Is it a popularity contest?

Because you know I like to keep you up to date with what's going on in my lomography blog. This entry is a bit of a response to some cheating going on in the competitions over there and some people, as a result have started to say that some competitions are purely a popularity thing. Clearly I do not agree.

I am getting a bit peed off with people who keep claiming that a lot of the rumbles (especially the blog related ones) are just popularity contests and below is my argument as to why this is not the case at all.

Lots of people on lomography have been saying (well whining actually!) that the competitions where popularity decides the winner, particularly with regards to a lot of the blog entry competitions are fixed as to who has more friends. In light of all this, and the situation regarding the cheating in the “analogue for a day rumble” having made me quite angry, I thought I would get my thoughts down in a nice coherent blog entry. I am quite partial to a good rant. . . .

The way I see it is that the “friends” I have on the lomo community are not people I have worked with, gone to uni with, met on nights out in my hometown (with the exception of my fiance – fletchinski84). They are people whose photos I enjoy looking at and who, in turn like looking at mine. I like reading their blogs and talking to them and sharing hints and tips. If one of my “friends” on here enters a competition, either with a photo or a blog entry, I might like it and therefore click the button, I might not and therefore I wont click the button because they are my friend. Equally if someone who I am not “friends” with posts a photo or writes a blog entry for a competition and I like it, I will click “like”.
For example, in the case of Zoezo, her blog entry which won the analogue photography competition was fab. She did not win it because she has a lot of friends. I liked that blog entry because it was good and there are others who liked the entry who are not Zoe’s friend because it is good. Equally Zoe has written other blog entries that I don’t like, and as a result I have not haphazardly clicked the like button because we are friends. I have a problem with people who write blog entries and win prizes because all of there friends (who have only signed up to lomo to like their entries) just like their competition entry piece, even if it is a load of s**t. If this was me, I wouldn’t feel like a winner at all (even if I did manage to get LSI to send me a free camera!)