Monday, May 07, 2018

WHY IS RUSSIA READING MY BLOGS?

Empress Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia
Anastasia's grandmother

I suspect that I’m being read and used by Russian troll farms.  Blogger gives me one set of figures, which shows that I’m getting under a hundred “hits” daily, and another metric shows over a thousand — even two thousand — readers.  Those numbers are especially high if I’m complaining about getting old.

It seems to be covert and uninvited — I’m not a fan of Russia and see Putin as an unwanted throwback — but does it put me in legal jeopardy?  I have no control over it, do I?  Can I block any readers from Russia?

In order to find ammunition for criticism of America, a reader of my writing would have to wade through a lot of musing about something one might call “pre-religion” — neurology theory, first instance.  I know everyone likes stuff about Blackfeet, esp. people who haven’t got the slightest idea what I’m saying.  I suppose small towns and old people are planet-wide, pre-globalized.

Our high school senior play was “Anastasia” and I played the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.  Background reading for that is about as much as I know — hardly comprehensive, much about Finland.  But I did get emotionally involved in the dispersal of the Soviet Union.  And Montana — if it weren’t for the weather patterns created by the Rockies — would be a lot like Siberia.

Demographically but unofficially, Russians have very high rates of HIV/AIDS and very low birth rates.  Alcoholism is common and I assume the drugs follow.  And yet government is what Millennials think they want: a firm hand from a stern father who somehow lets them be themselves.  Certainly this is a country that privileges the group over the individual, so why don’t they offer refuge for all the people from countries with the same belief in strict rules?  I guess because the rules are different.  And they look different.

So do they read what I write and secretly become converted, restless over the ideas and imagining emigration?  Are these the people demonstrating against Putin?

Incidentally, since I devote a lot of attention to evolution from the first life all the way up to today’s attempt to escape from the imperialistic colonizing designs, who were/are the indigenous people of Russia?  Or does it depend upon who one considers the first peoples of Russia?  Horse-riders of the Steppes or Denisovans.  Are they in contact with the world-wide meshing of indigenous thought and reaction, all the way from Hawaiians to the villages of high mountains in South America and the dry country of Australia?


Why do Russians always end up being quasi-Europeans?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Control, there is no such thing as control when it comes to who is reading your blog. Unless you close it down to only invited readers. Make it entirely private.

But should you be concerned? I don't think so. There are two ways how your numbers come to be: One, it can be "just" russian readers. Second, it may be visitors from anywhere in the world but using the methods of the so called "dark web". This could also cause many more "hits" than there actually are. Doesn't necessarily have to but could.

Maybe your site is enjoyed by people who do not yet have the technology to easily access fancy websites which require a lot of band-width to load in the first place. I know many Russians and Eastern Europeans still have dial-up and/or very slow, clumsy, expensive access to the internet. For a while I used to spend time on a Russian based forum that was operated on two standards. One for the modern world and one for those who do not have the ability to load pictures, movies, links and all that which we consider as the absolute norm nowadays.

Certainly can I relate to anyone finding your blog interesting. I don't remember what brought me here at first ... but I have been reading more or less regularly ever since for the simple reason that your writing puts very interesting topics into very interesting relations that my mind wouldn't come up with on its own. Not mainstream, that's for sure and that's what has me coming back all the time.

... maybe I am one of your russian hits at times. I do use Orbot to reroute my access. Not to hide as is often implied but to avoid being fed only the stuff the web algorithms learned I find interesting. I do not like to be fed bite size results if I search for something. But I also resent the big ones collecting data of every step I take and their trying to tie this to a individual. Me.


Mary Strachan Scriver said...

I appreciate this very much! Thanks.

The same schism of capacity and accommodation seems to exist between coastal culture and the rest of the continent as inconveniences the peoples of the "Western World" and "The Third World." I wish the techies would work on this instead of trying to add more and more bells and whistles to what is already overencumbered.

You'll probably like prairiemarytoday.blogspot.com.

Chas S. Clifton said...

I agree with the first commenter -- those are not necessarily real hits or real readers. One explanation that I have heard is that you, the blog owner, are expected to check out the sites that appear to be sending you traffic (sites often in Russia or Ukraine), and then *you* become their traffic to their spammy site.

Ain't the Internet wunnerful?

Mary Strachan Scriver said...

In no place can I see comments from Russia. If I get hits with comments in a foreign language, I translate them but I've gotten very few. Clustr.com is a "roll" that shows hits coming in and their locations, but no info else. I don't often look.

I'm about through with the Internet. Far too much mystery and too many flash/bang features that are confusing for old ladies.'

Prairie Mary

Mary Strachan Scriver said...

When I look at Clustrmaps (it's in the right hand column of this blog), I'm sometimes shocked by how many more people in Russia are reading this blog than people in the US. Are they all bots? It occurs to me that maybe they're just reading because they want to see what I wrote, that they're looking for themselves instead of the state.

If you click on the map, it will open up to show the other features, like the roll of who is "hitting" the blog just now.

Prairie Mary