Mock the Vote
Posted in Neutral on Feb 21st, 2008
I’m a new member of Motorcycle Bloggers International (MBI), “…an informal association of people who ride motorcyles or scooters and write about it,” and one of the requirements of membership is that I point you toward their annual Rider’s Choice Awards and encourage you to vote in them. I’ll do it because I like what MBI stands for and what they’re trying to do, but I do it under duress because I think the award topics themselves are pretty lame. Among the inspiring voting categories are:
- Best manufacturer’s website
- Thumbs down
- Thumbs up
- What were they thinking?
- Wish we’d thought of that
See? Lame. And don’t get me started about the nominating process…
I don’t have a solution or suggestions for how to improve it — I’m just exercising my god-given right to bitch about it. I just wish the categories were more interesting and focused more on people than on manufacturers or products — or manufacturer or product websites, fer fux sake.
If the powers that be behind MBI really do want to be taken seriously, then I think these awards need to step it up a bit. As it is now, I think they make us look like exactly what they say they don’t want to be taken as: “a fringe group of people with nothing to say.”
But what the hell, I’ve always been a grumpy bastard, so what do I know. Go vote.
Agree. I am a member of the MBI too and was less than thrilled with some of the categories.
The awards are for bloggers and by bloggers. So why aren’t the awards more centered around the blogs instead of “The Best New Environmentally-Friendly Concept Scooter” and other such crap?! I’ll tell you why. If you read through the discussion boards, you’ll see that the powers that be are way too afraid about offending anyone so they made the categories pretty wimpy. They were afriad to use the category “Best New Blog” because they knew it would probably be an English-written blog and didn’t want to offend any non-English bloggers. WTF!!! Let the voters decide! (I guess that I’m getting to be a grumpy old bastard too.)
You’re right though. The awards need to step it up or they’ll be as insignificant as a fart in the wind.
Well, if they didn’t want to offend non-English bloggers, then they screwed the pooch right out of the gate by writing the nomination and voting forms ONLY IN ENGLISH.
I’m not a member of MBI (yet). I’ve been thinking of joining but only because many of the blogs I read and enjoy are members. I was at their website twice, ready to register and each and each time, by the time I got done reading their rules, I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth. Not sure when or if I’ll ever join. It’s not what I thought it was.