02.10.2009 08:44 - The Curse of the Internet Competition
If there's something I have come to loathe, it's internet competitions. Against my better judgement, I allowed myself to be entered in yet another competition, sponsored by some second-rate phone company whom I'm not going to name here.
The problem is that internet competitions are, by the very nature of the internet, easy to fix. The above competition especially so. The winner isn't necessarily the best, or judged the best, but either the person with the most friends, or the person saddest enough to sit there all day faking votes.
I previously had to mediate on a music competition that had a similar problem. I spent weeks sorting through all the fake votes, tracking down the IP addresses, fake emails and all the other little tricks. It ruined music for me. How, I thought, could musicians like me be so selfish and greedy? Did they not have any integrity or belief in their music? Clearly not. At least one of the winners didn't deserve it. What is worse is, that such competitions turn friends into enemies, and set them at each other, and the truth is that the winner is going to have to live with the truth that they didn't really, truly, deserve to win, and they climbed over the backs of friends to do it.
I like to sleep at night, and I believe comedy is not a competitive sport.
So to hell with competitions.
