If you're a Twitter user, you've almost certainly noticed something about the Shorty Awards in the last few days. Like all awards, they're dubious at best. In this case probably even moreso, as the "awards" or at least the nominations for them, pretty much come down to who has the most followers or best bots. But it at least holds out the promise of a democratic contest, noting that "The five people with the most nominations in each category will go on to the final voting round, held January 5th to 14th."
Nonetheless, some people do take them seriously. One of those people, apparently, is former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, who seemed at least, to be trying to encourage people to vote for him. Enter Cap'n Smackers. After making a brief run for the humor category himself, Mike Monteiro asked a few friends to start promoting his fake dead dog to the top of the #business rankings.
Anyway. By mid-day yesterday CapnSmackers was shooting up the rankings, not just in business, but overall. By late in the day, he actually overtook Kawasaki, and was leading in business. And this evidently made the Shorty Awards people unhappy, or uncomfortable, or maybe it led them to realize the utter inanity of their sham awards. Likely it wasn't the latter.
And so they changed people's votes.
They changed 83 votes cast by Twitter users, from #business to #funnybusiness. In other words, they rigged the election so Kawasaki can win.
Now, I know somebody out there is going to argue that CapnSmackers isn't eligible because the contest is restricted to the five "people"with the most votes, and Capn Smackers is a dog. To which I say: When was the last time you saw a dog quote Heidegger? Behind that fuzzy avatar, there is a person. But even if there was not, if you open up a vote to the people, you have to accept the will of the people, even if you disagree with that. Just ask Mr. Splashypants.
You may be saying to yourself that this is a lot to get worked up over. That it's just a joke. That I should let it go. But that's beside the point, it doesn't matter that it was just a joke. What matters is that they asked for and received our participation and opinion, are actively using that participation and opinion to promote their awards, and yet rigged the process so that our votes are not counted. Nobody cast a ballot for CapnSmackers in #funnybusiness; I certainly did not, nor would I have. The shorties changed votes. They attrbuted an untrue statement to at least 83 users who believed in their process. And that's really, really uncool.
