wil wheaton sweeps the bloggies

January 30, 2002 8:00 PM

wil wheaton sweeps the bloggies
posted by stevengarrity (47 comments total)

And congrats to here, as well! We done good.
posted by j.edwards at 8:09 PM on January 30, 2002

Yeah...we beat out /.

If that counts for anything.
posted by plemeljr at 8:11 PM on January 30, 2002

Recount!
posted by crunchland at 8:16 PM on January 30, 2002

Congrats on the awards, Mr. Haughey.. Don't spend your $40.04 in one place... Assuming the checks clear.
posted by Hildago at 8:17 PM on January 30, 2002

Firda got over 50% of the bloggies correct (15/28) with her blogdex theory. So remember kids - it really is a "popularity contest", not a "best of" contest.
posted by Neale at 8:17 PM on January 30, 2002

Kudos, Matt!
posted by scottymac at 8:25 PM on January 30, 2002

Well, Wil gets to talk about being on 'The Weakest Link' and accidentally insulting celebrities. It makes for good blogging.
posted by Mark at 8:26 PM on January 30, 2002

Yay!!! I'm popular in Spanish!
posted by papalotl at 8:26 PM on January 30, 2002

Give Will his due. He's had enough in his life being tagged Wesley Crusher most of his young life. How many Star Trek conventions could you stand?

Besides, his blog is pretty entertaining and how many actors do you know who can set up their own website?
posted by Brilliantcrank at 8:34 PM on January 30, 2002

How many Star Trek conventions could you stand?

And thus was born a new reality TV game show. Geek boys in Klingon drag! Fawning fan girls with autograph fever. And. You. Can't. Leave.

Take that, Fear Factor!
posted by bradlands at 8:36 PM on January 30, 2002

The irony of Librarian.net losing to a Harry Potter blog is not lost on me.
posted by jessamyn at 8:40 PM on January 30, 2002

I'm still stunned that one of my sites was even nominated let alone one of the winners.
posted by bkdelong at 8:44 PM on January 30, 2002

aw, jessamyn. :( I voted for you. (no offense, bkdelong.)

and yes, I voted for wil wheaton in every category he was nominated for. it's all my fault!

bwwwaaaaahhhhaaaaahhhhaaaaaa!
posted by epersonae at 8:47 PM on January 30, 2002

And thus was born a new reality TV game show. Geek boys in Klingon drag! Fawning fan girls with autograph fever. And. You. Can't. Leave.

Already been done and Wil was on as a guest last week.
posted by eyeballkid at 8:47 PM on January 30, 2002

If you had told me a year ago that Wil Wheaton was suddenly the hero of the geek community, I would have laughed and laughed and laughed.

But congrats to all the winners!

Neale: in Blogland, popular = good. It's edutainment!
posted by solistrato at 8:49 PM on January 30, 2002

Strangely enough, tonight's TNN Next Generation rerun is Wheaton-centric, with Asley Judd as love interest. Yes, a perfect night here in Geektown.
posted by kittyloop at 9:04 PM on January 30, 2002

Eh.
posted by Su at 9:10 PM on January 30, 2002

Its vote based, you can really make the same criticism for any awards show.

Every awards is vote based. However, some limit the number of voters, the best ones to those who can critically judge what is best and what is not. You have to admire the SXSW awards for at least trying to show what is the best according to the judges, and having a seperate poll for what is the most popular.

Would it have been best if the least known blogs regardless of their merit won?

It would have been best if the best blog won, regardless of it's popularity. There are few bloggers who can fight the star power of Wil Wheaton.

Lots of blogs get popular because they are good.

And lots of good blogs never get popular at all, are never recognised, because popular blogs get all the votes in awards like this.

I agree that sometimes the best blogs are also the most popular blogs (eg. metafilter). But this is not always the case, and when it comes down to a popular vote, I would say the best is rarely recognised.
posted by Neale at 9:24 PM on January 30, 2002

I missed the whole will wheaton thing. whats the big deal?
posted by mcsweetie at 9:42 PM on January 30, 2002

what with my pushing of 'august is wil wheaton month', i think mr. weaton owes me some slices of olive loaf.

pay up you jackanape!
posted by jcterminal at 9:44 PM on January 30, 2002

I'm glad to see that Wil has finally got the user-comment option back up and running, but I'm not sure I'd wanna take any bets on how long it'll last. I'm afear'd it'll be an early casualty now that more people are discovering the site and his growing work schedule will (no doubt) demand more of his time. I wish him continued good fortune.
posted by RavinDave at 9:50 PM on January 30, 2002

If Wil Wheaton was just some random, unknown guy living in a basement, I doubt that the site would have taken off as it did. In fact, I bet on it. Then again, random guy wouldn't be posting about his appearance on Weakest Link, and whatever.

I don't mean to take anything away from Wil Wheaton, he seems like an ok guy (he plays GTA3, and listens to Tool), but the whole "celebrity" mob around him makes me nauseous.
posted by mkn at 10:00 PM on January 30, 2002

Yeah...we beat out /.

If that counts for anything.

Given the other nominees, I don't think it does.

As for Will Whaeaton, MKN's right. Bloggers really are high schoolers. Suck-fest meets puke-fest.
posted by donkeyschlong at 10:09 PM on January 30, 2002

Yeah, it sorta feels like Wil Wheaton's fans hijacked our little underground movement, doesn't it?

Let me clarify: I'm not saying they did. I'm just saying it feels like they did.

Then again, I don't know. At first I thought, well, maybe all these Wheaton fans who don't read any blogs but his wound up flooding the Bloggies with their votes. But I don't think Wil even mentioned the Bloggies on his site until the final day of voting. So I don't think he brought in many non-blog-readers (i.e. people who read only his blog and no other blogs) into the voting process. Rather, I think a lot of people who read lots of other blogs and would have voted in the Bloggies anyway wound up voting for him.

I'm not really sure what that paragraph means.

At least he has a decent site, so it's not like an enormously awful travesty or anything.

But I've had a crush on the guy since I was about 12, so I'm probably not being objective here anyway.

(n.b.: I didn't vote.)
posted by Tin Man at 10:26 PM on January 30, 2002

... the whole "celebrity" mob around him makes me nauseous.

I dunno ... that can cut both ways. I've seen celebrities with an online presence warmly embraced and others roundly hooted into silence. It all boils down to how they handle themselves -- and I think you gotta agree, Wil gets points for extra graciousness after years of of electronic ass-whacking and (mostly good-natured) abuse.

I recall many years back when Billy Idol popped up on UseNet with a hefty dose of attitude and was promptly devoured by people not-so-star-struck as he had assumed. He lasted about a week. I also recall a similar situation with Courtney Love (anyone else remember those lower-case, coke-induced, 12-page rants with no discernible punctuation?) She was savaged initially, but -- incredibly -- gave as good as she got and won quite a bit of respect in the process (as a UseNet poster -- not necessarily as a singer). She took the time to grok the rules of net.culture and even people who didn't like anything else about her appreciated that.
posted by RavinDave at 10:34 PM on January 30, 2002

Did Fark really win best weblog about politics? That's a joke right? Early April fools, I get it.
posted by Nothing at 10:37 PM on January 30, 2002

Wil Wheaton is the patron saint of Fark, in a lefthanded kind of way. Wil wins. Fark wins.

My stavro-sense is tingling...
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:25 AM on January 31, 2002

*sigh*

I had hoped that someone else would have said it already, but I suppose it's up to me now.

wil wheaton sweeps the bloggies

The boy?!
posted by rocketpup at 12:42 AM on January 31, 2002

It's hard to believe we're typecast as "if you combined Noam Chomsky and Emily Post at age 22 and set them in front of a computer after their 89th consecutive dateless Saturday" when we're aweing in front of Wil Wheaton.
posted by Homeskillet Freshy Fresh at 1:26 AM on January 31, 2002

There are few bloggers who can fight the star power of Wil Wheaton.

There are few bloggers who can fight the star power of a wet moth, apparently.
posted by donkeyschlong at 1:35 AM on January 31, 2002

Surely it can only be A Good Thing, if a blog allows 'thousands of hich school kids' to interact with the 'Star Power' that is Wil Wheaton.....

Not that I'm a huge fan it must be said ...
posted by MintSauce at 5:22 AM on January 31, 2002

Hah. Congrats to all, especially The Best Kept secret Blog!.

And I paid for the award!! :)
posted by arnab at 5:34 AM on January 31, 2002

Great. Wil Wheaton won. Can this joke be over now, please? Or do we all have to keep voting for Wil Wheaton for everything for the rest of our lives?

Nonsense like this shows just how truly meaningless the Bloggies are, if you ask me.
posted by briank at 6:29 AM on January 31, 2002

Wow. Does this mean that I have to be a former teen actor turned blogger to even get considered? My life is just not as exciting as Wil's so I guess I'll have to start making stuff up. My new tag line for my blog:

"Made by a guy who as a child was in an episode of "Lost In Space" (Season 2, Episode 7)"....

:::::eating bowl of sour grapes:::::::
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:09 AM on January 31, 2002

Nonsense like this shows just how truly meaningless the Bloggies are, if you ask me.

Friend, read that last sentence over again. Yes, you wrote that. Don't you feel a tad silly?

They're blogs! This isn't the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize here, they're popularity awards someone ran off their site for blogs! Come on! Get some perspective here!

Sorry to be the cold bucket of water here, but we're not talking about the National Book Awards here, people. Step back for a second, take a deep breath, and realize that this awards ceremony was about as meaningful as any other online poll, except you don't have Howard Stern listeners trying to stuff the ballot with Hank the Angry Drunken Dead Dwarf. Please, you must chill, or surely this will affect your health. And if you die because of a stress-induced embolism, you will have died thinking about blogs, which will condemn your soul to haunt Blogdex for all of eternity or when the fad dies.
posted by solistrato at 8:30 AM on January 31, 2002

You are right, sjc. God, I miss Hank!
posted by briank at 8:43 AM on January 31, 2002

Jeez, guys, lay off Wil whydontcha. Sure he gets a boost from his (somewhat minor--sorry Wil) celebrity, but people wouldn't keep coming back if he just posted promo photos of himself and asked for acting jobs. He must be doing something worthwhile to keep people interested. Isn't that what any other blogger is doing? Besides, there's lots of blogs no one would ever have seen if it hadn't been for a little notoriety.
posted by owen at 8:48 AM on January 31, 2002

What's really amazing about this is that there was a MetaFilter thread about his site and how sucky it was about a year ago. He came to Metafilter and read the responses. I've got to say, that from his site he seems like a good guy. And what he's done with that website is amazing. I wish I had taken a screen shot of the old one.

Good Goin Wil!
posted by xammerboy at 8:58 AM on January 31, 2002

I'm wondering if the people who are bagging on Wil have even read his blog. It's insightful, but not sappy. It's interesting, but not bizarre. One of the reasons I read it and enjoy it is the fact that he's about my age, a geek, and going through a lot of the things I go through. The fact that he was in Star Trek is interesting, but I forget that once I start reading the blog, unless he mentions something Star Trek. And that's an added bonus - he has funny stories about the show.
posted by fnirt at 9:03 AM on January 31, 2002

the best kept secret blog isn't a blog according to nikolai's definition. it's a journal.
posted by centrs at 10:08 AM on January 31, 2002

Congrats to all the winners. True these awards are just a bit of fun fluff, but fun is what it is suppose to be. Don't take all of this too seriously.

Wil has done a great job with his site, I remember when he first put it up, it was BAD! He came, he listened, he learned. Good job , Mr. Wheaton.
posted by bjgeiger at 10:15 AM on January 31, 2002

i wonder how many of those awards noah grey would have won had he not withdrawn.

i miss noah grey.
posted by pikachulolita at 11:57 AM on January 31, 2002

Weblogging. It's a lot like high school.

A couple of worthy winners, but mostly the usual race to the lowest common denominator popularity contest. At least the Anti Bloggies are just around the corner.

[begin sarcastic tearful sniffling] If only we could all live in a world where people are judged by their work, not by their Q factor! [end sarcastic tearful sniffling]
posted by mark13 at 12:12 PM on January 31, 2002

Oops. Should have said Q score.

Q factor is a mathematics/electronics thingy.

Math was never my strong suit.
posted by mark13 at 12:25 PM on January 31, 2002

Sorry to be the cold bucket of water here, but we're not talking about the National Book Awards here, people.

I was one of those people that was originally taking the Bloggies way too seriously, but this is a good point. You have to wonder, if they were called "The Nikolai Nolan Blog Awards," would they have as much cache? Call them the Bloggies and they sound so Official Award-y. It's not like a Central Blogging Academy got together and created the rules or the categories; it was all done by one guy.


i wonder how many of those awards noah grey would have won had he not withdrawn.

It sort of bothered me that Noah requested Greymatter be withdrawn from the voting. I can understand him wanting to withdraw his personal website, but it seems a little much to deny Greymatter users the opportunity of voting for a product they use; Greymatter isn't really his anymore -- it's ours.


the best kept secret blog isn't a blog according to nikolai's definition. it's a journal.

Then again, why should it matter whether it's a weblog or an online journal/diary? How do you define "best weblog" anyway? Is it the quality of the links? The quality of the writing? The best comments? What? It's so subjective. And unless the criteria is the quality of the links, it shouldn't really matter.
posted by Tin Man at 1:33 PM on January 31, 2002

If you had told me a year ago that Wil Wheaton was suddenly the hero of the geek community

Geek community? What geek community? Methinks you've been reading too much Katz.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:17 PM on January 31, 2002

tin man, i agree. i just spent a lot of time though, trying to adhere to his rules while nominating and voting on the nominations. he said he had to narrow the definition to save himself time. i learned my lesson though. i have remembered why i rarely participate in things like the bloggies now.
posted by centrs at 2:52 PM on January 31, 2002