About these here awards contests -- Part Deux.

In the earlier comments section, Canadian Blog Awards co-organizer Saskboy writes:

I'm not going to try to force or even convince you CC to leave your blog in the awards. I'm just going to state for the record that I kept the CBAs going by assembling as diverse a team as I could in a month (and am still accepting offers to help), because I think the CBAs have the opportunity to be more than just an orgy of blog navel gazing and freeping.

And yet, SB, I think you know as well as I do that an orgy of freeping is precisely what it will be, given that Canada's blogging retards have never seen an online poll they didn't get endless satisfaction from fucking up totally. Even when it has nothing to do with blogger popularity, the aforementioned retards just can't help but trash someone else's time and effort. It's not as if they get anything out of it -- it's just online vandalism, plain and simple. Wrecking other peoples' work is their idea of fun. This is how these people operate, and if you think it's not going to happen again, you're deluded.

More to the point (and you can read into this whatever you wish), I don't see why anyone who has any self-respect would want to participate in a contest in which the "Best Blog" winner is, for the most part, pre-determined. If you want to make the awards meaningful, why not just give first place to Kate McMillan's "Small Dead Animals", then let the rest of the blogosphere at least make a decent contest out of seeing who comes second? And, as someone else has already noted, some people find it just plain demeaning to beg for votes on their blog. I've never done that, and I have no intention of starting now.

Finally, SB writes:

If you don't care if your readers think you're worthy of being listed as one of the best in whatever area you write about, why try to guilt other people into quitting too and ruining my effort?

I've never suggested that others not participate. If they want to, good for them and best of luck. I'm just explaining the rationale behind my decision. Sure, it would be nice to get that kind of recognition. But as long as the CBAs are based on "Vote early and vote often," I don't consider the results particularly meaningful, and they're even less meaningful given the inevitable lack of suspense as to who's going to end up at the top when it's all over.

That's just my $0.02. Everyone else is an adult, and they're welcome to make their own decisions.