Kiss the Ring, Lest I Crush Your Online Empire

It looks like my blog may be doing better than I thought.

Or maybe it isn’t. I can’t really tell. You know what Mark Twain said about statistics.

If I understand web stats correctly, about 1900 different visitors come to this site every day. This is up from around 700 in 2010, which is as far back as I can check. I went all Jesus freak in about 2008, so that would be when the big plunge took effect. I used to reach thousands of people every day, and then the smell of Christianity drove off most of them.

The traffic collapse was not a big deal to me. I used to have hopes of blogging for a living and using the blog to drive books, but I got over that, and now I don’t care much whether anyone shows up. I should be glad I’m not in the numbers-for-money game, because the bloggers I respect the least are the ones who whored out 100% for traffic. Any idiot can get traffic if he plays the game. Suck up to Glenn Reynolds (or whoever the new traffic-driver is), put pictures of women on your site, link to everyone imaginable, have contests, give things away, and network, network, network. Above all, never EVER go against the party line. Do these things, and you’ll have 5,000 visits per day within a year. You won’t have a soul, and you will be an imbecile no one with any brains respects, however.

I have deliberately avoided capitalizing on my traffic for a long time. I have two reasons. First, for years, there wasn’t enough traffic to capitalize on. Second, if you make money on a blog, you open yourself up to lawsuits in other jurisdictions. It’s a bad idea unless you have huge traffic and income. Nobody wants to open himself up to lawsuits in Guam in exchange for fifty bucks a month. Millions of bloggers are doing exactly that.

You can probably avoid liability by incorporating, if you’re determined to monetize.

In the distant past, I made some change by blogging. I had a few ads. I covered my hosting fees and probably had enough left over for a few cheeseburgers. I got rid of the ads. This blog is a hobby enterprise which costs me money, and that makes me harder to get at, should some slimy, sleazy, louse-festooned demi-person decide to attack me in court.

I used to think only “unique visits” counted when I looked at blog stats, but it appears that this is wrong. People on the web say “visits” are what matter. If what I have read is correct, a person who shows up twice in a day only racks up one visit, so each visit is access by a unique computer. My stats say I’m at about 1900 visits per day. My guess is that maybe 1200 are actual human beings who can read English. Blogs attract all sorts of stat-inflating bots.

If over a thousand people are reading what I say every day, shouldn’t I clean up my act?

When you think you’re reaching a couple of hundred bored individuals per day, and no one is paying you, you tend to feel pretty independent. You don’t like what I write? Get lost. I’m paying for your access to this blog, so what do I care if you leave? That’s the attitude. And you tend to feel that what you write doesn’t matter, so if you’re a slightly bad influence, it’s okay.

I suppose it’s not okay, especially in view of the true volume this site does. I think I will continue to not care if anyone shows up, but maybe I should be more careful about what I write.

In my heart, I always see myself as an obscure, nearly invisible person no one cares about, and I like it that way. I know there are many individuals who share this opinion of me, because over the years, they have come here and left comments to this effect. But I think my perception is exaggerated and not entirely realistic.

Perhaps my view of my impact in the world is colored by my childhood in an abusive environment. I was made to understand that I was powerless, annoying, unattractive, disgraceful, and incapable of holding an opinion worthy of consideration, and I internalized the perceptions of my abusers. You don’t actually have to believe things like that with your mind in order to internalize them. They bypass the mind and get into your flesh, like tapeworms or something. Thinking these feelings away is like trying to think away the flu.

I think I’m better off than a person raised by doting enablers. If you’re going to have delusions about yourself, it’s better to shoot low than high. Proud people do a huge amount of damage to others.

When I write, I don’t think I’m changing the world or turning people’s lives around. I write because I like to write. I have a certain amount of hope that I’ll reach a few people with my testimony, but this is not my main motivation for writing. Should it be? Maybe it should. In the long run, nothing else I write about will be considered anything but afterbirth.

