IT’S HARD NOT to get swept up in the internet and “content” nowadays. If it was easy, we probably wouldn’t find ourselves playing slaves to our phones, all day every day. 

If you’re regularly online, you’re probably aware of a viral video that was doing the rounds this week of a woman seemingly throwing bleach on men on public transport to stop them manspreading.

Oddly – or perhaps not – the video ‘Spread your legs? Here you go’ can no longer be found, but it was originally linked to Anna Dovgalyuk’s YouTube channel.

At the time of the video’s release, Anna said: “Men demonstrating their alpha-manhood in the subway with women and children around deserve contempt.” She said she was acting “on behalf of everyone who has to endure the manifestations of men declaring their macho qualities on public transportation.”

People were mad to write about it. And sure why wouldn’t they be? Manspreading remains a hot topic – Madrid banned the practice on public transport last year. Not to mention the fact that people love when women do bad things. The bleach is a bonus, really.

Except, she wasn’t throwing bleach on them – it was water.

Stanislav Kudrin – one of the men featured in the video – confirmed on his Facebook page that the video was “a production” by My Duck’s Vision, a company which makes viral videos.

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Roughly translated, the post reads: “They poured water on us [...] Naturally, staged. That feeling when you come to the shooting with two spare pants and leave with a salary.”

This is where research comes in handy, folks.

Anna’s regularly pulling stunts like this – she previously went viral by flashing her underwear at commuters in protest of Russia’s upskirting laws.

This is where things get tricky – was Anna, as she has done previously, trying to raise awareness of an issue as provocatively as possible, only for the message to inevitably be lost? Or is actual, paid for, anti-feminist propaganda in line with the state’s anti-feminist narrative?

Whatever the case, let this be a reminder – don’t believe everything you watch.

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