵 and we have nothing in return to show for it. 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Afghanistan 🇦🇫.) 

 

 

 

 

Even Ukrainians 🇺🇦 have a reason to be mad at us because of President Trump, and him throwing Ukraine 🇺🇦 and Zelenskyy under the bus and siding with Putin and Russia 🇷🇺, and I don’t blame them for being mad at us. I am truly embarrassed and ashamed to be an American 🇺🇸 right now. This is not us, Trump does not represent us. I know that Russians 🇷🇺 say the same thing about Putin, that Putin doesn’t represent them, and it would be hypocritical to say that Trump doesn’t represent us when I said that Ukrainians 🇺🇦 have every right to be mad at us 😡 because every Americans 🇺🇸 bears moral responsibility for Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine 🇺🇦 just they did for Bush’s invasion of Iraq 🇮🇶. 

 

But still, I don’t feel represented by Trump, even he is representing us, I didn’t even vote for him, and I hate him with every fiber of my being 😠, and he is going against 80 years of American foreign policy wisdom 🇺🇸 by abandoning an ally and siding with one of our adversaries. Some would say that it’s conventional wisdom for America 🇺🇸 to abandon its allies, and while yes, the US 🇺🇸 has abandoned a lot of allies (I just named one, Afghanistan 🇦🇫), we aren’t supposed to. We’re supposed to stand by our allies, and defend them in anyway we can, because it benefits them and benefits us. NATO has served as the bed rock for European security and American security 🇺🇸 for 75 years, it’s a huge reason why we’re able to have the international order we currently have, and we couldn’t have done it without our allies. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of NATO.)

 

 

 

 

NATO is a good example of what happens when we stand by our allies and don’t abandon them or waver in our commitments. The same goes for the bilateral defense pacts that we have with countries like Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, Taiwan 🇹🇼, Australia 🇦🇺, New Zealand 🇳🇿, and the Philippines 🇵🇭. By abandoning Ukraine 🇺🇦 like this, Trump is going against everything that makes American foreign policy 🇺🇸 what is, or what it should be in an ideal world. A lot of people have said that he is the most unAmerican president 🇺🇸 we’ve ever had, and I couldn’t agree more. 

 

According to the constitution, and other laws we have on the book, he’s traitor because he waged a violent insurrection against our government so that he could illegally stay in power. So, he’s guilty of treason and he might as well be an enemy of the state. Of course, that being said, that doesn’t absolve Americans 🇺🇸 of any of the moral responsibility for what Trump is doing, and what he will in the future when it comes to foreign policy. After all, millions of Americans 🇺🇸 voted for him, which enabled him to do all the horrible things he’s currently doing. He wouldn’t be president at all if people didn’t vote for him, or chose to vote third party or not vote all, he’d probably be in a prison cell right now, if Americans 🇺🇸 made better choices. 

  

It also helps that Elvira is very soft-spoken, her Russian accent 🇷🇺 is not too thick, she has a very motherly or grandmotherly look to her, and her videos have this very warm and inviting feel to them. Even if she does use that same piano music 🎹 in all the transitions in her video that kind of gets annoying after awhile. I think a lot of people projecting all those feelings on Elvira, and why they’ve latched onto her so much. People, I think, also started watching her because they think she’s hot, because think they she’s pretty. And certainly, I think she’s very beautiful. In her video talking about her love life ❤️ in 1990s Post-Soviet Russia 🇷🇺, she showed a picture of herself of what she looked like during that time, and while she definitely looked pretty back then, I think she looks far prettier now 😍. What I can say? I do have a bit of a thing for older women ♀︎. I could go for one. 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Elvira Bary’s video talking about her love life ❤️ in 1990s era Russia 🇷🇺, comparing how she looked back then compared to how she looks now.)

 

The first video of hers that I watched was not the “Are Russians 🇷🇺 immoral or amoral” video, but her video about why Russia 🇷🇺 has always been a dictatorship and has never been able to become a democracy, at least for very long. Then I watched her cat video 🐈‍⬛ where she talked about a female cat 🐈‍⬛♀︎ that she may or may not have seen in Almaty, a city in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿, and in fact, the largest city in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿. I think it might’ve been her pet cat 🐈‍⬛ but I’m not exactly sure. The video was just her reading a poem or a short story that she wrote (or someone else wrote) about this cat 🐈‍⬛ that may or may not be her pet cat 🐈‍⬛ . 