I used to have some hope of impacting the political scene, but I am nearly over that. I have little relapses, but I am out of the loop. I don’t know who the big conservative bloggers are right now. Is Misha still out there? Dan Goldstein? No, it’s Jeff, not Dan. I’m having a hard time remembering who my old allies were. I should look at my blogroll, which is a time capsule dating back to the Bush years.

Pajamas Media and fake corporate blogs really killed conservative blogging! Was I right about that, or what? Conservatives did really well in the blogosphere for a few years, and then Roger Simon bit the head off the golden goose in order to get the eggs. Introducing money and the guild structure into blogging cut the roots of the whole enterprise.

I really caught it for criticizing PJM, too. I correctly diagnosed their problems and predicted their future, and I got reamed out for it all the time. My opinion got the amount of respect it has typically gotten all of my life, from limited thinkers who were not merely wrong but obviously wrong.

I was a traitor! My little blog, not the poisonous, wrongheaded, greedy dreams of the traffic merchants, was the problem. If it weren’t for me, Simon and his pals would be blogging from yachts in Monaco. I took all that away from them!

Too funny.

I rejected PJM and refused to join them, and they returned the favor, in spades. Because it was never about getting the conservative message out, which was something I helped do. It was about making money for the PJ’s.

I was never one of the cool kids, in spite of very good traffic. I started blogging in 2002, I have received tons and tons of links, and Glenn Reynolds has linked to me only once or twice. One of the funniest things that happened during my previous incarnation was receiving an Instalink when Ann Althouse guest-blogged for Reynolds. I wonder how he felt when he saw it. I kind of wonder if she did it to needle him.

It’s strange that I didn’t see that the incurable, terminal pajama blight was inevitable. Maybe I did. I don’t remember. Build a house, and eventually, roaches, rats, and termites will show up. The scent of money was in the air, and eventually hyenas had to smell it.

Where is PJM today? Nowhere. Where is Roger Simon? Is he still alive? He’s not on Fox. He’s not at Breitbart.com. Does he even get to contribute at Hot Air? Somewhere in the dry deserts of Cyberia, there should be a fragment of a statue with “PJMandias” carved into it. All that stuff turned to crap. Total disaster. Simon is more obscure than ever, Bill Whittle is an absolute, complete, utter nobody, Glenn Reynolds is a nobody outside the blogosphere, Michelle Malkin ought to be on a milk carton, and Pam Geller only makes the headlines when someone tries to shoot her. She should be paying jihadis to follow her around.

Where is the PJM cable channel? Where is the PJM satellite? What’s the address of the PJM skyscraper in Manhattan? Where are the revered, gravitas-stuffed PJ pundits we were supposed to see on CNN and the networks?

Where is the mighty PJ media machine which could not help but prevent Obama from being elected twice? It must be around here somewhere.

Wikipedia says PJTV, the rarely viewed PJ video site, went under in 2016. BAH HA HA HA HA. It was all me! I did it! And I’m glad! Do you hear me? GLAD! For my next trick, maybe I’ll generate an earthquake.

When I Googled to find connections (like endorsements and interviews) between Donald Trump’s campaign and PJ Media, excluding results on the PJ site, I got nothing, basically. But I did find PJM’s Youtube channel, which is a testimony to the failure of PJTV, and I also found a story about PJTV’s disintegration. Trump busily covered all the media bases, and he even let little Internet players into the White House press room, but the mighty PJM monolith appears to have escaped his notice.

Look at the damage I did, with my observations. Singlehanded, I destroyed the dreams of millions of conservatives. I killed a brilliant idea that couldn’t fail. I’m amazing. Why hasn’t Soros sent me a check?

I should make cancer go away, too. I’ll start criticizing it.

It occurs to me that a lot of people reading this may not know what PJM is. It failed so completely, most people probably haven’t heard of it.

Ask your barber what he thinks of Instapundit and Pajamas Media for me and tell me what he says. Caveat: not a fair test, if your barber is a former conservative blogger who has to cut hair for a living.

I don’t know if having more traffic than I thought will influence me much. Sitting around analyzing what I write would destroy the pleasure of blogging. I’ll make a little effort, but I doubt there will be a substantial change. I think I will always feel like I’m blogging for 10 or 15 people.

