On The 2009 South African Blog Awards, Joy And Bitterness

If you got here from facebook, my apologies as I believe advertising your blog in your facebook status is the equivalent of going to your friend’s house wearing a sandwich board that reads “Eat At Joe’s” but I’m still going to do it just this once.

Last night I Wrote This For You won Best Photography Blog at the 2009 national blog awards. The photography bit is all due to Jon, who deserves this and much, much more for his incredible talent. Go tell him how awesome he is, because he is.

Now follows the inane braying of farm yard animals.
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I’m bitter that we didn’t win Best Original Writing or Best Personal Blog. I feel like we should’ve won. And of course, everyone else who’s blog was or wasn’t nominated, feels the same way about theirs.

That’s the problem with award shows and I’ve been to a few. They engender bitterness because you’re asking the asking the question “Who’s The Best?” and of course, indirectly, “Who Isn’t?” which are sometimes terrible questions to ask about the things people spend time and effort on.

There’s been a fair amount of bitterness floating about even before last night, I’ve seen posts entitled “The SA Blog Awards Are Meaningless” and read that “I Wrote This For You doesn’t belong in 'X' category.” amongst other things.

Which I take as a compliment because calling I Wrote This For You a blog is a bit of a stretch at times. It’s not a traditional blog in any sense of the word and that was always my goal when I started it.

I wanted to and still want to push the medium as far as I can. I feel that a lot of what’s done on the internet now-a-days is the equivalent of using the first sheets of paper to come off the Gutenberg Printing Press to advertise books written on stone.

The way we communicate is shaped by the medium we use to communicate. You can’t have a discussion about philosophy using smoke signals, or twitter for that matter. I want to explore these boundaries, limits and what new things they allow us to create.

I’ve always had a special relationship with the internet. I was probably around 12 or 13 (1992/3) when my brother introduced me to Beltel and FROGG, the first chat Bulletin Board Services (BBS) available in South Africa, before the internet as we know it today came into existence.

My brother’s technological journey suffered a severe setback when he was arrested by Interpol at age 16 for hacking into Telkom (South Africa’s only phone company/monopoly) and running a zero-day courier service (amongst other things) for the benefit of the local internet users, before things like “torrents” existed.

He always understood the technological aspect of it while I was always more interested in the social and underlying emotional meaning of these interactions.

I loved the fact that I could talk to complete strangers about anything and everything and I recognised, at some point, that the internet had a soul. One giant, beautiful, communal soul that we are all aspects of. Often, when I’m writing to “You” this is the you I’m writing to.

I also think this is the main reason I’m an at least reasonably good writer. I’ve been writing to complete strangers in real time for close to 18 years. I know the nuances that need to be conveyed using the written (typed) word in order to make someone understand exactly what I mean, without the usual benefits of real life interaction, such as pupil dilation, tone of voice, posture and so on.

Also bear in mind that this was before Instant Messengers, like MSN and Skype and gChat. Those are people you already know and so, you’re allowed a lot more leeway in how people judge the things you say. As I’ve said before, strangers are friends you’ve yet to meet. I’m probably one of the last 8 people on earth who still use Internet Relay Chat (IRC), specifically for this purpose.

Back then it was easier because everyone on the internet had several common denominators, they were smart, technological minded curious people. I love curious people. Then, of course, the Eternal September began.

Which should be viewed as a good thing as before that, everyone who recognized what a powerful force the internet could be wanted it to become mainstream.

But it also created new sub-species on the internet. Before that, if you were on the internet, you were a geek. A nerd. Normally some kind of social outcast and there was a certain sense of solidarity to be found wherever you went online. Today, of course, the chances that you’re actually a geek on the internet are about the same as you being a hippie, yuppie, jock, marketer, artist, musician and so on.

And so the soul of the internet has changed and become more complex, more textured but I still love that soul just as much as I always have. If we, as in Earth, ever become one global being, one uniform creature, the internet will be both our synapses and our soul. I find that thought incredibly beautiful.

Because I hold such tragically romantic views of the internet, I’ve never allowed my day job (I work in the communications/advertising/design/creative industries) to cross over into it because it feels like I’d be selling out the friends I love.

I don’t view the internet as a “thing”. I view it as the best parts of all us. It’s the single greatest accomplishment in regards to communication since the invention of language itself. We honestly and truly have no fucking clue how lucky we are.

So I cringe whenever I hear people use words like “social media” and “web 2.0” because those are the words you use when you want to sell something to someone over the internet. And the reality is, curious 14 year olds have more of an understanding of the culture of the internet than these people usually, because they didn’t learn what they know about the internet through articles they found on link farms or power point presentations.

Which is why I find it at least slightly sad that in the prize pack we were given for winning last night, was a copy of a book entitled “eMarketing.”





























I find that on the same level as winning an art competition and getting a book entitled “How To Incorporate Products Into Your Paintings.”

I’m with Seth Godin on this one.

So that’s what I think of the internet as it stands, and in some weird way, what I saw and thought about last night at the 2009 South African Blog Awards.

By saying all these things and getting them off my chest, I hope to be a less bitter person. One thing that does give me solace is this:

Last night, a photographer from Japan won an award in South Africa because an audience of thousands voted for him, that came from across the world, everywhere from Jakarta to Southern California.

That’s the point of the internet. And there’s more than enough poetry and beauty in that to make me smile.

Congratulations to all the winners, the nominees and everyone out there who helps make the internet a beautiful place. You, especially.