Thursday 12 April 2012

This Community is Not a Competition

(I guess this post could be subtitled: What's Working For Me: Having Really Strong Opinions About Things That Probably Don't Matter)

A few days ago, I got an email from Circle of Moms [who? Exactly.] telling me that I had been nominated for their Top 25 Adoption Blogs for 2012. And I groaned and thought oh no. 

I was nominated last year, although I didn't really get involved because of my deep seated fear of rejection, and the whole thing was a disaster. People get very wound up about this sort of thing and it's not fun to be part of and it's not fun to watch.  Social media is already far, far too quantitative. Everything is about the numbers. It's already too easy to judge ourselves by how many people follow us, how many people 'like' what we say on facebook, how many times your  your witty analysis of the latest Kardashian divorce is retweeted.  It always feels like a popularity contest. 

And this 'Top 25' stuff isn't even a veiled or implicity popularity contest - it's an actual popularity contest. What kind of  a sick idea is that? Surely the whole point of blogging is connection.  How is that going to make us feel more connected to each other? It's not, that's what.  But then, it's not really about us, is it? It's about money

Here's the idea - they nominate you, or you nominate yourself, and then you ask everyone you know to vote for you. You can vote every day. 

Gaaaaaah. Any competition that says you can vote every day is totally and utterly bogus. Competitions like this are not about promoting understanding about adoption, or of connecting mothers with each other, or even about curating a list of useful adoption writing. Vote-every-day competitions are about one thing only: increasing traffic to the host website.  Which makes sense, I guess: they are not in the business of educating people, or of increasing awareness about the complexities surrounding adoption. They are in the business of making money. They want advertising. To get advertising, they need traffic. Specifically, they want our traffic, traffic from the adoption community as we vote for our favourites and try to pretend that we don't care how many people are voting for us.  They want our traffic.  Next month, I guess it will be traffic generated by competition for the Top 25 Moms Who Live On A Farm, or Top 25 Moms Who Drive A Prius, but this month it's us and it annoys me I am going to use my own little space to say that I Do Not Like It. 


I don't know anything about the people involved in this website, and I have nothing against them personally. But I don't like what they are trying to do - they are trying to use the community that WE have created, together with our our pathetic need for constant validation
to drive up their own advertising revenues.  That just seems unbearably cynical to me. 


I guess the payoff is supposed to be that, if you make the top 25 list, you get the benefit of a link to you from their website.  Aaaaaaand... who cares? It's not BlogHer, people, it's not CNN. Personally, I had never heard of Circle of Moms until they ran the Top 25 thing last year and then I pretty much forgot about them until I got an email about it again this year. 

I do not think that popularity contests promote a sense of community. I resent that a group of people who are not part of this community would crash in here and ask us to annoy each other by spending four weeks shilling for votes, then assess our self worth by how many we get. What's in it for us? Nothing, that's what. 

So, I'm boycotting the whole thing. I won't be voting for you, and I don't want you to vote for me. 

That was all I was going to say. 

And then, this happened, because I obviously needed another reason to be annoyed about the whole thing. In short, the Circle of Moms team decided that Cassi, one of the first mothers on the list, wasn't positive enough about adoption, and they unceremoniously removed her from the competition. This is, of course, pretty eye-watering. Seriously, people? Seriously? Cassi has some difficult stuff to say about adoption coercion, but I think that if any of us had been through what she had been through, we would have some difficult stuff to say about that too. On one level, I'm shocked. 

But on another level, I'm not shocked at all. This decision is entirely consistent with the fact that they are trying to make money from advertising revenue.  Having a blog like Cassi's front and centre is probably not a very revenue-friendly thing. 

Some people have concluded that the best way to react to this is to vote as often as possible for the other people who are telling the more complex story of adoption - particularly other first mothers and adopted adults


With respect, I disagree. Making a point of visiting frequently in order to vote for the complicated stories pretty much just gives them exactly what they want.What Circle of Moms needs and wants is traffic. They want our clicks.  I say - don't give it to them.  Spiking their traffic is hardly going to punish them for censorship. If you don't like what they're doing, don't link to them. (There are no links to them in this post, obviously). Don't visit their site.  Send the organisers an email, if you want to, and then move on. Whether because of the cynicism or the censorship, I don't want to be part of this whole thing, and I recommend that you aren't, either. 

Okay, off my soapbox. 

And now, because all that was very negative, please enjoy this picture of my son meeting a chicken. 



32 comments:

  1. So, I'm boycotting the whole thing. I won't be voting for you, and I don't want you to vote for me. Me too! WORD. And thanks for writing this so I didn't have to.

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  2. You? Are awesome. I'm pulling my blog off the list if they refuse to reinstate Cassi, but even if they do reinstate her, I'm not advertising my "place" on their list on my site. And I'm not voting. And I hope no one visits the site solely to vote for me.

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  3. High five! On all of it. Community > competition.

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  4. AMEN sister! It is so easy to get sucked in with all the stats, to start craving the validation, to basically revert to the worst of the teen years. Thank you for spelling it out so clearly... and for the completely adorable photo.

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  5. Someone asked on FB about this whole thing and my response was pretty simple, "I don't like cool cat popularity contests." The whole thing stinks. Thanks for speaking up for so many of us!

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  6. I am boycotting it this year too! I also groaned when they sent me the "you have been nominated" e-mail LOL. Glad I was not alone.

