RUSSIA IF YOU'RE LISTENING

I hadn't logged into Blogger in a long time, and was surprised to see that my Russian followers have lately renewed their interest in my blog:

Pageviews by Countries this week.

You may recall how, in the lead-up to the 2016 election, this blog transitioned from accounts of carefree California adventures to alarm at the world's devolving political realities to dire warnings of the fall of the Republic.  (And it has mostly continued in that vein, with occasional hints of "I will probably die alone but at least I have my sanity.") During that transition, I noticed I gained a small Russian "readership".  "Huh, that's odd," I remember thinking, "I don't know anyone in Russia."  But soon, Russia claimed the #2 spot of countries with the most views of my blog.  (Who's #1?  USA! USA! USA!  Thank you for your support, even when I write nothing.)  

After they helped elect Donald Trump without his knowledge (which is entirely believable because he's never had knowledge, duh), the Russians got bored with my blog and and their views slowed to a mere trickle.  But now they're back.  (#releasethepeetape)  These campaigns always start earlier and earlier, don't they?  They can't even wait till 2020 to start hacking the election.  Where's the respect?

I'm pretty confident Vladimir Putin doesn't have The Blob on a watchlist, but I am curious about the whole bot-farm process.  I don't think this happens to every website--I have a similarly unknown architecture blog and last I checked, not a single Russian had laid its bot-balls on it.  So how do the bots find me?  Does The Blob have a critical mass of certain keywords?  What do they do once they are here?  Come for the hack and stay for the jokes?  Guess at my password?  Take screenshots? 

All time views by country.

I know 724 hits from Russian bots on my little blog is small potatoes in terms of the internet.  I wanted to share this because I think it's hard to visualize what "Russia hacking our elections" actually means.  Maybe this gives it some scale.  Plus I'm pretty sure you can still make vodka out of small potatoes.

I had logged in to write a small impeachment post, but then saw all the Russians at my door.  Like this administration, I take national security very seriously so I think I will save impeachment for tomorrow.





PS. Sincere apologies to the Borises and Natashas if in fact you are real humans who come here to enjoy the fretting of a random American girl.