The Null Device

The scandal of the Bloggies, the supposed Academy Awards of the weblog community; it turns out that in the nomination process, corruption and favouritism are rife, with judges voting as a bloc, voting for people they know and like rather than objectively judging weblogs, and predictably the A-List(tm) storming home every time. It appears that the Bloggies selection process is dominated by a small clique of "in" bloggers who use this to increase their and their friends' Whuffie. (via The Fix)

(And I was wondering why there wasn't one right-wing populist jingoblog among the nominations, despite the dominance of such blogs in the public eye (and if you're reading this, you're by definition not the public eye; sorry).)

And then there are the Anti-Bloggies, which are the Razzies to the Bloggies' Oscars (or the Ig Nobels to the Bloggies' Nobels, or something like that), but still tend to focus on Well-Known Blogging Personalities and the memes that pass between them.

(Tangent: one of the downsides of a reputation economy is that it tends to be riddled with cliques, with insiders getting bonus Whuffie just for whom they know, and things soon starting to resemble the sociology of a high school canteen or a goth club, where your status depends more on petty politics than on your individual qualities. Discuss.)

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