“At some point I realized that this was too much.” A Minsk woman talks about what it’s like to have a personal stylist

Vladimir Pozner loudly appeared on our television in 1985 with teleconferences connecting the USSR and the USA, and charmed with his signature smile and squint. But today, thirty years later, he still smiles charmingly and squints slyly. And interest in his person and in everything he does does not fall. Perhaps because he own confession, did not lose curiosity at all: neither about life nor about the profession. He believes genes are to blame for this. Like a true Frenchman, Posner loves and knows how to live.

1. About the profession

I have a very busy life. Of course, I try to somehow distribute things, but there are periods when one thing is layered on top of another. And to be honest, I love this rhythm. Got used to it. Although, of course, it happens, I feel like it’s too much, I understand that I’m tired, it’s very difficult. But there is nothing to complain about, because I am doing what I wanted and want.

I have talent as an interviewer. This includes the ability to hear and listen, and the ability to speak with a person and win him over, and the ability to ask a question in such a way as not to offend him, even if the question is unpleasant. And also make sure that the interlocutor answers it.

Interviews are one of the most difficult genres in journalism., because this is communication with another person, which requires additional stress, additional work.

If the hero is not interesting to me, then nothing will work out for me. But every person can be interesting. You just need to be able to find it.

2. About age and experience

At some point I came to the conclusion that we need to call a spade a spade. No need to flirt. Therefore, when they ask me about something, I say: “Yes, I think so. It's my opinion". “This is immodest,” they might say. Well, that means you'll have to live through it. In fact, I am a modest person, but I know my worth. And in my profession, in what I do, I don’t see anyone stronger than myself yet. I think so and say it directly.

With age normal person becomes less categorical. He must learn to analyze himself and be tolerant, to understand how little he really knows. But the character does not change much, the person simply becomes more experienced, wiser.

Growing up is largely a process of parting with illusions. There is nothing good in illusions, but if you managed to live with them all your life, then it’s not so bad. But I wouldn’t want that, although it’s probably easier to live this way.

I'm still interested in everything today. And this is happiness! I think it's nature. When they ask me: “How can you, at your age, play tennis three times a week for an hour and a half by yourself?”, I answer: “It’s nature that did it, and my mother, who raised me in a certain way so that I would be healthy.” My only merit is that I try to take care of myself. Or perhaps this is so, because I was only allowed on the screen at the age of fifty-two. A gigantic famine has accumulated. And even now this thirst is not quenched.

3. About myself

I'm ambitious but not vain, because it is necessarily associated with narcissism. And I am absolutely not a narcissistic person. On the contrary, I am very critical of myself.

I have an intuition. Often this is the main thing in my decisions and actions in people’s perception. I really believe in first impressions. Several times I tried not to pay attention to it, and then I realized that it was in vain. After all, we are basically animals, something very ancient lives in us, and the cerebellum, as a rule, works very precisely.

You should enjoy everything in life. The French know how to do this. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?! But some of my American friends have no taste for food at all. For me, it’s like reading a regular book and a book on the Internet. I enjoy holding a book in my hands, tactile sensation, from the smell of paper. And cooking is one of the wonderful achievements of mankind, invented not in order not to die of hunger, but in order to have fun.

4. About mentality

I came to Russia at nineteen years old. And he really wanted to be Russian, and most importantly, like everyone else, so that no one could say: “He’s not ours.” And not bad, just different. But one fine day I was forced to admit to myself: “No, after all, you are not entirely Russian, nothing can be done about it.” This is a result of growing up in another country and what I inherited from my ancestors.

There is very little in common between the French and Russians. The French are more closed and more reserved and less susceptible to mood swings, which is typical for Russian people. It seems to me that the Irish are most similar to Russians. Both of them are due to the artistry of nature. Highs of absolute delight, and then a fall into complete depression, are very characteristic of both Russians and Irish, as is an undoubted penchant for alcohol.

I'm an emotional person, and on the other hand, quite restrained. French mothers cuddle and kiss their children very little. I can remember literally isolated moments when my mother suddenly hugged me. This tactile love is very rare in France.

The French are less open, but at the same time they are more sincere than the same Italians. And if they love or accept you, let you into their home, into their soul, then there is no doubt that it is sincere...

How a schoolboy launched one of the largest networks for selling hacked accounts

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The editors of the site received a letter from the former owner of a network of online stores selling hacked accounts and game equipment. On the condition of anonymity, he spoke about how the “gray” Internet market works and why law enforcement agencies turn a blind eye to online deception.

