And so, I did not manage to figure out the origin of the term, but I stumbled upon a book titled "America on Six Rubles a Day or How to Become a Capitalist Pig", written by one Yakov Smirnoff circa 1987.
Ukrainian-born Smirnoff emigrated to the US in the mid 80s and built a career as a comedian by drawing on the gaps between Soviet and American culture. His jokes portrayed the US from the standpoint of a somewhat gullible Soviet immigrant - a refined and politically correct precursor to Sasha Baron Cohen's "Borat".
The Cold War has been over for nearly 20 years but the Russian Reversal is becoming popular again. This is mainly due to its usage in online Lolcats - humorous captioned portraits of cats in various situations. Recently, a new web site was launched with a growing collection of satirical 'Translations of Lolcats from the Eastern Block'.
Apart from making people laugh, the Russian Reversal played an important part in drawing people's attention to the sinister nature of living under constant surveillance with sentences such as "In America, you listen to man on the radio. In Soviet Russia, man on radio is listening to you!" and "In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!"
These are reminiscent of the Telescreen, a TV-like machine that simultaneously receives and transmits information from the living rooms of the citizens in George Orwell's 1984. In the book, the Telescreen picks up video and sound from people's apartments and transmits it back to the Thought Police. At the same time, it also broadcasts various instructions and propaganda. It is possible to turn the volume down, but it is not permissible to turn it off completely.
The current economic stand-off between the US and China, the last bastion of totalitarian Soviet ideology, made me think of the way in which the Russian Reversal stands the test of time. Sadly, it seems that while the Soviet Union is long gone and totalitarian regimes are slightly less brutal, it is in the West that society is becoming more and more similar to the one described in 1984.
After all, it is us who are spending most of our days sitting in front of a screen, digesting information, and allowing that screen to collect information about our activities, interests, and private conversations and deliver it to faceless buyers on the other side of the world. These buyers, in turn, broadcast their targeted messages back to us.
At the back of our mind, we are aware of this process, but it does not seem to bother us too much. And so, in virtual America, advertisers sell to you on Facebook. In real America, Facebook sells you to advertisers (and god knows to who else...).
Come on man, you serious with this article? The title was extremely misleading. You only had like 2 sentences having to do with the telescreen and facebook.