And Now Some Archaeology

I couldn’t resist. I Googled some more.

I remember when Kevin Aylward was a somewhat sheepish noob asking for links on Internet chat. His site, Wizbang, became a right-wing powerhouse. I was not a Wizbang-staff favorite. I felt they were soulless Kool-Aid drinkers who would swallow live snakes for traffic. Anyway, I just checked, and Wizbang is barely breathing.

I happened to see Mary Katharine Ham on the contributor list. You may not remember her. She was a conservative pundit who became famous at about the age of 9 (I exaggerate) based on the following qualifications: she was very attractive, she had a brilliant smile, and she was a woman. I never got the Ham craze. She seemed like a nice kid, but she never said anything remotely insightful or important. As a commentator, she was a nullity. Her success was mystifying, unless you accept the unthinkable proposition that looks matter more than talent. You could go to a random diner in a red state and find 5 uglier people who could do what she did. She has only written one book, with a co-author. Generally, a co-author is a person who writes a book FOR a more-famous person.

Fox dropped her as a commentator. Now she’s a few paragraphs on Wikipedia.

When you’ve been a regular on Fox, the last thing you want is a credit on the front page of Wizbang. It’s like a former Sports Illustrated bikini model working a car show.

Aylward is not mentioned on the front page. Maybe he’s selling real estate or managing a Motel 6 somewhere. If he was smart, he sold Wizbang when it was worth something.

John Cole at Balloon Juice was a big PJ, and in his utter wrongness, he got angry at me for stating the obvious. His site appears to be stumbling on. Somewhere on the web, it says his politics have changed. That’s not unusual. Political people sometimes have epiphanies when they realize their existing political stances don’t generate much attention and/or cash. I don’t know John’s story; maybe he’s sincere, or maybe it embarrasses him to side with people who drive pickup trucks and go to church. I was never a reader of his blog. I didn’t think it was all that good. Anyway, PJM did not propel him to stardom.

The Protein Wisdom blog is dead. I don’t know when that happened. I guess JEFF Goldstein (not Dan) got tired of having his children threatened by leftists nuts. I knew Jeff fairly well by blogger standards; I just forgot his first name. I ran a defunct humor blog called Huffington’s Toast, and Jeff contributed. Anyway, he was PJM. Jeff was a very, very unhappy person, and I would guess that the vitriol he was exposed to through blogging wore on him eventually.

Hot Air is not doing great. They sold out to a corporation. Wikipedia says Michelle Malkin, whose preexisting celebrity jump-started the site, wrote very little of its material. Allahpundit, one of the most talented blog personalities, appears to have remained there, grinding out essays. I hope they are giving him a decent salary. If not, he ought to move on, because blogging isn’t going to get more lucrative in the future.

Malkin herself has not published a book since 2015, and that book had a co-writer. Real writers do their own lifting and do not use co-writers. Her Fox TV presence is reduced now. She founded Twitchy.com, a disheartening site where angry people gather to criticize political tweets. It looks like her star has settled near the horizon, but she probably has a nice income.

Roger Simon is out at PJM. He left in 2013. He is the “CEO Emeritus,” and for those of you who don’t know it, “emeritus” is Latin for “not any more.”

Instapundit is still up, but it’s hosted by PJM, which makes you wonder if the traffic is paying the bills. Reynolds (assuming it’s him) seems to be writing more than he used to. A typical 2005 entry looked like this: “Pie a symbol of capitalist oppression? Ann Althouse has more.” Now I am seeing complete sentences and a few paragraphs. Notable fact: PJM has been in existence since 2004, and Reynolds is still not famous. His recognition factor is probably halfway between those of Ed Morrissey and Mark Steyn. I believe it has peaked. Fortunately he has a lucrative position as a law professor.

John Milner continued drag racing and was eventually killed by a drunk driver. Steve married Laurie, never went east to college, and became an insurance agent in Modesto. Terry “the Toad” Fields was killed in action in Vietnam. Curt went east in spite of all his reservations. He never found the girl in the white T-Bird.