 

Then I saw her video where she talked about how she tried to break into Soviet television ☭📺 as a child I guess because she was a child for most of her life in the Soviet Union ☭. Then her video about why the Soviets were bad at economics, then her video the Soviet gulags ☭ under Stalin, then her videos about Soviet “life hacks” ☭ (God 🤦‍♂️), and then her video about her inventor dad, and then her video on the Russian book 🇷🇺📖 War and Peace which was about Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia 🇷🇺 (which was adapted into a movie in 1966 and 1967 which was the most expensive of its time and is about 431 minutes, or 7 hours and 11 minutes long), and so on and so forth. 

 

I’ll admit, I was hooked, I really liked her videos. That’s why I subscribed to her after all. I don’t subscribe to people I don’t like and I don’t enjoy. I doubt anyone really does, unless they’re hating watching someone, and need videos to make content on for their own channel. I enjoyed listening to her unique perspective on Russia 🇷🇺 and Russian culture 🇷🇺. She has a unique way of looking at the world to put it as kindly as I can. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that bother me about her or things that are worth criticizing her about. 

 

The first problem I ever had with her was that she used AI generated images in a lot of her videos. Like all of the videos I saw of hers initially had at least one AI image, and her website also used a lot of AI images, in fact they’re still on there now. But, she has a least stopped using AI images in her YouTube videos as far as I can tell. Probably because she got a lot of criticism for using AI images. I hope that she starts hiring actual artists to do artwork for her because in my mind, people who use generative AI for art are lazy people who either don’t want to do the art themselves or they don’t want to actually pay the money 💵 to hire an artist to do the artwork for them. There’s a lot of struggling artists who are looking for work and would be more than willing to do artwork for a channel such as Elvira Bary’s. If the pay is good enough that is. 

But, the real issues that I have Elvira Bary, that kind of makes me doubt her arguments or her insights or whatever, and not really like her is the personality test she created. Yes, I’m finally going to talk about this. You see, she created this personality quiz called the Sphinx Method that is meant to determine which one of the personality type that she created do you fit into, and then after you figure out which one of these personality types you fit into, then you can begin to self-actualize. Here’s the exact description that she wrote to describe what the Sphinx Method:

Legend has it that the Sphinx would challenge passersby with a profound riddle about their identity. Failure to answer correctly meant death, while success led to rewards and blessings. This mythical scenario mirrors real life. Countless individuals struggle to understand their true selves, often feeling directionless and overwhelmed. Their feelings could be described in the following way:

• I am stuck, and nothing works out for me.
• I'm uncertain about which goals to pursue.
• I doubt I have any impressive talents.
• I lack the energy for self-actualization.

This indicates that people don't know themselves or understand their abilities and internal resources. They set goals that are not their own and try to follow someone else's path, which feels like spiritual death.

The Sphinx Method offers a structured approach to answering critical questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is my true potential?”

With this method, you gain clarity on your direction, where to invest your energy, and what you naturally excel at, making your journey both intentional and fulfilling.

 

My problem with the Sphinx Method, as it is described by Elvira Bary herself (or whoever wrote this description), is really the problem that I have with all personality quizzes or tests, it’s way too narrow. It’s too neat, and if there’s one thing that humans are not, it is narrow and neat. You can just categorize people based on a few personality types, not everyone fits neatly into the personality types that you came up with. I like, I don’t fit any of the personality types that Elvira Bary created. I did try to take the quiz, and none of the questions described me at all. So, it’s bogus. It’s as bogus as astrology. That’s about as real as these personality quizzes or tests are, they’re about as real as astrology, which means it’s not real at all. It’s fake, it’s nonsense. It feels very pseudoscience-y. 

But whatever, Elvira Bary created a silly personality quiz based on her own kooky ideas of how people actually work and how the world actually works, that’s fine, it might be something fun to play around with if you’re into that sort of thing, but the problem lies when she tries to use her own personality quiz to explain the behavior of real people, of real politicians and world leaders, and when she tries to apply it geopolitics. She used her own personality quiz to describe the personality types of countries if they were real people in one of her past videos, and I thought it was kooky and weird and a bit silly, especially how she characterized Russia 🇷🇺 and the United States 🇺🇸, describing Russia 🇷🇺 as some kind of narcissistic caregiver that just wants to be “loved” and “admired” or something and the US 🇺🇸 as an “adventurer” or “explorer.” It was really stupid, I didn’t agree with that video at all. 

