Long-time readers of this my blog will recollect that I have often in the past exulted or lamented about readership in “strands afar remote.” Cases in point: long-running pleas for Bolivian recognition, and delight when Eswatini swam into my ken.

So when no fewer than five (count ’em, five) readers from Laos, the first from that country, showed up one day last week I was readying a celebratory post.

Until.

Watching YouTube videos randomly for my weekend amusement, I struck another ad for a VPN service, which I routinely ignore. My ultra-hip readers know these are Virtual Private Networks, that hide and disguise the user’s location and data by means of intricate server jiggery-pokery, so that one sitting at one’s computer in Brooklyn, New York, appears to the world at large as if ensconced in a cave in Waziristan.

Whereupon, the penny dropped. At last.

I have no way of knowing how many of the hits I’ve enjoyed are utterly bogus. At least some, probably many, conceivably most.

So much for WordPress’ vaunted “Countries” list, and my “frantic boast and foolish word,” as the Man from Mumbai put it. Goodbye to all that.