I was recently nominated for the “Reader Appreciation Award” by Daniel Mullin of the “Unemployed Philosopher’s Blog”. This is quite flattering, especially for a young blog that isn’t about anything in particular and has yet to find its voice. I appreciate the nomination, so I want to be sure to reply, though I do feel a bit bad that I am the second of Daniel’s nominees to be a nerdy sticker about the award.
Accepting the award requires thanking the nominating blogger (thank you Daniel), posting an image on your site (no thanks), answering some questions about yourself (see below), and passing the nomination on to other bloggers (see below). Another blogger, Elkement, took an interesting look into how the image and the questions have mutated over time (both fascinating and neither of which I had even thought about). Elkement also touched on the main concern with chain messages: exponential growth. If every blogger nominated five other unique bloggers, we would exceed the number of blogs in WordPress (about 58 million) in about twelve iterations (3 months at an iteration a week). Even if each blogger nominated just two other bloggers, the population would be exceeded in 26 iterations (about a half year). The effect on bandwidth wouldn’t be that bad, but what’s the value of an award if everyone’s a winner within a half year?
Number of chain mail iterations required to exceed the population of WordPress. The first bar is much bigger than shown – it should go up to about 58 million.
Still, there’s no good reason not to be a good sport and play along with the sort-of-silly, sort-of-fun, get-to-know-you questions (and also to add a bit of subterfuge by adding another question mutation):
- Your favorite color? Your favorite animal? Your favorite non-alcoholic drink? Your favorite pattern? Your favorite number? Your favorite day of the week? Your favorite flower? I have never really grokked the idea of “favorites”. How does one choose just one option to prefer above all others? It never made sense. Imagine a Monday full of seven red, checkered cats, all sipping ginger ale while sniffing a sunflower… come to think of it, that’s a pretty neat picture.
- Facebook or Twitter? Neither. Facebook made me think my friends were boring and trite. I preferred to live in a fantasy world where I wasn’t privy to every miniscule, trivial thought of theirs.
- Do you prefer getting or giving presents? Giving. I usually find receiving presents to be a burden. It’s more stuff that I really don’t want and that I have to figure out where to put.
- What is your passion? It may involve friends, dinner, and booze. Perhaps travel and exploration. Or arguments and ideas.
As for paying it forward, the buck stops here in the public interest of stopping the exponentially expanding vicious cycle of nominations. I will mention two bloggers, but the mention comes with no need to link back, post images, answer questions, or to re-nominate. I would have nominated tearmatt but Daniel already nominated him. My mention of appreciation, then goes to:
Yes, I’m aware that it’s not the most meaningful award in the world, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Thanks for being a good sport. By the way, I did specify that the blog nominations were in no particular order, so don’t read too much into being the second of my nominees. :)
I definitely appreciate the thought (thanks again). I have no concern at all with your order – just flattered you even listed this blog. What I meant to say is that of your nominees, not one, but two of us couldn’t leave it at “thanks”, but instead had to have all sorts of opinions about it.
Ah, sorry I misread you. Actually, looking at it again, you’re nominated second to last, but don’t read into that either. Yes, you and elkement definitely took advantage of the inherent opportunity for irony and ‘nerdy’ analysis. But it’s all in good fun. Cheers.