Carding Folklore: Stories, Anecdotes, and Memes as a Way to Cope with Stress and Create Collective Memory (On Humor in the Face of Constant Danger)

[Professor]

Introduction: Humor on the Edge of the Digital Divide
In a world where every day threatens exposure, arrest, or deception by "colleagues," mental stress reaches its limits. In extreme conditions such as prison, war, or closed communities, a special kind of folklore is born — dark, cynical, and self-deprecating. The carding community is no exception. Its tales, jokes, memes, and proverbs are more than just entertainment. They are a complex psychological and social survival mechanism that allows people to cope with fear, share experiences, strengthen group identity, and create an alternative history for their tribe.

Chapter 1: The Functions of Folklore: Why Laugh When You're Scared?​

1. Catharsis and anxiety reduction (Laughter as a defense).
The constant fear of being "burned" (exposed) is paralyzing. Dark humor allows you to take control of this fear by turning it into a joke. Discussing the worst-case scenario in a comical way deprives it of some of its power.

• Example: A meme with the caption, "When your drop says 'everything's fine,' and there are already flashing lights outside the window" (the photo shows a calm person with police cars outside his window). This is a collective expression of fear.

2. Conveying experience and rules in coded form (Didactics through laughter).
Direct instructions ("don't violate OPSEC") quickly become boring. A joke or meme is more memorable.

• Example: A story about a carder who ordered goods to his own home address "to avoid exposing the drop." Told as a joke about "the dumbest scammer," the story becomes a powerful lesson in the importance of separating identities.

3. Creating group solidarity and boundaries ("Us/Them").
Shared laughter is a powerful social glue. Anyone who understands jokes about "bins," "drops," and "mules" is one of us. Anyone who doesn't is a loser, a newbie, or, worse, a cop. Folklore creates a shared cultural code that separates the tribe from the outside world.

• Example: Jokes that only those in the know will understand: "A carder's life: 95% paranoia, 4% waiting for transactions, 1% joy from a new avatar on the forum."

4. Legitimization of activity and neutralization of guilt (Normalization through humor).
Jokes about "suckers" (victims) or "greedy banks" create a narrative in which the community's activities are the norm, not an aberration. By ridiculing victims or the system, carders distance themselves from the moral consequences of their actions.

• Example: Cynical memes in the style of "A sucker is not a mammoth, a sucker will not die out" against the backdrop of a graph showing growing bank losses from fraud.

5. Construction of collective memory and mythology.
In the absence of a written history of the community, its legends and tales are passed down orally (in chat rooms). Amusing stories of failures or incredible successes become folklore, forming a pantheon of heroes and antiheroes, lessons and warnings for future generations.

Chapter 2: Carding Folklore Genres​

1. Tales and horror stories (Warnings in disguise).

• Stories: "How one guy decided to cash out through a friend, and he turned out to be...", "The story of how his apartment was exposed because of one photo on social media."
• The goal: not just to scare, but to make the threat concrete through a memorable story. These are educational cases wrapped in an engaging plot.

2. Jokes and absurdist memes.

• Content: Absurd screenshots of correspondence with "clients," ridiculous excuses from droppers, parodies of panicked messages in general chats at the slightest rumor of a "collapse."
• Example: The "Two Buttons" meme template: one button says "Operate OPSEC," the other says "Post stories from a new Mercedes." The man is panicking.
• Objective: To reduce the level of panic through absurdity, to ridicule typical mistakes and human stupidity under stress.

3. Heroic epics and tales of "legends".

• Plots: Exaggerated stories of the exploits of anonymous heroes who stole millions and vanished without a trace ("And he rode off into the sunset, to Nice, in a white Mercedes"). Often tinged with nostalgia for the "golden days" when carding was a "matter of honor."
• Purpose: To support the myth of chosenness and the possibility of triumph. To provide hope and a role model (often unattainable).

4. Self-ironic proverbs and statuses.

• Examples: "It's not a fire, it's a smoldering fire 24/7"; "My KPI is to not be on the Ministry of Internal Affairs' KPI"; "I work in IT. Remotely. Very remotely."
• Goal: Acknowledge the gravity of the situation, but do so with dignity and humor. It's a way of saying, "Yes, I'm scared and struggling, but I'm still making fun of it, which means I'm stronger than my circumstances."

Chapter 3: Key Themes and Archetypes of Folklore​

1. The Sucker Archetype: The eternal object of ridicule. Stupid, greedy, gullible. His portrait is a warning: "Don't be like him."
2. The "Crazy Dropper" archetype: A character who panics and makes silly mistakes, wreaking havoc. Their lack of professionalism and hysteria are ridiculed.
3. The "Scammer-Upstart" Archetype: A rude, greedy scammer who violates "rules" and quickly gets banned. His story is a lesson in the importance of reputation.
4. The "Sinister Agent/Handler" archetype: The semi-mythical figure of the "mend" or FBI agent, who could be anyone. Stories about him perpetuate paranoia as the norm.
5. The theme of the inevitability of retribution ("Everything is paid for"): A recurring theme in many tales. Even the most successful eventually "burns out." It's a pessimistic, yet protective, mechanism : prepare for the worst.

Chapter 4: The Evolution of Folklore: From Forum Posts to Telegram Stickers​

• The Forum Era (2000s): Folklore was text-centric — long tales, sagas, and fixed themes with jokes. Humor was more professional, for the initiated.
• The Telegram and Social Media Era (2010s–present): Folklore became visual and instant. Memes, sticker packs ("fraud chat stickers"), short viral videos. The speed of creation and distribution increased, and humor became more absurdist and outrageous, reflecting the overall aesthetic of meme culture.

An example of a modern meme: A video with energetic music, with the caption flashing against a backdrop of flying lines of code and screenshots of large sums of money: "Working with bins, plan a vacation in Sochi. Working with fulls, plan a vacation in Miami. Ditched one of your own, plan a vacation in a penal colony." This is a dream, a warning, and irony.

Chapter 5: The Downside: When Humor Becomes a Trap​

1. Normalization of extreme risk: Constant jokes about "mendas" and "burning" can dull the sense of real danger. Risk begins to be perceived as an inevitable background, rather than a mortal threat.
2. Increased dehumanization: Endless jokes about "suckers" completely erase the image of the living victim behind the screen, turning them into an abstract object of ridicule, which makes it easier to commit crimes.
3. Creating an illusion of community: Shared laughter creates a false sense of brotherhood and mutual support, while in reality, there is total mistrust in the community, and at a critical moment, “brothers in laughter” can be the first to betray or deceive.

Conclusion: Laughter in the Kingdom of Shadows.
Carding folklore is laughter that casts a long shadow. It's not light humor, but a mechanism for psychological adaptation to life in conditions of permanent fear and immorality.

It serves the same function as soldiers' tales, prison folklore, or doctors' dark humor: it gives strength to live in an unbearable reality, imparts knowledge, and constructs its own world parallel to the outside world.

But in this world, unlike the army or medicine, there is no ultimate noble goal. Therefore, its humor is particularly cynical, its tales are particularly instructive in a criminal sense, and its collective memory is the memory of those who "burned out," not of those who won. This is the folklore of the doomed, who laugh to keep from going mad as they journey toward their inevitable end — be it prison, a nervous breakdown, or betrayal by their own. Their laughter is the ego's last fortification in a digital war they themselves started and will almost certainly lose. And in this irony lies the bitterest joke of all.