Wonky Webbys

Thank you to all those people who didn’t vote for this blog in the recent Webby Awards; the 13th annual interweb back-slapping event saw the usual suspects walk off with the springy paperweights.

While there are some who deserve it, like The Guardian, most of the entries should actually have been put into a single category called “Smug gits who have too much time on their hands and spend it on entering awards”.

The problem I have is one of credibility – how can one take the Webby Awards seriously as the pinnacle of internet achievement when their own website is so utterly rubbish?

As of today all the category links are broken and the dropdown “Jump to category” menu is full of blanks; there’s an uncaptioned image of a bloke who looks a bit like the lovechild of David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, but with no ‘alt’ tag we have no idea what relevance he has to the awards, if any at all. To search the site you have to click a link, no in-menu search form – how quaintly 20th century.

Seriously, they’re a joke, and I hope someone, somewhere will get their ass well and truly kicked. Then we can only hope that the Webby organisers will take a long hard look at how they operate and start becoming the awards that really do celebrate excellence and diversity, rather than just being an excuse for some incestuous (and at present meaningless) self-congratulation.