First Cup of Coffee – November 8, 2024

A story about internet trolls and boys on the playground in grade school – and how they have the same tactics. On not succumbing to their bullying and remembering that they’re trying to use fear as a tool.

First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy

First Cup of Coffee - November 8, 2024

November 08, 2024

Jeffe Kennedy

A story about internet trolls and boys on the playground in grade school - and how they have the same tactics. On not succumbing to their bullying and remembering that they're trying to use fear as a tool.

Visit JenniferKLambert.com

RELUCTANT WIZARD is out now and audiobook is live!! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/reluctant-wizard

You can preorder STRANGE FAMILIAR at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/strange-familiar

The posture-correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself is here https://forme.therave.co/37FY6Z5MTJAUKQGA

You can buy tickets for Wild & Windy in Phoenix (February 2025) here https://www.wildandwindybookevent.com/phoenix-authors

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring, coaching, and conversation with me! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com/

If you want to support me and the podcast, click on the little heart or follow this link (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jeffekennedy).

Sign up for my newsletter here! (https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/r2y4b9)

You can watch this podcast on video via YouTube https://youtu.be/PhmCbRY7xDc

Support the show

Contact Jeffe!

Find me on Threads
Visit my website https://jeffekennedy.com
Follow me on Amazon or BookBub
Sign up for my Newsletter!
Find me on Instagram and TikTok!

Thanks for listening!



Russian Trolls Under Every Bridge

One thing I’ve noticed recently, in sifting through the spam comments on my blog, is how many come from Russians now. And on one post, in particular.

See, I stopped looking at the spam comments after a while. This kind of went along with my overall dip in blogging that I mentioned yesterday. The comments seemed to be always and endlessly spam, and never any legit ones. Always jam yesterday and none today. The White Queen haunts me.

Of course, some of this came as a natural consequence of me not blogging comment-worthy stuff. But then I did say something interesting, and my friend, the lovely Grace Draven, mentioned to me on Facebook that she commented at length–but I didn’t see it. It was in my spam folder, because apparently Grace is actually a troll selling off-brand cross-trainers and possibly nudie webcam dancing. I was able to rescue her comment, and set about housecleaning that bursting folder. 

I’ve been trying to keep up with it better – with the help of wonderful assistant, Carien – and I’ve noticed something very interesting. Most all of the spam comments are on one old post from 2014, called “Taking Guns to the Mall.”  (Note: I’ve since changed the title, in an effort to stop the spam bots.) And the comments come from people with Russian names and often with Cyrillic characters in them. They’re the usual balderdash of jigsaw puzzled paragraphs of technical information with links, both commercial and likely nefarious. What happens here is that bots are crawling the internet looking for search terms and submitting these “comments” to the posts. 

Interesting search terms, huh?

It’s fascinating to me to have my own small intersection with a worldwide plague, one that very likely contaminated the 2016 election. Evidence cited in that article indicates that Russia-backed posts reached as many as 126 million Americans on [Facebook] during and after the 2016 presidential election.  

If you haven’t seen it, this video of Senator Franken grilling the Facebook lawyer is full of awesome. 

At any rate, I considered deleting that post, or changing the title to something less likely to tempt the trolls out from under their bridges. For now I’ve tried turning off comments to the post. It will be interesting to see how that works.

Meanwhile, that’s still one of my favorite photos of David, dressed as a pirate in the big hat. Sail on, me hearties. 

Trolls and Toxicity – Battle Strategies for Dealing

the talon of the hawkI’m over at Word Whores today, talking about strategies for dealing with both online trolls and toxic people in your life. Because it’s the same answer for both.

I’m also at Urban Girl Reader today, talking about more frivolous things – namely my favorite moments in Rogue’s Paradise when modern human woman runs up against the inhuman mindset of her fae lover.