---"In his book Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, Yurchak describes stiob as an ironic aesthetic of a very particular kind that thrived in late Soviet socialism. Stiob “differed from sarcasm, cynicism, derision or any of the more familiar genres of absurd humor” in that it “required such a degree of over-idenitification with the object, person, or idea at which [it] was directed that it was often impossible to tell whether it was a form of sincere support, subtle ridicule, or a peculiar mixture of the two” (2006:250)"