I love it when people embrace technology. I love it when people try out things they may not totally understand, and may even find really intimidating. It’s like when your grandfather sends you a text, or your uncle replies to you on Twitter, and throws in a hashtag for good measure. It’s refreshing.
However, what really annoys me, is when people make a big stink about “getting” something, and then don’t even bother to get it right.
I was really intrigued by the concept of the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards. When I received the invitation to their event, I was even further intrigued, as I’m sure I have personally slagged off Cosmopolitan a number of times, but never mind.
Our fabulous Lori Smith went to the event, representing both BitchBuzz and her own blog, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and reported back on BitchBuzz Style that:
“[Cosmopolitan] know their readers love blogs and that they have their must-read sites which they read daily, but Cosmo want to find more for them. They want to find blogs their readers will love, so are asking bloggers to spread the word and get their readers to nominate their favourites.”
The cynic in me is naturally suspicious of any magazine that “embraces” blogging, as in my experience there are a lot of old-school fashion journalists who don’t really like bloggers all that much. You know, with our cheap SLRs and our Twitter and our Internet Talk. However, after reading such positive reviews of the Cosmo Bloggers Event and many “Vote for me in the Cosmo Blog Awards!!!1!!” Tweets in BitchBuzz’s feed, I thought maybe Cosmo struck gold with this.
Instead of snubbing the bloggers, they were making friends. And giving them free things, which we love.*
(Sure they’re going down the “Be our intern! Uh, we mean FASHION BLOGGER!” route with their Catwalk Queen/OSOYOU sponsored New Fashion Blogger category, but again...they’re trying.)
I took my sweet time before going on to the site to nominate some of my favourite reads, as I still think Cosmopolitan is one of the worst magazines for women out there, in addition to the fact that I tend to shy away from online popularity contests.
I finally went on to cosmopolitan.co.uk to nominate Mademoiselle Robot in the “Fashion & Style” section – and then on to nominate BitchBuzz under the “Lifestyle” category – when Cosmo’s website threw an error in my face that said:
“There was a problem with your submission.
Sorry, but this form is limited to one submission per user.”
Now, considering this was my first time nominating anything in this awards ceremony, I was a little confused. “User”? I don’t have a Cosmo log-in, and to nominate a blog you don’t have to give any sort of information about yourself whatsoever.
The quick explanation is that Cosmo's webs geniuses don't want to put off people making nominations by asking them to register.
So, instead, Cosmo thought they’d be super clever and make it easy to nominate a blog without having to give any info, and still make sure you can't nominate the same person a thousand times, by tracing and identify each "user" by their IP Address.
Clever, right?
Wrong. Wrong and very irritating.
What this means is that you get one nomination per household or per office. Not per registered user. So if you have flatmate who want to nominate you, too? Tough shit. And if you and your coworker both want to nominate someone – you can’t.
Furthermore, and maybe I'm just being cynical and missing something which wouldn't be surprising, but as they're seemingly getting loads of traffic and buzz around the nomination process (courtesy of "vote for me" links on Facebook and Twitter)....what does the "winner" of each category get? A badge for their sidebar? A free subscription to Cosmo? Internet honor and glory for a couple days?
It might just be a silly web error to some, but the combination of my perception of Cosmo and the details and the tech fails surrounding the awards leads me to think that some folks should just lay off the whole OMG BLOGGING trend and stick to what they’re good at. Like making women feel fat and undervalued. I mean...helping us find out who the hottest boyfriend is and what swimsuit we should be wearing for our body shape. Oh! And also finding out what men think the hottest body shape is.
*Bloggers shouldn't be blamed for liking free things. We barely make any money.