A Personal Blog
by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
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So on the entire “first page” of this blog, which goes back to a Feb 28 post (almost a month ago), the only comment made to any post was one of mine to your robot cars thing some time ago. Nothing else. And you didn’t even bother engaging in conversation on that one. As far as I can see, you have to go back more than a month to get even more than a couple of comments (mine) and find a post were numerous people engaged – and even in THAT one, you made but a cursory appearance, then left to ignore it…
Which begs the question: What do you want to DO with a blog, and why do you even HAVE one? Seriously. You don’t encourage interaction. You don’t engage in conversations for the most part. Mostly it’s like it’s just an archive of things that cross your mind and which you’d just as soon forget, because they clearly don’t actually interest you.
Why should anyone bother to view the video in this post and then comment on it, if you just don’t care one whit about it once you post it? I realize you are a busy guy, as many of us are, but why should anyone ELSE waste any time at all engaging YOU, when you clearly just don’t care about our time in return?
I post stuff I think may be of interest; if you don’t find it of interest, don’t read it.
It’s true I both post and comment much less than I did before my heart surgery. I don’t have quite the late-night energy I used to, and something had to go. Serious blogging seemed more expendable than academic writing, teaching, running Jotwell, or doing the We Robot Conference.
Readership has slumped as a result: where I used to have thousands, I now have mere several hundreds. And commenting has also declined. C’est la vie. But at least it is vie.
I find a LOT of it of interest. That’s exactly my point. When someone takes the time to ALSO find it of interest and post a reply, or engage you in conversation about it, 99 times out of 100, you just ignore it. So OTHER people waste their time on it.
As I asked, why have a blog? You have every right to prioritize things any way you want. But it is rather rude to solicit interest in things, then ignore those who engage. Other people are busy too. If they take time from THEIR lives to participate in yours, you should APPRECIATE it – especially since you have such an obscure little corner of the web here that it takes some effort and desire to actually find it.
Again, I don’t care what you do with your life, but there’s only so much interest that I have in being ignored when I try to participate in what you CHOOSE to make pubic “discourse.” Maybe you don’t care, but I’m not sure you’ll have much of anything at all here, other than a personal archive, if you alienate your interlocutors.
Just so we’re clear, I’m trying to be constructive with this. None of this should be at all construed as an insult or attack. And I don’t begrudge you your own priorities.