I'm grumpy about The Ultimate Blogger competition. I'll state up front that this is a result of some expectations I set for it early on, and not necessarily a result of some failing on TUB's part.
I thought of it as a writing competition.
It turns out, however, that the best writer does not necessarily win. Alliances have formed behind the scenes, and there are groups of contestants voting together. Contestants don't have an incentive to vote off the worst entry; they'd rather vote off the toughest competition. The only reason the clearly best isn't voted to oblivion outright is the awarding of immunity.
In this light, a good strategy might be to write non-threateningly mediocre (or even bad) entries, avoiding immunity and voting. When the bloggers left are all obviously inferior, write like crazy to get constant immunity. Who'd want to read that?
It might make entertaining television, but I think a different method is needed to find a top candidate.
Challenge 3 irritates me further since it's essentially a photography competition. I know that blogging now incorporates photos, sounds, and videos on top of the more traditional words and links. I guess the Ultimate Blogger folks are covering the bases here. Maybe future challenges will involve audio and video. Maybe there will be a challenge in which contestants search for the best link(s) on some topic. That would round out some of the blogging genres. Still, it bugs me.
It's probably a bias toward what I see as my strength. I post the occasional photo, but I really think of this blog as verbal. If I'd been selected as a contestant, I'd probably be thinking right now that I was at a disadvantage. Asking bloggers to photograph isn't such a stretch, but it still seems to me like asking authors to sculpt.
Maybe I'll slop something off to pretend that I'm still playing at home, but I'm getting a strong "don't embarrass yourself" vibe off this one.
That, and I'm swiftly losing interest in a competition where the best are eliminated first.
5 comments:
The swiftness of the alliance building was a surprise, but I've been surprised by every elimination so far. I was confident even before seeing the results of the first competition that Joel was going off first, but he is still in there!
I can see how the the non-writing focus could be frustrating, but we do see blogging as a lot more than that. I think it is primarily writing, and the challenges will also be primarily writing based.
Do you think that Sonny and Karsh represent the best bloggers?
I think the bloggers who were eliminated, while perhaps not the best, were far from the worst. It's hard to tell who the best is (they're so good), but it's easy to tell the worst are still there.
I share your sentiment, Kyle. While I have not paid quite as close attention as you have, it seems to me that the bloggers who established the boldest personalities have stuck around. I suppose that is why I don't like reality shows on TV. I find the spectacle of human behavior and "social" interaction far less interesting than demonstrating actual skill at a task or activity.
I agree that the alliance-building aspect of this is a little too reminiscent of a certain reality show. It's a shame that the good writers in the bunch are getting picked off, while the generic, long-winded, self-inflated bloggers are still around. This is definitely not a writing competition.
kyle, appreciate your thoughtful criticisms of the compeition. also appreciate your playing along at home.
while i agree with some of your assessments, and i think we may definitely tweak the rules for a second edition, it was never intended just to find the best writer. we always wanted a strategy element, and wanted to make the competition fair for more people who do photoblogs or videoblogs or mp3blogs and the like. we select winners based on what we think is the most entertaining entry that fits the challenge and that we would want to show other people.
i agree that maybe one or two have stuck around because of their personalities i don't think we have lost the best writers. we have some big personalities left but most of those present equally as entertaining content.
i am worried that strategy will take over too much, though.
thanks again.
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