My story began in 2012. Then the boom with the game Minecraft had just begun, and in the wake of all this hype, I decided to open a server on my half-dead computer for the same schoolchildren friends. Over time, through friends, I met a group of other guys: they made commercial servers with donations and received good money from it. At that moment, something clicked in my young head and the thought arose: “If they can do it, then why can’t I?”

The first pancake came out lumpy, and I didn’t succeed with the servers. But I found demand in a slightly different area. At that time, everyone downloaded a pirated version of Minecraft and played on pirated servers, which were constantly glitching. To play on good Western servers, you had to buy a licensed version, paying the developers almost 1000 rubles. Of course, many schoolchildren did not want to part with their money.

While scouring Western forums, I discovered that you can find hacked accounts for $2-4 dollars. I bought a couple of pieces and sold them on the forums with a markup of 40%. I spent a whole week searching for and selling accounts, and in the end I decided to automate the process: I found a simple platform and made a store.

I didn’t have advertising skills at that time, so I just sent out the link on the forums, and it’s amazing how quickly everything went. The income was around 20-40 thousand rubles a month, which to me, a 14-year-old schoolboy, seemed like a very large amount.

However, another problem arose: demand exceeded supply, and the number of people willing to buy hacked accounts was noticeably greater than the number of accounts that I could get. By the way, many realized that this Goldmine, and the number of such stores began to grow exponentially.

At the end of 2013, demand began to gradually fall. I thought about what else I could do, and for a test I decided to add hacked accounts from other games that I could find. They were bought not for access to licensed servers, but for rare items or more advanced characters - it depended on the game. However, there was a problem: I sold them with a slight markup, so most of income was spent on purchasing new accounts.

At that moment I met some guys who had their own stores. We got to talking, and they were surprised that I didn’t sell “dummies” - that is, accounts without the promised things. “But there’s no point in selling to workers; buyers will always be unhappy, and the amounts are small,” they argued.

And at that moment I thought: it’s true, why sell working ones if buyers in 50% of cases remain dissatisfied, because after a short time even pumped up accounts stop working.

Of course, I was tormented by doubts, but in the end, I decided to try. I justified myself by deceiving people for small amounts - on average, an account cost around 99-299 rubles.

My income started to increase. Three thousand, four thousand, five thousand a day - I understood that it was impossible to deceive the people like this and remain unpunished. In addition, out of my stupidity, I left my data in the store: when it remained “gray”, it was safe. When it turned black, I deleted them, but they still remained in the cache. And I began to receive threats from deceived people.

The money went mainly through Webmoney and Qiwi. Now I understand that I was stupid and fearless: I went to the bank and cashed them directly. Of course, over time, employees began to wonder how, at the age of 15, a student can withdraw 20-30 thousand weekly?

I tried to hide my income from my parents and friends. I was ashamed to admit to them that I was deceiving people. However, at a certain point I needed to go through Webmoney identification, and due to the fact that I was a minor, I needed a parent's signature. I had to deceive them too: I created and opened a non-existent “white” project as a cover, in order to justify high earnings in the future.

By mid-2014, I had reached my profit ceiling on this store. I understood that four to five thousand rubles a day was not the limit, and I needed to move on. It was at that time that players began to demand inventory for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - weapons with rare textures, cases, stickers, and so on.

It was necessary to work urgently before competitors appeared. I did it the old fashioned way: I set up a store on a new platform, ordered a lot of advertising, and things took off. But when the profit from the new store exceeded five thousand rubles per day, the first serious problems: blocking of wallets and constant DDoS attacks. For a month, I slept two to three hours at a time, stopped going to school, and spent days solving problems.

After a while, I managed to cope with everything, more or less automate the system, and even hire two friends, so that one would be responsible for the operation of the service, and the second for searching for sites where you can buy advertising.

At that moment I was receiving about 10 thousand a day. When I was sober (if you earn such sums at 16, it’s hard not to get involved with some stupid company), I understood that this was no joke and I needed to at least somehow keep a secret before I was tied up. And in general, in an amicable way, we need to move to “white” projects.

There were more and more competitors and gradually profits began to decline again. When I went on a short tour of Europe, I met one of the moderators of the Dark Money cash-out service, and through him, another company that was doing things much bigger than mine.

They were involved in scams related to online hardware stores, and their monthly income was from one to four million rubles. I felt terrible about the company I ended up in, because it’s one thing to deceive for amounts not exceeding 300 rubles (even if a large number of people), and another - for amounts from 10 thousand. They wanted me to join their “modest” company, but I politely refused, because I had to know when to stop. And he did the right thing - in August 2015, this entire company was tied up.

