In Russia, a new subculture is flourishing – offniks. They wear clothes from Stone land, go to the “clearings” and “zabiva”, ask “to explain about the gear”, and they also really dislike the shaggy redans.
What are known offniks and who are they
– For the lads and the yard I shoot point-blank. I’m a cool off-picker, driven. A real off-roader is like a good car: simple and reliable, — in a conversation with Life, 15-year-old A. sprinkles boyish quotes. There are twenty people in their company. They never go alone. They usually hang out at VDNKh. Many have been brought to the police because of the fights, some are registered with the departments for juvenile affairs.
“Near-football fans”, or, for short, offniks, is a Russian youth subculture that stands out among others for its ostentatious aggressiveness. Mostly boys and girls aged 12-16. Unlike classic ultras, they may not be into football at all. The emphasis is on fighting and on the right clothes – gear.
Initially, the football players completely copied football hooligans, arranging crowd-to-crowd fights – the so-called clearings and scores. Now off-brands are more associated with a group of teenagers who hang out in a certain area or shopping center.
If there is a reason, they will fight. First of all, they provoke their peers. Reasons can be very different, including football addictions and walks in a “foreign” area. But the most popular reason is clothing.
– Explain for the gear – Off-brands provoke a potential victim by demanding an explanation as to why she wears a particular brand. Not only brightly dressed anime people can be beaten, but also teenagers wearing “near-football” clothes that are “not according to their status”.
What is that playing in your headphones? What is the ringtone? — provocation can begin with such phrases. Offniks themselves prefer rap.
What are you standing for? — another question that could lead to a fight. It’s about hobbies and belonging to a subculture.
Offniks themselves do not adhere to any ideology. They also do not have conscious political views, if only because of their infancy.
Officers try to run into peers equal to them in strength. But the Web is full of other cases when they attack a crowd of small companies that are obviously weaker. Football players do not encroach on the property of their opponents; they are primarily interested in the conflict itself. However, sometimes they can take away the clothes they like from the victim.
Sometimes off-players try to act as fighters for justice, but it doesn’t work out very well. A couple of years ago, in the Moscow region, they brutally beat up three guys who had previously offended their classmates. The beating was recorded on camera.
By analogy with football ultras, a group of offs can call themselves a firm (office). There is an internal hierarchy. The basis is strong proven fighters. Youth are inexperienced beginners. Both at the base and in the youth team have their own leaders. It is the leader who negotiates fights with others, but he himself practically does not participate in them.
There are purely women’s offices. One of the most famous – “Forest Princesses” – operates in Tver, the leader is a 17-year-old girl. The rest are younger than her by a year or two.
According to the templates of the thieves’ world, a community of off-line workers in Naberezhnye Chelny is organized. More on this in my blog. told local resident Daniel.
Why there were offnics
In large cities of Russia, the gopnik subculture is dying. It has become too dangerous to take away expensive gadgets: there are cameras all around – the police will simply figure out and find the thief.
Football hooligans also go into the shadows: now there is no fight at the stadium and near it – modern tracking and control technologies make it possible to identify any participant in the brawl. In addition, the ultras are much older in age and simply will not accept young near-football players into their party.
It turns out that aggressive teenagers have nowhere to go. There remain the banned extremist movement AUE * and, in fact, off-brands.
Offs or offs
Offnikov cannot be called an integral subculture. They do not even have their own developed publics in social networks. There used to be several, but one has already been removed, the second has long been abandoned, the third has changed the subject. On the other hand, the web is full of communities where they laugh at offenders by posting meme pictures that are offensive to them.
This subculture has no unity even in the name. There are two spellings on the Web: off-line and off-line. And both are essentially true.
Offniki is an abbreviation for the phrase “near-football fans”. And officers are an abbreviation for “near-footballers”.
Officials against “PMC Ryodan”
Officials first came into the spotlight when they took part in mass fights against anime people representing a youth subculture called “PMC Ryodan”. This happened at the end of February. One of the first skirmishes broke out in the Moscow shopping center “Aviapark”. Officials stuck to the informals at the food court. Word for word, “explain for the gear” – a fight began. But the redans fought back.
The video of the incident was shared by dozens of youth publics – this produced the effect of an exploding bomb among schoolchildren.
A day later, the offs and redans sorted things out in two metropolitan shopping centers at once – in the same “Aviapark” and “Markos Mall”. Then the youth fought en masse already in the shopping center not only in Moscow, but also in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan and Kursk. The guards did not particularly interfere in the mass fights, only the riot police were able to disperse everyone. Dozens of teenagers were detained. The youngest were not even fifteen years old. There were many victims, but, fortunately, there were no serious injuries.
The Redanians are considered by the Offics to be their sworn enemies. And it is not clear where such hatred came from. In Kurgan, near-football players humiliated a guy with cerebral palsy simply because he was photographed with representatives of the Ryodan PMC. And then one of the officers carried out the punishment. He broke the poor fellow’s ear with an accurate blow, knocked him to the ground and kicked him with his feet. After the end of the execution, another officer “nobly” gave the guy with cerebral palsy a hand to get him up off the ground, and returned his hat that had flown off to the side.
What are offniks wearing
Officers love rolled-up jeans, white-striped Adidas sneakers, rune-printed T-shirts, camouflage bucket hats, and hats with built-in aviator goggles. During fights, near-football players often cover their faces with scarves or balaclavas.
Officers often use slogans on their clothes: “There are no innocents”, “Sober and angry youth”, “My honor is my loyalty”.
Now off-brands express themselves with clothes by designer Gosha Rubchinsky, T-shirts with prints from Sputnik 1985 and Thrasher, hoodies from The North Face and Supreme, sweatshirts from Palace, pants from Everlast and Napapijri military jackets. If a non-Officer wears these clothes, he runs the risk of running into trouble.
Among offniks there is a kind of elite. They can afford real premium brands.
— For the love of clothes of certain brands, we are also called casual. Our clothes cost a lot. I can’t imagine how the guys from the province will buy it. Surely they wear a finger, – 14-year-old official I. tells Life. His wardrobe consists exclusively of brands worn by British and Russian fans.
The Italian Stone land is considered to be a cult brand among such off-brands. It can be recognized by an external tag with a wind rose reminiscent of NATO. Since the mid-90s, Stone land has become a kind of uniform for football hooligans around the world, including in Russia.
The brand is considered premium corresponding prices. Jackets cost 70-400 thousand rubles, T-shirts – 15 thousand, leotards – 30 thousand, sneakers – 30-50 thousand.
Non-officers are not allowed to wear Stone land and other brands they love in their environment – they can be beaten for this. Other teens used to be beaten for wearing Tommy Hilfiger, Fred Perry and New Balance, but now these brands are too common, except in the backcountry you can still get hurt because of them.
What to do for parents of off-brothers
Life asked this question to a psychologist Larisa Ovcharenko: