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Bruce Toews ([personal profile] dogriver) wrote2009-02-17 08:51 am
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LJ Idol: Some Thoughts

What is the LJ Idol competition about? Or more accurately, what
should it all be about?

Some take it very, very seriously. I think I may have been guilty of
that last year, when I was unceremoneously dumped from the competition
under questionable circumstances. At the time, I took things very
personally, and I was very angry. I had to decide, at that point, if I
wanted to continue and join the contest again for the 08-09 season.

I decided to do so. But I also decided to totally rethink my purpose for
being in it, what I expected to happen, what I thought people's
motivations should be, and what I thought people's motivations
would be. Most importantly, I tried preplanning my reactions.

In an ideal universe, the LJ Idol thing would be about writing ability
and people's reception of that writing ability. You write something that
people want to read, you get votes for it. You write something that
people don't want to read, you don't get the votes. I've always tried to
at least play the game that way. For a lot of people, though, the
game has turned into a loyalty contest: "If you don't vote for me, you
are not loyal to me". It is this view that makes me question whether I
want to participate in future incarnations of the contest. LJ Idol is
fun. It should be fun. But it's simply not something worth making or
breaking friendships over. I told [livejournal.com profile] kittytech at the beginning
of last season that, even though she's my girlfriend, if she didn't like
what I wrote, I didn't expect her to vote for me. And I meant it. This
notion that votes equal loyalty and no votes equal disloyalty is the
stuff that elementary school brawls are made of. I wanted to be judged
based on my writing, or rather, on people's perception of my writing. I
do not feel that happened last year, but I do feel that it did this
year. I was voted out of the contest fair and square, and it had nothing
whatsoever to do with loyalty or disloyalty, it had everything to do
with the fact that I wrote a piece not worthy of a lot of votes.

In a competition such as this, you have to write not for yourself, but
for your audience. It's not about what you would want to read, but what
your audience wants to read. As much as I do not particularly enjoy
putting my blindness front and center in my writing, others enjoy
reading what I write on the subject. As much as I'd like to devote my
writing to CocaCola, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, sleep,
memories of my dad, and my passionate dislike of mushrooms, these
subjects don't interest the general public nearly as much as the
blindess thing does, so in a contest where public opinion is everything,
I write accordingly: not just about blindness, of course, but a little
more than I might normally do.

So there are my thoughts, for whatever they may or may not be worth.
I'll probably be back next year, because the contest is great and I like
the way [livejournal.com profile] clauderainsrm runs things. But if I start losing
friends over this, or if I start equating votes with loyalty, then I'm
out, because it's just not worth that kind of a price.

[identity profile] oberonia.livejournal.com 2009-02-17 02:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I was thinking about this the other day. The only true way to make it about the writing is to have everyone make a completely anonymous journal...no friends. Each journal would simply be a number and the entries would be linked by number. That way, readers wouldn't know the author and there wouldn't be any campaigning.

Then again, it would be a huge pain in the butt for whoever runs things, I think anyways.

It was the only thing I could come up with to make it completely 100% about the writing and take the element of friends lists and popularity out of it. *shrug* Then again, I'm pretty tired and a nap under my desk sounds like a good idea too.

[identity profile] baxaphobia.livejournal.com 2009-02-17 03:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I think I know where this entry came from. I've gained much more than I've lost through the contest. Emotions can run high when you put yourself out there. Some do it more than others. Each person approaches the game differently just as people approach life differently. It is a deeply personal decision as to how much you want to reveal. I lost a long time friend because I chose to express my opinion. So be it. It could have been over something else other than [livejournal.com profile] therealljidol. Being cast off because of one comment and one incident means to me it was never a friendship in the first place. I love the contest for what it is to me...a game and a way to meet people and exercise my writing ability. I've been told I can be positive about most anything. And I choose to believe that a positive came out of the whole mess this weekend. It showed that a friend truly was not one.

[identity profile] arinoch.livejournal.com 2009-02-17 04:47 pm (UTC)(link)
LJ idol is, in my blatantly honest opinion, little more than a glorified popularity contest. More often than not, he with the largest friends list wins. Not that I think you or [livejournal.com profile] kittytech are guilty of doing such things, but to a lot of people, I've noticed, that's pretty much what it comes down to. And if they don't get the votes they're expecting, it's automatically because their friends list doesn't care enough to vote for them. It couldn't possibly be that not that many people thought the entry in question was deserving of a vote.

I'll admit, I don't participate in LJ Idol as a spectator. Sure, I read the entries that interest me. I've even been known to comment on one or two. But that's it. Because while in theory the way it's set up is absolutely awesome, in practice, you pretty much have a decent idea who's gonna go far in the competition. Usually by the crying people do for a week after they were eliminated.

[identity profile] clauderainsrm.livejournal.com 2009-02-17 06:30 pm (UTC)(link)
We agree on some of it, we disagree on other parts. But that's part of the fun because there are as many ways to approach things as there are players!

The line that made me chuckle was "But if I start losing
friends over this"

I always lose a few a season! I'm just *that* charming!!!*G*

[identity profile] lyssas-song.livejournal.com 2009-02-17 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I totally agree with you. The first week, I voted for those who were on my friends' list. After that though, I decided that voting for someone just because that person was my friend was not a smart thing to do, especially if I did not like the particular post for that week. It definitely shouldn't be a popularity contest.

[identity profile] imafarmgirl.livejournal.com 2009-02-17 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting. I haven't heard of anyone losing friendships over LJ Idol specifically. I think that would be a little drastic.

[identity profile] sweetstephanie.livejournal.com 2009-02-18 03:46 am (UTC)(link)
Well, and these are just my thoughts for what they're worth, but, here's what I noticed about the hole idol thing, and, quite frankly, this is the exact reason that I chose not to participate this year. I've noticed that the people that do well aren't necessarily the people with the largest friends lists, but rather, the people who have the time to not just participate in Idol but actually live LJ Idol. Please, make no mistake when I say that if that's how some of you choose to handle things, I respect that that's your choice. But, for me personally, I do not have the time to get overly involved in the green room and all of the little side dramas and chats that go along with it, and, I'd suspect that this is how a lot of the alliances and loyalties are formed. I, unlike many of you, unfortunately, cannot access LJ from my job because the evil work has blocked the LJ website, therefore, my LJ time is restricted to when I'm at home in the evenings. When I participated back in 2007, I was doing good just to get my entries posted, let alone even begin to look at the greenroom, and, as a result, I really don't think I made a connection with anyone.