Udaff.com started in 2001 as a brainchild of Dmitry Sokolovsky, an electrical engineer from Saint Petersburg, nicknamed "Udav" (Удав, translated as "boa").
It was popularized by the padonki subculture on websites like Udaff.com and Fuck.ru (currently defunct) created by entrepreneur Egor Lavrov and Konstantin Rykov, now a deputy of the Duma.