The article offers a new look at the genealogy of sadistic verselets — a genre of school humorous folklore of the 1970–80s, which is a dactylic quatrain or couplet where a tragic event occurs to a child character (‘a little boy’). It has been proven that the verselet is deeply rooted in the literary tradition and can be interpreted as a result of de-canonizing the ballad. From the point of view of historical poetics, we analyze the features of reproducing and transforming the ballad invariant, as well as the reality conceptualization principles determined by the same. We have found out that, on the one hand, ‘catastrophic’ motives are ‘exalted’ in the verselet (everyone is defenseless against the evil that inevitably and variously penetrates the world) and, on the other hand, they are discredited by means of the grotesque (which ensures the self-identity of the modern genre). In combination with ballad plots, the focus of works on Soviet material allows us to view official discourse as ‘alien’ — alternative and hostile to a human and, for this reason, ‘rejected’ in the act of laughter. Therefore, the contextual synonymy of everything ‘Soviet’, ‘adult’, and ‘parental’ turns into dispelling the myth of the ‘people’s state’, which not only does not protect people from danger, but also directly threatens their well-being.