sorenbowie:Webbys, Please Quit Doing This Awful Thing You DoI...

sorenbowie:

Webbys, Please Quit Doing This Awful Thing You Do

I assume this must be true of most award but nowhere is it as egregious as for awards celebrating accomplishments on the Internet. At least with Oscars or Emmys or even MVP, the playing field is fairly equal and the expectations for excellence are the same across the board; professional athletes aren’t competing with a kid in high school who’s still trying to decide if he wants to play basketball or be a biologist. But the Internet is, literally, everyone with Internet access. Even worse, the categories are so nebulous that they can include pretty much everyone on the Internet. Point in case, when the category is Best Writing for Social, and the nominees are four legitimate candidates in their respective social arenas… and then also the entire show of Last Week Tonight, that poisons the whole process.

Four of those nominees above are relegated to one social platform and they are competing against the general idea of one of HBOs most popular shows. How is this a fair fight?
I know why it’s necessary, the Webbys need to court big names to
the award ceremony for the sake of clout to keep the Webbys prestigious,
but now the only way for the other four to win is by campaigning hard enough to overcome the direct or peripheral awareness that John Oliver exists; a man who could casually mention the Webby over the closing credits of his show and win by a landslide. Even if one of the others somehow succeeds, it’s only because the giant didn’t care enough to try and that doesn’t feel particularly earned.

For most people, this won’t matter. This is a silly gripe about an award that barely matters to 98% of the world (I made that percentage up but, ballpark, it feels right). But for people who have built their entire careers on the Internet, who work there every day trying to make something other people will like, the Webbys are a huge deal. Winning a Webby can bring dollars to your business, encourage other great writers to work for you, and make your stupid site better in countless other intangible ways because it is inarguably the most important award for entertainment on the web. When that spring is essentially gifted to any celebrity who might be willing to come to the award show, it cheapens the significance of being nominated at all.

Anyway, Cracked is nominated for Social writing on Facebook. This is a wonderful and very deserved nomination for Anita Serwaki, Chris Pauls, Katie Goldin, Randall Maynard, Dan Duddy and everyone else who writes our posts every single day. They are wonderful and deserve this award.

https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2017/social/features/best-writing