Fortunately, communication with them only worked for the “benefit”: I realized that constantly buying advertising is not very productive, and you need to make a separate themed store for each game and raise it in search. At that moment, I knew nothing at all about SEO and 90% of the traffic was advertising.

I ended up taking a working store template, changing it a little for each game, and opening five stores first. I also found SEO specialists who were ready to promote it for a certain amount. After 2 months, they began to rise up in key queries. By the way, half of my friends are still involved in such things and their sites occupy leading positions for certain queries.

In addition to the more or less stable eight to ten thousand rubles a day from the main store, I began to receive two to four thousand a day from those stores. And for me this was a special joy: there is no need to pay large sums for advertising, it is enough to pay specialists to monitor the position of resources in the search. But still, some of my acquaintances had to pay for their silence.

But here problems began with blocking wallets, and I paid up to 20% of the profit to people who monitored their condition, cashed out money and changed it two or three times a day. Gradually, I acquired a whole “empire” of a network of similar stores; I connected all of their payments through the WayToPay payment acceptance system.

I think they were shut down thanks to me, because my network made up a significant part of their income, and more of the same scammers were constantly connecting to them. Thanks to the system, I could not pay 20% of the profit for changing wallets, but only 3-10% for the commission from the aggregator. By then I had already wised up and was a talented launderer of money: to those around me it looked relatively white.

“Empire” grew and net income at some point reached about 20-30 thousand per day. It was the fall of 2015, it was becoming more and more difficult for me to launder money, the authorities were increasingly interested in the Internet. Gradually, against this background, I began to have insomnia, because to everyone around me I was white and honest, and no one suspected that I was doing shady things.

I had dreams that they were tying me up, I was paranoid and it seemed that the house had been bugged, that the SOBR would now break in and begin a search. It couldn’t go on like this, but I got used to the big money too quickly and didn’t want to give up, so I simply played for time and invested in white projects so that sooner or later I could deal with them in earnest. But this didn’t work out very well for me.

At the beginning of 2016, I found out that department “K” contacted one of my friends and closed their shop. And it was strange, because he did not show data on the network and they could not reach him. But for me it was easy: all I had to do was go to the web archive, find the old store and copy the numbers of the wallets registered to me.

I had to urgently make a decision: either I continue to take risks and live in fear, or I close everything and gradually spend the accumulated amount or do something of my own. I made the second decision: freedom is more important. Although half of my friends continued to do such things, and surprisingly, the authorities this moment doesn't matter. Apparently this is due to small amounts (which later add up to a large amount).

I may not have the same income, but I began to sleep better and my soul became calmer. With my departure, new grids appeared. You have no idea how vast this gray market is. People who have settled in certain areas (keys, inventory and game accounts are just one of them) do this for two to four years. Some don’t even try to be secretive, and it’s not difficult to find them.

But, as I already said, the authorities turn a blind eye because they deceive people for small amounts (up to a thousand rubles), and because of the bureaucracy it will be difficult for them to add up everything and confirm each payment in order to receive at least part of the amount from the income of such projects per month.

Customers who are scammed create entire communities, write petitions, but the stores still exist. In the area of ​​accounts and games, at least 50% of store owners are minors. And it’s not hard to be surprised at the kind of lifestyle they begin to lead if their monthly income exceeds 200 thousand rubles.

IN European countries It has long been customary to resort to the services of professional stylists, but for Belarus this is still a rare practice. We talked to a Minsk woman who has had a personal stylist for a year and a half.

TATYANA KURBAT
PR specialist, blogger

I am a professional PR professional. When I stopped working for someone, I realized that appearance- one of the components of my personal brand. I realized that it greatly influences my work and the perception of me by potential and existing clients, so I seriously decided to take up this area. So I concluded that it was necessary to contact a professional stylist.

Most often, people do not understand what a stylist's job is. To tell you the truth, I didn’t quite understand either. It seemed to me that a stylist is a person who, at most, chooses clothes for a photo shoot and tells you how best to put on your makeup (laughs). And this is a very subtle and deep work on psychological level, which most people don’t even know about.

“WHEN I SAW THE TEST RESULTS, I WAS A MIGHT SHOCK”

I turned to the stylists Ekaterina Belevich And Yulia Petrunenko. Before you start teaching anything, it took them a long time to recognize me. The first conclusions were drawn from the analysis social networks. Next, we made collages, from which I chose those capsules (images) that were closest to me. So we found out what I like and don't like. This became the foundation for the work of stylists.

The next stage was psychological test . The stylists sent me a series of questions, the answers to which were supposed to be pictures. After that, we met with them, and I commented on the selected images.

