I began seeing posts about the 2006 blog award brouhaha only a week to ten days ago, yet I have already reached my limit.  For the same reasons I hate the Oscars and Emmys and Country Music Awards and all that other crap, I hate the blog awards.  This particular incarnation is especially loathsome.

Let’s see: People vote on their favorites.  They can vote once each day—for as many days as they like.  Contestants get to blather ad nauseam about why you should vote for them instead of the other blogs.  Dare I go on?  No, I think not.

The point is this: Write.  Instead of trying to win, prove via the medium that you deserve to win.  Then it doesn’t matter if you win or not; your audience is intact and they haven’t been chased off with prattling blather—self-promoting balderdash, that is, capable of doing nothing more than promoting both mental and gastrointestinal emesis.

Honestly, does anyone deserve to win if they spend weeks telling you why they should win?  Hardly.

And the point is this: When you can vote repeatedly, what use is the award mechanism serving?

Perhaps I’m cynical when it comes to these things.  Perhaps I have a low threshold of tolerance when it comes to self-aggrandizing twaddle spewed repeatedly as though it means something, or is interesting, or caters to the reason people read your blog anyway.  It doesn’t, it’s not, and it won’t.

Yawn.  Can we move on now?

Lest anyone beat me to the punch, don’t bother with pedestrian suggestions that jealousy or resentment play a part in my views on this.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I blog for the fun of it, and more importantly, I blog for the writing exercise.  It’s just that I tire so quickly of the “mindless promotion of moi” that takes place in response to seeing one’s name on an arbitrary list for a popularity contest rigged from the beginning to favor those with larger and more dedicated automatons willing to spend time each day registering another empty vote.

Besides, I really am quite sick of the whole “Vote for me! Vote for me!” nonsense taking place.  How common.