Then she did it again when she did a video where she tried to psychoanalyze Putin using her own personality quiz. She proscribed him as a “hunter” like she said he was a “hunter-something,” I don’t remember what she said, she said he was combination of a hunter and then another one of her made-up personality types. It’s always dicey when try to psychoanalyze someone when you aren’t a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. Especially when that person is a dictator and a war criminal like Vladimir Putin. Elvira Bary has no expertise in these fields, she’s doesn’t have a doctorate in psychology or psychiatry, she’s an author! She’s a make-believe philosopher. That would be like me saying that I’m a neurologist or that I know anything about neurology to speak on the matter when I’m just a blogger.

She was clearly showing the limits of her insights and knowledge when she starts talking about psychology and personality quiz. In fact, she shows the limits of her insights and knowledge when she talks about anything that isn’t narrowly about Russia 🇷🇺, Russian culture 🇷🇺, or her own lived experience living in Russia 🇷🇺 and the Soviet Union ☭. Like, she did this rather silly video where she used this Russian concept 🇷🇺 called “khalyava,” which basically means “freebie,” it means you’re giving something for free, for nothing in return. It has a negative connotation in Russia 🇷🇺 because it means you’re giving someone something or receiving something that you weren’t entitled or you didn’t deserve. Like, the example on Wikipedia is if someone gives you a ticket to go to the movie theater with them simply because their wife can’t go or doesn’t want to go, then it’s khalyava. 

And while this idea may work when applied to normal daily life or even to Russia 🇷🇺 specifically, it in my opinion doesn’t work when you try to apply it to the whole world and try to use it to explain how the world works. I disagreed with that video so much, just the mere premise of it, that I felt compelled to write a comment on it. I explained my disagreement with the video, and Elvira actually responded to my comment. But it was weird because her reply was really short, and she didn’t really say anything to reply to my statements. All she said was “thanks for watching.” But, I’m not sure if it was a genuine “thanks for watching,” or a nervous or awkward “thanks for watching,” or a passive aggressive “thanks for watching,” it’s hard to tell with text. 

 

 

(These are screenshots of the comments I was referring to with myself and Elvira Bary.)

 

Something that I did in one of her recent videos that really bugged me was something that bugs me about every Russian 🇷🇺 or non-Russian 🇷🇺 white-knighting for Russians 🇷🇺 (being offended on their behalf) when they do it, is when she complained how commentators, politicians, and YouTubers say “Russia 🇷🇺 wants this” or “Russia 🇷🇺 wants that,” and that the Russian government 🇷🇺, or “Russian elites 🇷🇺” as she said in the video, doesn’t represent all Russian people 🇷🇺. 

It’s a really bad faith argument, whether she intended to or not, it’s meant to be a “gotcha” moment or a way to dismiss someone’s argument or point. Like, when the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine 🇷🇺🇺🇦, there all these Russians 🇷🇺 and non-Russian coming to the defense of Russians 🇷🇺 saying that you should say “the Russians 🇷🇺” when referring to the Russian government 🇷🇺 or the Russian military 🇷🇺 since not all Russians 🇷🇺 support the war, or support Vladimir Putin, or agree with Russian propaganda 🇷🇺. 

But it’s semantics, people should know what commentators or politicians or YouTubers mean when they say “the Russians 🇷🇺” or they say “Russia 🇷🇺.” Of course they aren’t referring to all Russians 🇷🇺, they’re referring to the Russian government 🇷🇺 or Russian military 🇷🇺, and they’re referring to the Russian state 🇷🇺, the country of Russia 🇷🇺 as an entity. I thought Elvira Bary would be familiar with this concept considering that, as I just said, she made a video where imagined what the personality types of countries would be if they were people. This should all go without saying, we shouldn’t have to explain ourselves, it should be a given, but the fact that it’s not just shows how easily offended some people can be. 

