It is prestigious among young men in Russia to be a wrestler. Not a professional athlete but somebody who belongs to an amateur wrestling club. If people know you are a wrestler, they will think twice before trying to bully or insult you.
Being an actual wrestler is hard, though. So these young men found a way to look like wrestlers without doing any wrestling.
They break their ears.
An ear is frozen and broken, making people think it was broken during a fight. For this purpose, pretend wrestlers invariably choose their left ear.
Riddle: Why do they break the left ear and not the right?
Clarissa's Blog 
Most people are right handed, so their opponent would’ve used their dominant right hand to break their ear. You can only hold someone’s left ear with your right hand if you’re face to face (like in a wrestling match).
Yes?
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That was my guess. But no, it’s crazier than that.
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Like Van Gogh?
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Yes, but with much less impressive results. 😎
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I don’t know the answer. Why do you think the two drunk Russian wrestlers in this TRUE story chose their left ears to cut off?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10563209/Russian-men-cut-off-own-ears-after-arm-wrestling
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The link doesn’t work. It was an article in “The Telegraph” stating that two drunk Russians got into a wrestling match in which they agreed that the loser had to cut off his ear — and apparently the match ended in a tie.
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Jesus. Poor freaks.
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Simple psychology: It’s not right to indulge in self-mutilation, and if something isn’t right — it’s left.
(I’ll give you my e-mail address so you can use PayPal to send me the prize money.)
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This is a brilliant answer. And it can even be made to work in Russian.
But it’s not the real reason.
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Okay, that wasn’t the right reason — but do I have to be left out of knowing the answer?
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Is a broken right ear some kind of a dishonorable sign in Russian (prison? gay?) subculture?
Do they wear earrings and to put one in a right ear would be such a sign?
I am surprised those quasi-wrestlers expect people around them to be the kind who to pay attention to those broken ears but not the kind who knows what you have written about.
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“gay?) subculture?”
That’s what I was thinking. Back in the early 1980s in the US when men started wearing earrings the supposed code was left-ear straight, right-ear gay. But that broke down later. And there’s no reason to expect the same idea to appear in Russia and would be transferred to ears…
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Shot in the dark. So that it’s visible when they use the phone?
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You are going in the right direction. 😊 A hint: in Japan, they’d be breaking the right ear.
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More visible in cars!
That makes sense the crazy in Russia twitter feed is full of enraged drivers threatening each other with guns and knifes (I know a bunch of the stuff there isn’t from Russia but there’s enough from Russia that is that it makes the country look like it’s filled with rageheads.
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Exactly. 😃Roads are insane in Russia, and this is a way to make sure nobody messes with you.
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Ok, now THAT’S a pretty stupid reason!
Hell, why not scar your left cheek, and claim it was a modern-day dueling scar?
Yeeesh…
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Like there could be a good reason to break your ear. 😀
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Re Russia, just saw something I haven’t known:
В ГУЛАГе евреев убивали больше всех
Как оказывается, по абсолютному числу расстрелянных евреи уступают только русским, обойдя даже украинцев. Если же принять в расчет, что евреи составляли примерно лишь 2% жителей тогдашнего Советского государства, а среди расстрелянных на Колыме их почти 12%, вывод о безусловном их приоритете (печальном приоритете!) среди жертв УСВИТЛа становится неизбежным и несомненным.
http://grimnir74.livejournal.com/7208940.html
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Jews were very active in the Revolution, so they ended up caught in its web more often. The percentage of Jews in the population is entirely irrelevant.
I wonder if historical memory has really been lost to this degree or if this author is simply being dishonest.
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