Are You Old-School or New-Format?

There is nothing so demoralizing as calling a computer specialist to your home, then opening the door to find the компьютерщик (computer guy) isn’t even old enough to shave.

Actually, that’s not true. The really demoralizing bit is when you spend ten minutes explaining what didn’t work, no matter what you did, and the kid listens patiently then flicks a single switch and says: “Вот так” (Like this.)

You sign to yourself: Я технологически отсталая (I’m technically backward.)

Отсталость (backwardness) means having fallen behind in some way. Some​times it is not our moral failing, but an organizational issue: Зарплата бюджетников сильно отстаёт от средней зарплаты по стране (The salaries of government employees have really fallen behind the national average). But it is generally not a word we would like to hear applied to ourselves: Гуманистическая идеология в наши дни и есть «отсталая» идеология (In our day, humanist ideology is the epitome of “backward ideology”).

In fact, it is a word that you should not use in certain contexts. For example, it is not polite — or correct — to call people умственно отсталые (intellectually backward). That pejorative phrase has been replaced with люди с особенностями интеллектуального развития (people with intellectual disabilities).

If you simply don’t like change, you might be a консерватор (conservative). Note that, in Russian, perhaps a bit more than English, you might have liberal political views but be conservative in, say, your culinary tastes. For instance: Он консерватор. Каждое утро заходит в кафе ровно в 9 часов и пьёт ровно одну чашку кофе (He’s a man of habit. Every morning he goes into a café at exactly 9 a.m. and drinks exactly one cup of coffee).

You might not be offended if someone called you a человек старого покроя (old-fashioned, literally “of the old pattern”), which is, in itself, a rather old-fashioned phrase. This is similar to человек старой закалки (old school), which can be either pejorative or admiring, depending on the qualities under discussion and the views of the speaker. For example, директор завода старой закалки (old school factory director) could mean someone with outdated management skills. But it could also mean someone “tempered” (in the original meaning of the word, like tempered steel) and strong enough to handle anything. Директриса мне понравилась – такая пожилая дама старой закалки в хорошем смысле этого слова (I like the director — she’s an older woman of the old school, in the good sense of the word).

However, chances are you don’t want to be called регрессивный (regressive), with реакционные взгляды (reactionary views).

Nope, these days you want to be a человек нового формата (new style, cutting edge) or even современный (modern).  Мой дедушка очень современный человек — мобильник, интернет, слушает подкасты и перекачивает кино по Нетфликсу (My grandfather’s really modern – cell phone, internet, listens to podcasts and downloads movies on Netflix). Or he might be передовой (advanced, ahead of his time): Он в курсе всех интересных событий — в общем, передовой человек (He is up to date on all the interesting events — basically a man ahead of his time).

This type of person, however, might be one of modern Russia’s most mysterious creatures: хипстер (hipster, sort of). These people are mostly known by their style, which involves highly groomed facial hair (men) and artful make-up (women), skinny jeans, and vintage accents. And as for their tastes: инди-рок, артхаусное кино, современное искусство (indie rock, art house cinema, and modern art). They might be либеральные и прогрессивные (liberal and progressive), although they also might not be.

But they can most likely figure out Windows 10 all by themselves.