Award-Free Blog

Recognition is great. I want to put that out there first of all. To have people show their appreciation for something that you did feels fantastic.

Equally amazing is sense of community. People coming together and helping each other or boosting confidence and such is wonderful. I have absolutely nothing against either of these two things.

But please don’t nominate me for the blog awards on WordPress. I will try to explain my reasons, for those who are interested, below. If you’re not interested, I honestly don’t blame you. Just skip to the bottom bit.

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In case you haven’t yet seen one of these ‘awards,’ they have rules. Awards typically require you fulfill certain criteria before being nominated, rather than setting conditions upon receipt of the award. I don’t watch the Oscars, but I’m fairly certain that when Frances McDormand got up on stage to a standing ovation she wasn’t given a set of rules she must abide to or risk having it taken away.

Which brings me onto my second issue with the awards on WordPress. What the rules actually are. One of them is thank whoever nominated you. Yeah, okay, I can live with that. The second is answer some questions or give a few facts about yourself. Again, no problem there. But what I am against is the rule that states you must nominate other blogs to receive the award. Which means that you’re not nominating somebody because you think they deserve it, but because you have to.

And now comes the issue of choosing who to nominate. I don’t follow many blogs. Thirty-nine apparently, including the Daily Post. So let’s call it thirty-eight. Of those, only fifteen or so actually post at least weekly. I make genuine effort to read probably ten of them. Five are award-free. Of those remaining five, one of them nominated me in the first place. Of the four that are left, I would rather nominate somebody who hasn’t received the award before, or hasn’t received any award for some time. Which means I am now nominating somebody not because I think they deserve it, but because I feel it’s the right thing to do. That’s not recognition; that is pity.

(I’m not suggesting that anybody gives these awards out of pity, only that I would be if I did give somebody one of these awards)

Finally, the whole ‘post it on your blog and nominate x number of people’ is too much like old chain mail, or the posts on social media that claimed a ghost would rape your cat if you didn’t re-post it within 19 seconds. Not only have I never had a pet cat, I always felt that ghosts (if they were real, which they are not) had better things to do than monitor what people were doing online and sexually assaulting felines as some kind of punishment.

That final point isn’t really relevant. I just wanted to make it anyway.

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TL/DR
I find the ‘awards’ to be both tedious and meaningless. I don’t feel like they truly offer recognition for one’s work. I have no problem with people doing them, I just will not accept any myself.

If you would like to offer me some actual recognition, however, there a other ways it can be done. And I will be far more appreciative and accepting.

• Comment on my post(s) that you liked it/them (or didn’t – I welcome all feedback)
• Message me, say hi, tell me how brilliant I am (or not – I welcome all feedback)
• Buy me a coffee (it’s a capitalist world – it sucks, but money matters)
• Buy my book (if you don’t like my poetry, it could be useful for lighting fires, or if you run out of toilet paper)

And even if you do none of these things, just understand that every like on my posts and every follow for my site means something to me. Knowing that I have made some kind of positive impression on people, or maybe just wasted five minutes of their day, gives me far more joy than a chain mail award.

 

Oh, and if you don’t like this post and re-blog it in the next fifty-four seconds, a banshee will break into your house tonight and steal all your socks.