The Shorty Awards are a Sham

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.

The very quick back story: Mike has a somewhat curmudgeonly persona  on Twitter. He went through a happy phase, during which he started talking about his fake Bichon Frise, Cap'n Smackers. Somebody else subsequently registered the Twitter username Capnsmackers, and began updating. It was hilarious. So then Mike killed his fake dog.

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.

Comments

[Mike Monteiro]

This write-up touches me Mat. I'd like to point out that although the vote-rigging sham artists at Shorty Awards moved 83 votes, which were cast by people, you can STILL vote for my dear sweet departed dog in the business category. Until they decide to change THOSE votes.

You can kill a dog but you CANNOT kill an idea.

Also, my son cried himself to sleep last night because of this.

[Michael Sippey]

Internet election fraud is a serious problem. Luckily, I have proof of my vote: http://sippey.typepad.com/filtered/2008/12/election-fraud.html

[sig h.]

First Boing Boing and Violet Blue, now this. What is the internet coming to?

[John Keyes]

Why don't we ALL vote for someone else in #business and see what happens?

[Mat Honan]

Hey John - I don't mean to imply that they intentionally rigged it for Guy. But they have effectively done so. And it's weird that there's no consistency.

[torrez]

They admitted in the FAQ that they rigged it for Guy on the about page that was later removed. Super shady folks.

[Mark]

In essence, you're advocating a textualism approach to these awards? Even going so far as to accept the soft plain meaning rule to parallel the logic of originalists like Scalia? Was that more than 140 characters? If only the framers of the Constitution had used tinyurl.

[Derek Powazek]

Changing the rules mid-game is never a good way to play.

[Michael Moncur]

1. I don't see why I should have sympathy for someone who admittedly tried to game the awards with a fake candidate.

2. When will companies learn that if you let people vote for awards online, people will always try to game the system, and then they'll always act irate and think you betrayed them when you try to undo the damage.

3. A dog (@PawLuxury) appears to be beating Guy Kawasaki right now anyway.

[jeff paul scam]

thanks for telling me that CapnSmackers isn't eligible because the contest is restricted to the five "people"with the most votes.