Anthropological theorists have often dismissed the notion of nation‐as‐family as an abstraction or as evidence of nationalist sentiment. But in postsocialist Armenia, nation is practiced as family. Everyday intimate encounters in public carry narratives of genealogical belonging and expectations based on forms of kin relation. This is particularly notable in the experiences of queer subjects—those who fail to meet the demands and expectations to belong to the nation‐family and who thus disrupt national sensibilities of propriety and genealogical continuity. Those who are genealogically perverse experience the nation‐family as unbearably intimate. This intimacy, however, makes possible acts that introduce queer difference into what national propriety means. [queer, intimacy, nation, kinship, perversion, postsocialism, Armenia]

Fake news and fake social networking profiles have recently come under a great deal of public attention. Much of this attention has focused on the dangers of politics as a space in which inauthenticity is now running rampant. Through an ethnographic exploration of how LGBT activists and their right‐wing nationalist opposition make use of fake information and fake social networking profiles in Armenia, I argue that rather than dismissing fakeness as an aberration of politics, it might be regarded as an emergent political tactic within a new informational logic that has risen through, and in interruption of, digital communication. While actors on the right in Armenia and beyond have used forms of such inauthentic politics, fakeness has the potential to be used in multiple directions and for various other political causes.

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