[rossvor]

>That's quite an uncharitable interpretation.

Agree, that was an uncharitable offhand sentence. I think it was prompted by your uncharitable criticism of the video -- immediately concluding that he's making shit up (rather that thinking it was a mistake or something else)

>In the context of judging the American nation as a whole -- of course not.

I don't think video is there judge Russian culture as a whole -- and I don't think that's ever useful. It's there to entertain and present (and judge) various cultural _strands_ of it, which someone outside of Russia/Ex-soviet states may not be aware of.

In the context of this thread, grandparent (smsm42) does seem intent to reduce this particular cultural stand to being _the_ Russian culture and all dominating. I disagree with that, but neither this video nor context of the palmetieri2000 post (he wanted to illustrate that it _can_ be that comical) was about that.

[gdy]

'I think it was prompted by your uncharitable criticism'

Yep, it's only fair.

'nor context of the palmetieri2000 post (he wanted to illustrate that it _can_ be that comical) was about that'

What is 'it' in 'it _can_ be that comical'?

Here I disagree with you -- I interpret 'it can't be that cartoonish' as a reply to 'culture-wide thing' statement. A subculture can be arbitrarily weird, but when a sweeping statement is made about the whole nation it becomes cartoonish.

In this context bringing up a game review is as a valid point as bringing up Manhunt or Postal in a thread about American-wide culture.