All explanations were recorded and then a verbatim transcript was made. From this transcript, my most pronounced qualities were revealed. The result was a three-word definition; When I saw this, I was in slight shock. It is simply impossible for me to give the most accurate definition. Based on the results of testing, it turned out: creative, esthete, introvert.

After this, the stylists continued to build a work strategy. We started with the hairstyle. I had fairly long curly hair, and they suggested that I add more “flight”, audacity, and playfulness to the image - get a fairly short haircut. From several options, we chose the optimal one for my hair structure. Together we went to the hairdresser, who cut my hair and colored it. I've stuck with this style ever since. There is no desire to return to the previous image and hair down to the lower back.

Before contacting stylists.

« AT SOME MOMENT I REALIZED WHAT THIS ISTOOMUCH»

The next stage is color testing. For me it is quite passable, because intuitively I have a good sense of my own and not my own colors. The only thing I realized is that it doesn’t suit me in terms of prints. For example, it is strictly forbidden to use strict geometry: corners, squares, rhombuses and polka dots.

Afterwards we had a wardrobe analysis- this is the most interesting and most painful. Showing off your wardrobe not in yourself, but simply in how your clothes turned out to be quite a challenge. The stylists acted extremely ethically, they were gentle, and if they criticized, it was very correct. But still, at some point I realized that this was too much, and said: “That’s it, I don’t want anything else. I like my clothes" (laughs).

After common sense came back to me, and I got rid of almost everything that was recommended to me. There was only one thing that was not affected. But she is dear to my heart, and I believe that such things should not be thrown away.

After that, my friend and I took part in several master classes: about what lines, silhouettes and fabrics suit whom, and about accessories. Before that, I thought that accessories didn’t suit me, earrings and rings - the maximum. Now I have a huge six-story box with accessories, which no longer fits everything.

I learned to wear different necklaces, earrings, rings, brooches, and I really like it. I realized that accessories create the mood and become the icing on the cake in any look. Previously, all I knew how to do was tie a scarf or scarf. So I accumulated 60 of them.

“WHEN YOU ARE IN ITALY AT A SALE, YOU CAN LOSE YOUR HEAD”

At some stage of working with stylists, my friend and I decided to go shopping in Italy. Naturally, before this we asked the stylists for advice, and this turned out to be very useful. That's when I truly realized how cool it is to work with stylists.

If you find yourself in Italy during the sales period, you can lose your head. But, fortunately, each of us already knew what was right for her. When we came to the store, we felt some kind of built-in filter. You immediately see: this is mine, and this is absolutely not mine. Every purchase hits the bull's eye.

Of course, after Italy, a couple of things appeared in my wardrobe that I wear infrequently, but it is foolish to believe that such skills come immediately. The understanding is there, but the skills need to be developed gradually.

Working with stylists saves money, effort and time, because you begin to understand the principles of buying things. There are so-called begging things. You may really like such a thing and fit well, but there is nothing to wear it with. In this case, it is better not to take it. The item must fit into at least three bows.

We returned from Italy, and the stylists arranged a photo shoot for us, on which our images were analyzed. We showed business, romantic, and casual options. These are the images that we most often use in life. You can build on them in order to further modify and implement something.

And on final stage work they made a style book for me. This is such a voluminous book, in which there are a lot of recommendations relating specifically to my appearance. One might say, a complete instruction manual. When I forget something, I flip through it, refresh my memory, adapt it for today and move on with my life.

I’ve been working with stylists for a year and a half now and I understand that this is such an endless space and you can study it for an infinitely long time. But of all the things I've done with my appearance in thirty years, this is the coolest and most useful investment.

The main acquisition is absolute confidence in his appearance. I used to be characterized by worries, complexes and uncertainty. And now it doesn’t matter who thinks what or what they expect from me.

I get comments on Instagram quite often, and I caught myself thinking that I’m curious about someone else’s point of view, but I don’t perceive it as a priori authoritative. I am guided by my inner comfort and feelings, I trust my opinion and the opinion of my stylists. It is very important to find a specialist you can trust.

Photo: from personal archive heroines.

It's never too late to dream. No matter what age you are, you cannot close yourself off from everyone, forget about your desires, and most importantly, forget about your dreams. A person is filled with what he values, what he wants to achieve, and what goals he pursues. Many people have proven to us more than once that it is so important to understand not only yourself, but also your desires. Some managed to fulfill their lifelong dreams, and some were afraid to cross the line and allow themselves a little more than they currently have. Today’s article will be dedicated to one person who, despite various prejudices, still decided to fulfill his old dream. Well? We hope that after reading the story of this American, you will also think about what you really want and begin to fulfill your dreams.

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