Why the face is linked to the promise of easy money
Mavrodi headed MMM, whose shares and tickets became a mass phenomenon in Russia in 1994. Rapidly rising announced prices and wide advertising drew people in with the promise of income, and the system’s collapse fixed its name as a symbol of a financial pyramid. In 2007 the Chertanovsky District Court of Moscow sentenced Mavrodi to four and a half years in prison for fraud. After his release he returned with the MMM-2011 project.
This notoriety gave memes a ready-made biographical role. It was enough to combine the photo with some new way of charging money to produce a comparison with MMM. In the four-panel versions, Mavrodi seemed to ask his “descendants” how they had learned to deceive people, and then evaluated the examples shown next. Such a line belongs to the meme sketch. After Mavrodi’s death on March 26, 2018, an additional wave of jokes arose, but the image itself and the association with the pyramid existed before.
Open palms and an ordinary interview background
In the photograph, Mavrodi sits in a dark armchair and raises both hands with palms open toward the camera. He wears a blue patterned polo shirt; a small microphone is visible near the collar. Large glasses and the hair at the sides of the head make the face recognizable. Light shelves stand behind the armchair. There is no money, no MMM tickets, no charts, and no ready-made caption in the shot.
The gesture itself allows several readings. Mavrodi may look as if he is explaining, asking to stop, or distancing himself from what he has heard. The meme caption assigns him one of these roles. It is the open palms that let the image show both the calm reasoning of an imaginary specialist and the exaggerated reaction of someone surprised by another’s way of collecting payment. The exact date of this shoot is not established, so its setting is not tied to a specific MMM launch.
A historical reputation becomes a comic voice
The meme uses the biography as a short character sketch. The viewer already knows why this man is associated with other people’s money, and so instantly builds an attitude toward the example offered. The caption can depict admiration for cleverness, surprise at its scale, or an attempt to refuse such an inventive idea. Different reactions keep one connection: Mavrodi gets the role of a judge of dubious profit.
The device is especially noticeable when a minor fee or a conditional in-game currency is being discussed. The comparison with the historical pyramid turns out to be deliberately excessive, and the character seems to consider a small trick with the seriousness of a major project. In a multi-panel version, the following pictures must reveal the reason for his reaction. In a single portrait, the caption does this job. It defines the object of satire; the image supports it with a familiar face and expressive palms.
Imaginary schemes for such commentary
In an invented game, a virtual museum sells an entrance ticket, a separate ticket for each painting, and yet another to read its title. Mavrodi with raised palms is captioned “let me at least get to write it down.” The joke depicts excessive admiration for a system where an ordinary service is split into endless small purchases.
Another invented example concerns a board game: a player hands out to friends beautiful tokens that can be exchanged only for even more beautiful tokens. The portrait comments on a promise of value that keeps getting postponed. In a third sketch, a household cat introduces a conditional tariff: for each stroke the person must first open the door, close it, and open it again. No money is involved at all, but the owner constantly invests effort for a result the cat keeps deferring. The historical association becomes a comic exaggeration of a domestic deal, while the raised palms depict the respect of an imaginary observer for someone else’s tireless inventiveness.