I remember when Cody from AlternateHistoryHub (also PointlessHub) made his video debunking the NATO argument (the argument that Russia 🇷🇺 invaded Ukraine 🇺🇦 because it was “threatened” by NATO, and the US 🇺🇸 promised never to expand NATO eastwards but lied and did it anyway), he had to clarify in the video itself that whenever he said “the Russians 🇷🇺,” he meant the Russian government 🇷🇺 and not all Russian people 🇷🇺. But he shouldn’t have had to say that, it should’ve been a given. By the way, he deleted that video I mentioned, or he privated or unlisted it. I don’t know why, maybe he thought it was too politically charged, because he wasn’t proud of it. 

Whatever the reason, that video is gone now from his channel, along with the alternate history video he made to go along with it as a companion piece. The only proof of its existence are reuploads that people have done throughout YouTube. I think I have the alternate history companion video saved on my Backup Plus external hard drive, I could reupload that video on my channel if no one else has already. I have some other videos that were deleted off of YouTube saved as well that I’m definitely planning on reuploading, all of the old ADV promo videos that disappeared from YouTube, presumably after the channel that originally uploaded them was shut down and deleted. 

This whole video Elvira’s kind of rubbed me the wrong way because it sort of condescending, like it was a video where she was trying to say that she knows better than everyone else, that she knows more about how the world works than anybody else, and she speaks for all Russians 🇷🇺 and knows what Russians 🇷🇺 really think and what they really want. Like with the khalyava video, I left a comment on this video about what “Russian elites 🇷🇺” want from the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦. She didn’t respond to that one, but a couple of did, and one of them actually agreed with what I had to say. I’ll show you the comment that I wrote.

 

(This is a screenshot of the comment I wrote in response to Elvira Bary’s video on the “Russian elites 🇷🇺.”)

 

Her latest video is about declining birth rates, because that’s always a fun topic, and one that she’s totally qualified to talk and is equipped for, and how to solve them. This video had a lot of the same issues as the khalyava video and the “Russian elites 🇷🇺” video, where it’s too neat, it’s too simplistic and a bit condescending, it’s her talking as if she knows better than everyone else, and knows what everyone wants and what everyone thinks, and thinks she has all the answers to solve a complex issue that millions of people around the world have been trying to solve for decades. She bit off more than she could chew here, and it really shows. Population decline and declining birth rates is a complex and complicated issue with a lot of moving parts and a lot of causes. It is not monocausal, and it felt to me like she was trying to make it seem like it is. 

The part that threw me off was when she said that people aren’t having babies anymore because they’re too self-conscious and they want to please people or fit into society or something, it was really stupid and it didn’t make a lot of sense, at least to me. Maybe I’m just not big brained 🧠 enough for little ol’ Elvira over here. Then she was talking women ♀︎’s role in causing birth rates in developed countries to decline, and how it’s because women ♀︎ are taught to be strong and independent, and because they have different expectations placed upon them, and because they want to have careers on them, they just choose not to have children. Is Elvira Bary anti-feminist? Because this all sounds like anti-feminist nonsense to me.

There was this comment in the comment section that said something like “the wolves 🐺 are crying 😭 that the sheep 🐑 are not breeding,” and Elvira replied to that comment said “I’m not a sheep 🐑, I hope you aren’t either.” They weren’t literally saying people are sheep 🐑, Elvira Bary, it was a metaphor talking about how the rich and powerful 🤑 (you know, the “elites”) are upset that the peasant class (or what they see as the peasant class) is not having children that they can then exploit for profit when they grew older. That’s what the comment was trying to say, it wasn’t saying that people 🐑 or that women specifically are sheep 🐑, it was trying to make a point using animals to illustrate that point. Make it something witty that people would easily understand. It’s almost as Elvira doesn’t understand idioms, or metaphors, or allusions, or allegories, or choosing not to understand to make her own points and to shield herself from criticism. 

Speaking of which, I am glad that so far, she hasn’t deleted negative comments on her videos, or comments that are critical of her videos but not outright hating them. I screenshotted those comments you saw above just in case she deleted from for being too negative or too critical of her. I was worried that she was one of these creators who only wants positive comments in her comment section, who wants the comment sections of her videos to be filled with nothing but enduring fans constantly trip over themselves to tell her how amazing she is and what a genius she is. And while there is still plenty of that in the comment sections of her videos, she has kept the more negative comments up, including mine. 

