The 2006 Bloggies Are Out (and They're Stupid)

So, the winners of the Sixth
Annual Weblog Awards (the Bloggies) were announced this
afternoon at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin.

Alas, I did not win anything. However, this is not a surprise, as I was not nominated for anything.

I'm not going to cut and paste the whole Awards list, so I'll just note a couple of things:

* PostSecret came away a big, big winner, taking Best American Weblog, Best Topical Weblog, Best Community Weblog, Best New Weblog AND Weblog of the Year.

That's a lot of Bests. Congratulations to Frank Warren.

* I see that our own blogger John chipped in a prize (copies of Agent to the Stars and Old Man's War) for Best Writing of a Weblog, which was won by fashion snark blog Go Fug Yourself. See now, this is the very definition of enlightened self-interest.

In my opinion, the Bloggies are infinitely less irritating than, say, The Webbys, but they still seem kind of... gratuitous.

Would I turn one down in the (extremely, vanishingly) unlikely event that I won one? Of course not.

It just seems to me, that for all the talk about blogging as showcasing the power of the long tail, bloggers still seem inordinately focused with notions of the A-list (and how they can break into it).

It's also part of the reason why I get tired easily of hearing all the Bubble 2.0 cyber-blog-utopianism of how blogging and social media is going to revolutionize society, give a voice to the little guy, transform everyone into empowered, self-actualized, do-it-yourself go-getters -- people, 1996 wasn't that long ago, just take your copy of Being Digital and substitute "blog" for "Web" -- it's kind of like popping the collar of your polo shirt: It may be new to you, but there is sufficient historical evidence out there for you that it's still stupid.

Anyway, just a little lack-of-coffee crankiness on a pseudo-summer day.

Thanks -- Joe

[Updated: I'm still cranky, so I updated with a deliberately inflammatory headline.]