Seven years on the internet is a very long time.  To provide context, many of the young lawyers who read blogs were either worrying whether Brad would ask you to the sock hop or Suzie would let you get to second base seven years ago.  You lost no sleep over the law, employment opportunities, social injustice or loan repayment.

Mike Cernovich wasn’t like you.  Instead of quaffing beverages of dubious alcoholic content, he chose to spend some of his free time writing. He created a blog called Crime & Federalism.

It’s been just over seven years since the first post appeared at Crime & Federalism. It’s been a fun and fucked-up seven years.

The blog first started when there weren’t many law blogs. I was a law student looking to engage others, and the blog achieved some measure of legal success. 

Mike significantly understates the influence and importance of his blog in the early days.  There were others, even in criminal law, but they didn’t compare.  Either the writing was mediocre (at best), the content was weaselly or self-aggrandizing (even then lawyers couldn’t help but try to paint themselves as heroes) or just plain bad.  Being an early adopter doesn’t preclude being a moron.

Describing his experience over the years, Mike makes it sound a lot like a 12-step program. There were the “highs”:

American Lawyer Media contacted me, asking me to be one of only eight official law blogs. Soon, my blog was one of only a dozen to be cited in federal judicial opinions. I built a huge readership of lawyers, serious legal scholars, and federal judges. Sounds great, right? And then things got better.

Norm Pattis joined the blog in 2005. Traffic was up, and C&F was one of the most widely-read legal blogs – and certainly the most widely read criminal law blog. Kindred souls, Norm and I went our separate ways. I stopped blogging for a while, as legitimacy comes with a price.

After several months of co-blogging, Norm and I started exchanging e-mails. “That post got a lot of hits. We should write more like it.” We started thinking about what others wanted to see. To build a readership, that is what you should do. Yet that makes the endeavor seem soulless and placid rather than vibrant and bold. He and I both got writer’s block.

And then the lows:

I came back and completely self-destructed, alienating nearly every regular reader. After a post about religion, the Law.com people asked me if it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to leave their house of legitimacy. I loved the idea, and seemed bent on self-destruction.

And the demands:

People today ask why I don’t blog much about the law. It’s not that I don’t care about the law. It’s that there are are several-hundred article-length posts about the law. I used to fastidiously categorize posts. Whatever you want to know is already in the Archives. 

Until finally, the come to Jesus moment:

The blog will always be a reflection of me, because no one tells me what to post (or not to post). Whatever I post, therefore, is being driven by conscious or subconscious forces. I am me, but also part of everyone else. We are all plugged into the collective unconscious.

While I’ve got a couple decades on Mike in real life, he’s got the same on me in internet years.  Following Mike’s travails has given me insight into what was ahead of me and how decisions on which forks to take would work out.  We’ve shared many of the same experiences, and I’ve avoided some because of what Mike went through, saving me some of the anguish that he endured along the way.

I’m told all the time what I think, feel, and do, right and wrong, by people I don’t know and who think they know me because they read a post or two of mine.  They inform me that they disagree and expect my world to rotate on its axis to accommodate their disembodied views.  I’m told I should write more about one subject and less about another, or that my rhetoric is too inflammatory or tepid.  And they get angry with me because I don’t meet their expectations.

In a comment to his post, a guy named Mel feels it worthwhile to let Mike know that he agrees with him 75% of the time, and disagrees the remainder.  Mel doesn’t write this to diminish Mike, but to praise him.

Even when you say something I completely disagree with, you’re funny, witty, engaging and worth reading.

That’s a very thoughtful compliment, and one I’m sure Mike appreciates.  The reason this is significant isn’t that Mel argues that Mike should change his 25% wrong ideas, which is what the vast majority of readers argue, but that Mel realizes that Mike is writing what Mike wants to write.  Mike is saying things that Mike needs to say.  And if anyone, Mel, you, me, doesn’t agree with it or like it, that’s our problem, not Mike’s.

Newcomers to the blawgosphere, or to SJ, are rarely shy about telling me what to do, how to behave and what to write about.  Some even try to tell me that the blawgosphere is doing everything wrong, and I should change my evil ways to suit their sensibilities.  Some who are critical think they are so consequential in my world that they have “nailed me” or “gotten to me” when they’ve done no more than make me shrug, if I even notice them.

My laissez-faire attitude toward the haters and even the well-wishers comes largely because of what I learned from Mike.  If you don’t care for Mike, that’s fine.  Neither Mike, nor I, give a damn.