So, if you’re reading this, Elvira, good on you 👍, I’m glad you’re doing that. But, I did notice these weird comments her latest couple of videos. There are these weird comments in the comment section that say “For the algorithm.” They’re from the same commenter, SayNoToDemocide. What are these supposed to mean? Are they positive comments or are they negative comments? It seems like Elvira seems to think that they’re positive comments because she has loved every single one that has popped up. YouTube gives you the ability to love comments with a heart ❤️ if you, the creator, like that comment. 

 

(This is a screenshot for those weird comments from SayNoToDemocide1 that Elvira Bary for some liked and gave a heart ❤️ too. I hated those comments and gave them a thumbs down 👎.)

 

 

Another issue that I have (three issues actually) that I want to talk about before I finally wrap this up is that I have noticed that she is a bit soft on the United States 🇺🇸 and Trump. Like, it always felt like whenever I watched her videos, she’s less harsh on the US 🇺🇸 and on Trump as she is on Putin and Russia 🇷🇺. I mean, I sort of understand why, she lives in the US 🇺🇸 and thinks that it’s a far better country to live in than Russia 🇷🇺. If she didn’t like living in the US 🇺🇸, then she would just move back to Russia 🇷🇺, and she clearly doesn’t want to do that. But still, Trump supports Putin, and he’s doing everything he can to help Putin and Russia 🇷🇺 and undermine Zelenskyy and Ukraine 🇺🇦. Not only that, but he’s actively turning the US 🇺🇸 into a dictatorship, and has so far been pretty successful at it. That’s why he hired Kash Patel as the FBI director, so that he can turn the FBI into the FSB. 

She is American 🇺🇸, she’s lived here for decades, so she’s just as much of an American 🇺🇸 as she is Russian 🇷🇺. In fact, you could argue that she’s more American 🇺🇸 at this point than she is Russian 🇷🇺 considering that she’s lived the majority of her adult life here in the United States 🇺🇸 rather than in the Russian Federation 🇷🇺. The Russia 🇷🇺 she grew up in throughout most of her childhood is not the same Russia 🇷🇺 that we have today. 

There are a lot of similarities, Russia 🇷🇺 didn’t change that much when it transitioned from communism ☭ to capitalism, and the state apparatus was still in place, a lot of top bureaucrats and elites still had their same positions (especially Yeltsin, who was the president of the Russian SFSR ☭ and then remained the president of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 when the Soviet Union ☭ dissolved and became nothing more than a memory), but they’re not exactly the same. There still are a lot of differences. It wasn’t even called Russia 🇷🇺 back then, it was called the Soviet Union ☭. The Russian SFSR ☭ was one of many Soviet republics ☭. The largest and most influential, but still one of many.

 

 

(This is the flag of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic ☭, or Russian SFSR ☭.) 

 

 

Surely, she would have seen the changes that America 🇺🇸 has gone through during her time living here. What were opinions on 9/11 or the War on Terror, something that she would’ve definitely been around to see. Surely she should have things to say about America 🇺🇸, other than it’s an Explorer/Champion according to her personality test, the Sphinx Method. I dread what personality type she would proscribe to Trump if she used her Sphinx Method on him (God, that’s so stupid 🤦‍♂️), probably something like Hunter/Caretaker or Hunter/Warrior, or Warrior/Champion, or Hunter/Diplomat (that would be the dumbest one of all given recent events), or Hunter/Strategist, or some other BS like that. 

She also hasn’t really talked that much about Ukraine 🇺🇦. I mean, she’s talked about it a little bit, it’s the reason why she’s even making content in the first place, but not as much as you would think or hope for. She hasn’t talked about Ukrainian history 🇺🇦, she hasn’t talked about Ukrainian culture 🇺🇦, she hasn’t talked about the Ukrainian people 🇺🇦, she hasn’t talked about Ukrainian politics 🇺🇦, she hasn’t even talked about Zelenskyy or given him the ol’ Sphinx treatment. 

On top of that, she only started talked about Ukraine 🇺🇦 or mentioning it from time-to-time when the 2022 invasion happened. To be fair, that’s when a lot of people started paying attention to Ukraine 🇺🇦 (including me), but still. She seemingly had nothing to say when Crimea was annexed or when Russia 🇷🇺 started waging a war in the Donbas, using so-called “separatists” as their proxies to do the fighting on their behalf. Only for the Russians 🇷🇺 to get directly involved, and invade the Donbas numerous times until launching a full-scale invasion in 2022, and trying to make a thunder run on Kyiv. 

