Natalia Poklonskaya Behind Microphones

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About

Natalia Poklonskaya Behind Microphones refers to a photograph of the Russian politician and former Prosecutor General of Crimea Natalia Poklonskaya and an unidentified man during a press conference. In 2019, the photograph was circulated as an object-labeling meme.

Origin

On March 19th, 2014, Russian news outlet Kazan First^[1] posted a transcription of a press conference held by the former Prosecutor General of Crimea Natalia Poklonskaya on its website. The article featured several photos of Poklonskaya and an unidentified man sitting behind a table, with multiple microphones partly obscuring Poklonskaya.

Spread

On March 11th, 2014, Redditor^[2] Jericho893 posted the image to /r/PhotoshopBattles subreddit, with the only entry submitted^[3] by Redditor Clark_Wayne (shown below, top left). On June 27th, 2014, Redditor^[4] algorithmic4 posted the photograph to /r/funny subreddit under the title "Men vs Women twitch streamers". In the following years, the image was reposted in several subreddits, with variations of the "Women vs. Men" trope used in the title.

On January 28th, 2019, Redditor^[5] CosmicKeys posted the photograph to /r/hmmm subreddit, where it gained over 33,600 upvotes in one day. In the comments, Redditors cat4laugh^[6] and pun_shall_pass^[7] posted memes based on the image.

On the same day, Redditor^[8] normiekid posted an object-labeling meme based on the photograph to /r/dankmemes subreddit, where it gained over 71,600 upvotes in 24 hours. Two more versions of the meme, posted by Redditors Dollon_da_God^[9] and J-dogums^[10] to /r/HistoryMemes and /r/GamersRiseUp subreddits, received over 40,900 upvotes and over 9,500 upvotes in the same period, respectively.

Following the initial posts, more versions of the meme appeared on Reddit and Instagram, with many examples falling under the We Live in a Society trope.