As a brief aside before I get all excited about my lovely birthday weekend again (which I’ve no doubt is boring the world to death), I should probably return to the issue of the Guardian ‘Best British Weblog’ award – which is currently being defended over at Onlineblog.com. I feel a bit sorry for Neil, actually, because clearly the intent behind the event is completely altruistic – but as anyone who has participated in things even vaguely like this in the UK knows, the only thing you can guarantee about throwing something large and full of implication before webloggers is that you’re going to get a fair amount of stick for it. Someone somewhere isn’t going to agree with it, or think it misses the point, or is prepared to fight about it. It’s just a shame that this time the person throwing a strop has to be me… Increasingly though I’m wondering if there is enough groundswell of support to make a sufficiently large statement by not entering. By itself a weblog is a tiny tiny thing, mostly incapable of generating any kind of change. But weblogs are jumping off points for memes, and memes in blogspace can be all powerful. But if the meme doesn’t travel… Perhaps a better idea would be to enter the competition on the understanding that there is the tiniest possibility that it might give you a platform to explain why you think the whole thing was a bad idea in the first place in the most public and outspoken way… Although that could just be an attempt at rationalisation…
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