The invasion was only supposed to last for three days, a week at most, and now it has gone on for three years. This is all despite her saying that she worked with Ukrainians 🇺🇦 prior to the 2022 invasion, teaching them in writing classes, and it’s another reasons why Ukrainians 🇺🇦 online may not like her, and see her as a phony and just every other Russian 🇷🇺. Maybe, it’s a good thing that she hasn’t delved deeper into these topics since as I mentioned, whenever she tries to cover something that doesn’t really know, something that doesn’t have to do with Russia 🇷🇺 or her lived experience living in the Soviet Union ☭, she completely misses the mark. 

And for all she talks about Russia 🇷🇺, she doesn’t really talk about Russian colonialism 🇷🇺. She hasn’t really delved that deeply into the territories that Russia 🇷🇺 has stolen and the ethnic groups that it has subjugated throughout its history. Nothing about the Chechens, nothing about the Tatars, nothing about the Buryats, nothing about the Tuvans, not even anything about the Nogais. She’s only really paid lip service to these topics by saying that Russia 🇷🇺 is an empire or that Putin is trying to turn it back into an empire, and she hasn’t at all suggested that Russia 🇷🇺 give up any of its territory that belonged to these non-Russian 🇷🇺 and non-Slavic ethnic groups. Would she even be willing to do that? Even the most staunchly anti-war and anti-Putin Russian 🇷🇺 isn’t willing to give up territory for the sake of decolonization. Some aren’t even willing to give up Crimea, as they genuinely believe that it’s Russian territory 🇷🇺 and that it rightfully belongs to them, even though it isn’t and it doesn’t, it’s Ukrainian territory 🇺🇦 and it rightfully belongs to the Ukrainians 🇺🇦. 

Despite what I’ve said about Elvira Bary and her content, I’m still subscribed to her. I like still like most of her videos, even if they have huge flaws, even if I disagree with some of what was said by her in those videos, I still like her and I’m still willing to stick by her and stay subscribed to her, at least for the time being. If she says anything to egregious, if she says anything in the future that I find too contemptible and too disagreeable, then I will unsubscribe from her. That is my current philosophy when it comes to YouTubers I’m currently subscribed to. I’ll only subscribe to them if I like them and I like their videos, and I’ll only stay subscribed if I continue to like them and their videos, and if I continue to agree with most of what they say. If not, then I’m out, I’m unsubscribing. 

That’s how it is, and that’s how I think everyone should approach subscriptions on YouTube. I’m not loyal to YouTube to a fault, I’m not loyal to them to the death so to speak, I’m only loyal to them so long as they keep producing content that I like and so long as I continue to agree with them. If they stop producing good content, if I stop agreeing with them and start disagreeing with them, then that’s it, I’m out. They’re gone. I make apologies for that. Keep that in mind, the next person who I choose to write about if I make this into a series. 

Next up is a repost of my second journal about Inuyasha ever. The one I wrote about Kikyo, and why they won’t let her die. I’ve got a lot of news stories from the last couple of weeks and last couple of days that I want to cover in the foreword. It’s going to be a huge project, it’s going to take me a while to write the foreword, probably the whole day. And this took me the whole day to write, so I might need tomorrow (Monday March 2, 2025) to take a break and recoup, to really recharge my batteries 🔋 so that I’ll be able to write that foreword and make it the best it can possibly be. I wrote a bunch of notes about the stuff I want to include in there, and I may not be able to get to it all. 

If I don’t, then I’ll just remove it from my To-Do List, whatever news topic I didn’t include. You already kind of got a preview of what I’ll probably mainly focus on, which is the meeting between Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vance in the Oval Office, that disgraceful meeting, an embarrassment to all of mankind. Not just the United States 🇺🇸, Ukraine 🇺🇦, or Europe, but all mankind. Of course when I say “mankind,” I mean all of humanity, not just men ♂︎, for all you people out there thinking I’m excluding women ♀︎ or other genders by saying “mankind” instead of “humankind” or “peoplekind.” Those just didn’t roll of the tongue quite as well in that particular sentence as mankind did.

 

(This is a screenshot of Elvira Bary from her video talking about Russian morality 🇷🇺.)