Hey y’all – sorry about not doing a Monday book yesterday, but the last one I read, I didn’t like, and we only do books we like here.
But I do have something fun for you today. You know that whole “Russian troll” thing? Meet AMANDA SMITH, our very own Slovakian.
Amanda sent a very strange comment to be approved after my Punk blog on Sunday–which if I do say so myself was one of the cuter ones.
Here is what Amanda sent:
the second wave is starting and in a pandemic it is usually the 2nd wave that kills the majority of people. You baby boomers are all going to die of corona virus and finally the world will be able to make progress when you boomers are all dead
So first, how interesting and factually inaccurate. Second waves aren’t the lethal ones. I’m not a Baby Boomer. I’m a Gen X.
Second, Amanda does this a lot. On March 27, she targeted a blog called The Summer years, saying:
You boomers are shutting down the entire economy because you’re afraid of a flu. Seriously, can you boomers kill yourselves? You are the most selfish generation to ever exist. You don’t give a shit about climate change, why should we young people give a shit if you get sick and die of some virus? I HOPE the virus gets much stronger and kills you all.
Third, Amanda doesn’t exist, at least not as Amanda. This is our girl:
So now you know. They’re everywhere, and they want us at each other’s throats. Silly, silly people fall for this crap. The rest of us laugh, say a prayer for whoever has to make a living doing things like this, and enjoy writing a blog about it. (Thank you Jen Cole for finding “Amanda” so quickly!)
I modestly like to think I rate a Russian troll (Slovakia is just where the pingback comes from) because of my forthcoming book COVID Conspiracies: QAnon, 5G, The New World Order and other Viral Ideas. But then, one of the leading attractions of a conspiracy theory is its empowering of victimization by feeling important enough to persecute, so….
Stay safe, be good to each other, and don’t believe everything you read, y’all. (I did a translation of English to Slovakian of “y’all.” It is “y’all.” So now we know…)
Here’s a link to that other blog. If you see Amanda in other places, tell them hi from us!
A short, but optimistic, Friday Retirement blog : Always look on … (you know the rest)
Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids 
As a boomer, I don’t like this. If its a joke, not funny. Is this a book?
No, it’s a bot. The whole idea of the bot sending out these posts is to make you angry. It’s a fake set up by a troll farm in Russia.
This will show the level of my non-techiness, but if this troll used a VPN, could that have mismasked them as coming from Russia? Just wondering; I have no idea of the answer and do not doubt that Russia or Slovakia are perpetrating the lion’s share of trolling (on at least some subject matter). Thanks!
The friend who did the unmasking said it came from Slovakia and that could be a shield such as you refer to, but that it wasn’t high tech enough to be geographically far distant from there. “It was a baby ping?” I asked and she rolled her eyes and said, “Close enough.”