We received fan mail from a reader in Russia.
Looking at the site logs can yield interesting results sometimes.
Currently we use a combination of Umami and Google Search Console to see where our views are coming from and what our most popular content is. In the past, I’ve used eXtreme Tracking and Google Analytics. Google Analytics is garbage and highly prone to referrer spam. eXtreme Tracking was cool in the 2000’s, but nowadays I think the internet has kind of outgrown it.
Internet privacy is in a weird place right now. On one hand, everyone has no problem plastering their real names up and cataloging every waking moment of their lives on social media. Yet on the other hand, they’re worried about tracking cookies to the point where legislation has been put out to limit and restrict them. We at AJnet obviously have no problem with people exercising their right to privacy when viewing this site, but it serves as a reminder that tracking logs aren’t super accurate, and their info should be used more as general guidelines than for planning entire strategies. Our IT guy Carl has offered to build a more reliable tracker for the site, but to be honest I really don’t care that much about the numbers.
Anyway, one of the things I enjoy most about the logs is seeing all the various different countries that manage to find their way to this dark dank corner of the internet. Most of our traffic comes from the US and Canada, but you’d be surprised what other countries show up in the logs from time to time. We have regular readers in censorship-heavy countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. I’ve even had a few hits from Cuba.
We also have a few regular readers that come from Russia. Now I know what you’re thinking, “It’s probably bots”. We get a lot of bot traffic, but most of that can be filtered out, and you can generally tell by other metrics whether or not the viewer in question is human. I’ve gotten pretty good at sorting humans from bots in the logs over the years.
Another good indication that a reader isn’t a bot is that bots don’t typically send me fan mail, such as this one from Alex:
Hi Ajnet, I want to say that I love your blog. I found your article about openshot and laughed my ass off at your video.
I read the rest of the website. Very good stuff. I agree with you on a lot of thing and the Reddit review is funny as shit.
I read your post about Russia and Ukraine war. I am Russian and I want to tell you that many Russian do not support this war. Only old people supports war, but that is because they watch propaganda. Many young Russian are afraid they have to go die in Ukraine for bullshit fucking war.
Do not listen to the news, we are not your enemy. Russian people love America and would be friends instead of having world war. Maybe when old fucking piece of shit in Kremlin die we have peace. Fuck Putin and fuck the government!
Much love from Russia. Rock on!
PS sorry my english is not very good.
Alex
Your name is Alex? And you closed your email out with “Rock on”? Man that would be so cool if this was Alex Terrible from Slaughter to Prevail. Could you fucking imagine? Unfortunately, I know it’s not that Alex, because Slaughter to Prevail made it out of Russia and is currently in Orlando, Florida.
I appreciate the email, Alex. I just hope you used a VPN when you sent it to us, because I’d hate to see a reader get whacked by the KGB FSB over fan mail. Glad to hear you like the site though.
Don’t sweat your English, it’s still way better than a lot of the shit I’ve seen from so-called native speakers. You’ve certainly got our profanity down. That’s one thing that’s always amused me about people who don’t really know English. They almost always know words like “fuck”, “shit”, and “bitch”. I guess I can’t talk, I don’t know a lick of Hindi but I can say “motherfucker” (madarchod). Why do we always gravitate towards dirty words when it comes to foreign languages? Fucked if I know.
I’ve always wondered how the average Russian actually feels about what’s going on in Ukraine. Sure, the news is always telling us that Russians are taking to the streets en-masse protesting Putin, and CIA-sponsored punk bands like Pussy Riot are touted as the voices of the Russian youth. But I’ve never trusted the media to tell me the truth, and I’m not about to start now.
Still, I guess it’s good to see that maybe they weren’t too far off the mark on this one. I genuinely feel bad for the Russian youth who are at risk of being drafted and sent to the meat grinder next door. If it was my ass, I’d blast the draft officers in their damn faces with a 12 gauge when they came to the door for me. If they somehow managed to drag me to boot camp, the moment I’m given live ammo the commanding officers are getting shot. Fuck dying in some “bullshit fucking war”, as you eloquently put it. I’m almost 40 so I’m unlikely to ever get drafted, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize with these young men (and women, we don’t discriminate here at AJnet) who are being forced to fight and die for someone who sees them as nothing more than pawns.
As much as I talk shit on here, I’m generally pretty anti-war (as anyone could easily figure out from the last paragraph). I live by the philosophy of “Don’t start none, won’t be none”. No sane person actually wants to have to fight or kill anybody, and 95% of wars are fought for stupid reasons. Unfortunately, the people starting the wars are usually insulated from their decisions by the safety of desks and bunkers. Imagine if assholes like Putin, Biden, Trump, Starmer, Alexander Dugan, the Ayatollah, or Netanyahu had to send their own children to the front lines to fight instead of ours, or, God forbid, had to fight themselves. If these chickenshit warmongers had to actually face repercussions for their choices, I guarantee we’d have world peace. Either nobody would want to start a war, or the problem would solve itself when these retards removed themselves from the gene pool.
I wish America and Russia could be friends too, Alex. Your country has a rich history and some beautiful architecture. Plus, you’ve got vodka. Actually, forget the history and the architecture, let’s just get smashed on vodka together. What’s the Russian word for “Cheers!” again?
This email should serve as a poignant reminder that the Russian people aren’t necessarily America’s enemy. Our real enemies are the governments of the world, and all the scumbags who are hellbent on blowing everything to kingdom come because they’re assholes who probably have small dicks.
You know what? If there’s anyone reading this from any other “enemy” countries (and we know there is, because we see you) we’d love to hear from you. I want to hear from the average person in countries like China, Iran, Palestine, places like that. If your country is on America’s shitlist, send us an email. AJnet wants to show the world that the real enemy isn’t the people of these countries, it’s the jerk offs in charge. The media won’t do it, so fuck it, we will.
Dasvidaniya, comrades.
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