My latest retro blog, this time from November, 2020. I confess I’d found it intending to post it on the Sunday (my usual retro blog posting day) just gone but that didn’t happen on account of me feeling a bit under the weather and I still do. Which is why I’m putting it out instead of a new Tuesday blog. This is the first time I’ve back -slid like this. Hope it’s a while before I do it again.
By the way it’s about bots. I thought I might be inundated by more of the same as time went on but since this date there have been no more. Shame really, it was quite exciting.
And a final ‘by the way’, my comments about Russia later in the blog feel quite inappropriate now but that’s the way it goes I guess. Read on.
It was not so long ago I wrote a retirement blog about the dubious pleasure of being trolled. You have to admit it’s quite an achievement for a retired person to acquire a troll. Now it turns out that my troll is actually a bot. So even bigger hats off to me? How on earth does little old me merit being botted? Or whatever the correct verb might be?
I mean on the lines that there is no such thing as bad publicity, having your very own bot must be good, right? You might remember that ‘she’, the troll, was called Amanda which is nice and homely. Apart from the upside of more publicity I’m not sure whether there is a downside. If there is perhaps somebody out there could let me know what it is.
As to how I found out about my bot, well that’s a strange story. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a woman name of Wendy. Clearly a pseudonym I thought. Her message made me even more suspicious. She said something along the lines of she also had received a trolling from Amanda and asked me if I would be interested in offering Amanda some guidance as to the error of her ways. Nothing ‘mean’, she said.
At first I ignored the email on the grounds that this was merely Amanda in disguise trying to suck me deeper into her social media cesspit. That’s probably a bit strong but you know what I mean.
Anyway turns out Wendy was perfectly genuine. She runs her own blog entitled Wendy Welch : Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids. Intriguing title I think you’ll agree. She sent me a second email saying a friend of hers had found out that Amanda was not in fact a troll but a bot. Lost me a bit when she wrote that she thought it was a Russian bot even though the information her friend had provided indicated that the bot was in Slovakia. Apparently that country was where the last ping-back came from. Excuse me?
This was some way above my pay grade. The first thing I had to do was, quite literally, look up what a ‘bot’ was. The definition from Google, I think, was, it is automated software which performs repetitive actions which are intended to make a site look more popular. I have to admit this didn’t help a whole lot. That sounds like the bot was trying to do me a favour which didn’t sit well with Amanda stated desire indicating that she hoped that I died.
But, even if this bot’s goal was to fulfill Amanda’s wish, why me? I mean who’d have thought that a 72 year old retired person would need to be trying to work out which was better or worse, to be insulted by a troll or a bot? All this based on his harmless old retirement blog. You know, me just trying to be helpful or raise a smile.
Here I am writing The Summerhouse Years, retirement blog, just bumbling along writing blogs about my own small world. Writing about enjoying old age, making the best of retirement life’s frustration, being positive, all that kind of baloney and suddenly I’m centre stage and a digital, international stage at that.
I know, I know, I’m over-egging it aren’t I but this doesn’t stop me vaguely returning to the big question – why, out of all the retirement blogs in the world, and believe me there are plenty, would this possibly Russian, possibly Slovakian bot / troll, name of Amanda, choose The Summerhouse Years to wish ill to. If that’s the right grammar.
I did spend just a few minutes trying to think if any of my blogs could be thought of as anti-Russian, anti-communist, anti-Slovakian. Had I suggested that Putin’s muscles were no more than prosthetics and the horse beneath him a papier mache model? Or was he sticking up for his mate, Trump and taking exception to me expressing my wholly negative opinions of him or even Boris?
No, long though I considered this, it just didn’t seem right. Which would, I guess, leave me with a much less interesting answer. My retirement blog had simply been chosen at random. If so then The Summerhouse Years is destined to return to relative obscurity.
But wait, at a more optimistic level. Perhaps this is what happens when your blog features on page 1 of Google, as we have for the last few weeks. With fame comes the virtual equivalent of the paparazzi. Unwanted attention from all the wrong places. Not that I’m suggesting Russia or Slovakia are particularly wrong or undesirable countries from which to receive a slagging off. Let me be clear about that just in case Amanda is reading this and decides to really wage a war of attrition against The Summerhouse Years.
After all we did visit Moscow some years ago and enjoyed the visit tremendously. We even bought souvenirs from this massive flea market (and I use that term in the most positive way possible). That’s the picture above, all Soviet presidents except one, can you spot the odd one out – maybe this is why they’re trolling me, not showing respect to their politicians although, as I understand it, they don’t show much respect, they kill them off if necessary.
Retirement blog summary
I admit I’ve never knowingly visited Slovakia but I’m sure it’s a lovely place. So all I can say to you Amanda and your international colleagues is a) thank you for the inspiration for this blog and b) if you feel inclined to slag me off again or hope that I die, could you possibly be a bit nicer about it.
Thank you and good luck with any revolution that might be currently on-going or, if you’re the government, then good luck with putting down the opposition.