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  7. So incredibly well said....I have to admit the whole voting/popularity contest thing made me so uncomfortable. I really appreciate how you are calling them out and at the same time honoring that blogs are about connecting with people & honoring experiences...not popularity and ultimately NOT about their traffic and adverstising budget. SOOO well said. Thank you

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  8. Wow, thanks for sharing this. I hate the whole "chasing traffic" aspect of blogging. And not just because I don't have much traffic myself. ;)

    I do want to vote for you, but I'll just do it right here!

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  9. lol. This post cracked me up. I'm just going to take a wild guess and say that I doubt you'll have to worry about getting nominated next year. I bet you'll lose sleep over it too ;)

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  10. This is awesome. All you popular girls drop the hell out. Then I am going to swoop in, nominate myself and WIN.

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  11. I remember last year the winner, or one of the top ones anyway, was a family who used CCI (Celebrate Children International) to adopt, one of the very worst, unethical agencies out there. So shows you how much ethics matter in this contest.

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  12. Yay for you for standing up and saying something! I saw the "Circle of Moms" thing last year but I didn't vote then and I won't vote now. Why do we always need to have "The best" of anything...and if it is about traffic and advertising revenue then shame on them even more.

    Adoption, its community and our children are not for voting about who is the most popular...it is about love, support, advice, kinship and kindness through the good, bad and ugly!

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  13. Frankly the first I'd ever heard of the whole thing was when they turfed the blogger you mentioned... and when I saw it was for not being "positive" enough I think you could have seen my eye-roll from space.

    (And never mind just the vote-every-day nonsense, you can nominate *yourself*? Wha?)

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  14. Awesome! I never vote anyway--but I do love your blog!

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  15. Wow. Kudos to you for steering clear of the racket. I whole-heartedly agree with everything you have said here. I visit your site regularly and appreciate your honest writing with ZERO strings attached. Keep it up, girl.

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  16. I hate the competition aspect and hate that it's so one-sided, but I like having the list of all of the blogs that are nominated. My husband and I are researching adoption and we feel that blogs by adoptive parents/ adoptees/ birth moms are great ways to connect to people getting real about adoption (though, of course, this isn't always the case). The Circle of Moms nominations last were was a good starting point for us to start finding blogs. From there we found more through links on those blogs.

    I guess I'm saying that I wish it was done differently, but I'm thankful for the resource. It's how I found you, and your blog is amazing.

    Also, if anyone knows of blogs about adopting from/ being adopted from foster care, we'd love the links!

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  17. Claudia, this is so the right thing. I tried to get off the "Circle of Mom's" email list when I received some tips about when it is okay to SPANK MY KID. Thank you, but no thank you, Circle of Whoever. But still, they send those emails. Community is far greater than popularity and competition. Cassi, your voice is important, quite probably to a much wider audience than you realize. Never stop speaking your mind.

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  18. contest/schmontests who cares!?!? ...lets talk about what is really important here: How freakin' cute is Blue with that chicken!?!?!

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  19. Amen! And yes: Blue + Chicken = Adorable.

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  20. Atta girl. I vote for you - in my heart.

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  21. How do I stand and applaud in the comment section? Is there a way that I can do that? Thank you so much for standing up for the community. Anything that make some bloggers feel less than and simply makes money for someone else is completely inappropriate.

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  22. Just the name "Circle of Moms" gives me the willies- so exclusionary. Also, because I have an active visual imagination, I immediately superimpose the faces of snob girls from high school as who the Circle of Moms really are, and I imagine them trying to mastermind this whole thing about who the Cool Kids are and who aren't. But in reality? I lay money that Circle of Moms is actually a circle of mostly men. Yup.

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  23. Yikes. This sounds so gross. Good for you for taking a stand (and also, you rock for posting that sweet chicken picture!).

    I've increasingly felt like such an outsider with regards to 'communities' of blogs. I think it's nice to help folks find each other, and get support from other folks with similar struggles. Yet I have always, personally, found the awards-things and the like sort of clique-y and not "my thing" (but again, if it makes some people happy, yay). But maybe this is coming from the fat little girl inside me that always got picked last for the kickball team in gym class.

    I also never really understood when everyday people start sticking a bunch of ads on their blogs and getting affiliated with big corporate entities that want you to shill buttery spreads or whatnot in the midst of otherwise completely unrelating blogging-material. But maybe that's just the advertising-industry professional in me who's sat through too many embarrassing meetings where everyone's trying to "create buzz in the mom blogosphere" or whatever the hell. Maybe you really do make money with those ads and stuff? Maybe I'm just an idiot.

    Anyway, love ya -- as always.

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    1. Ehhhh... I apologize for this comment, and on second thought wish I hadn't left it. I do not know enough about this topic to be saying anything about it, and really do not want to offend anyone with a different experience than me. Again, it's something I know nothing about.

      This is why I don't comment on blogs very much...

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    2. I liked your comment. I don't like blogs with advertisements much at all. they load slowly, they want to add pop ups, they blink. I'll read a magazine if I want to see advertisements.

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  24. I hate those nominate yourself ones. And I love your very level-headed way of looking at these things (comes from all that overthinking you say you do)

    XXX

    have you tried exercise at night for the insomnia

    PS Blue is ADORABLE - I wish you lived closer so our kids could play together!

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  25. Yes! You are so good at articulating things that get on my nerves. Boycott is on!

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  26. Loved this - this is why I drop by to read what you write. It IS about the community & the cool-cat competition can stuff it :) Boycott is on ... admiration & appreciation for your contribution to this community is being sent in place of the public kudos!

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  27. Thank you. Feel the exact same way. I appreciate that you saved me the time to write it.

    Tova

    PS. Delurking since it's about damn time I did.

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Over to you!