No. We (well, some of us) keep having popularity contests because that’s just what very social primates do. They fight for as much status as they can get. That means going for social leverage. And that means building up a sort of directed graph of social climbing and occupying one of the more-privileged nodes. People know instinctively who is near and who is far from the commanding positions in that graph. They know instinctively who they have to side up with to become more popular themselves, and which associations are social suicide.
Check out this page from my improv wiki: http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status
It’s not about popularity contests, but notice that “popular kids” tend to act almost exclusively in the high-status ways.
I find some of the current crop of popularity contest entertainment very satisfying. So You Think You Can Dance and Project Runway are the ones my wife and I watch, but I understand the appeal of the whole genre (even if I find some of the particular instances distasteful for one reason or another). At their best, popularity contests are celebrations of outstanding achievement and skill and represent a move toward transparency and populism and audience participation in the entertainment sphere.
Sure, you can criticize American Idol because of its limits in terms of what types of performers can succeed (”Bob Dylan wouldn’t make if far” goes the refrain), but the show encourages a critical eye to vocal ability, highlights a decent range of pop music (current and past), and by the top 10 virtually everyone is a better singer than 90% of what’s on the radio. To the extent that Idol displaces some of the marketing-driven paradigm in pop music, I see it as a positive development.
(And obviously, we keep making them because they are financially successful.)
The author touches a few points regarding The Grammy, Oscar, Golden Globe, etc. kind of awards which are only loosely connected to Internet popularity contests like Youtube’s 5 star and “Favorites” rating systems.
Larry Sanger, I follow a Youtube channel owned by a user called thunderf00t. He makes educational videos contra to what creationists have to offer. His channel and other channels like his were recently hit by pieces of software called Votebots. They upmod or downmod videos their operators agree or disagree with.
On the left bar of thunderf00t’s channel page he is saying:
UPDATE 28th May 2009
The votebots are back with a vengeance.
Hitting FFreeThinker with 12000 one star votes!
Other than that, an opponent filed false DMCAs in the past, but that’s not really related to popularity contests.
No. We (well, some of us) keep having popularity contests because that’s just what very social primates do. They fight for as much status as they can get. That means going for social leverage. And that means building up a sort of directed graph of social climbing and occupying one of the more-privileged nodes. People know instinctively who is near and who is far from the commanding positions in that graph. They know instinctively who they have to side up with to become more popular themselves, and which associations are social suicide.
Check out this page from my improv wiki:
http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status
It’s not about popularity contests, but notice that “popular kids” tend to act almost exclusively in the high-status ways.
This American Life has looked into popularity and meanness a bit:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1177
Finally, check out Paul Graham’s essay “Why Nerds Are Unpopular”:
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Comment by Ben Kovitz — May 29, 2009 @ 11:42 am
Because the people who say “No” are not the target market
More seriously, “like” and “need/willing to play” are very different concepts.
Comment by Seth Finkelstein — May 29, 2009 @ 1:40 pm
Yes.
I find some of the current crop of popularity contest entertainment very satisfying. So You Think You Can Dance and Project Runway are the ones my wife and I watch, but I understand the appeal of the whole genre (even if I find some of the particular instances distasteful for one reason or another). At their best, popularity contests are celebrations of outstanding achievement and skill and represent a move toward transparency and populism and audience participation in the entertainment sphere.
Sure, you can criticize American Idol because of its limits in terms of what types of performers can succeed (”Bob Dylan wouldn’t make if far” goes the refrain), but the show encourages a critical eye to vocal ability, highlights a decent range of pop music (current and past), and by the top 10 virtually everyone is a better singer than 90% of what’s on the radio. To the extent that Idol displaces some of the marketing-driven paradigm in pop music, I see it as a positive development.
(And obviously, we keep making them because they are financially successful.)
Comment by Sage Ross — May 29, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Social commentary webcomic about Popularity Contests:
http://www.viruscomix.com/page482.html
The author touches a few points regarding The Grammy, Oscar, Golden Globe, etc. kind of awards which are only loosely connected to Internet popularity contests like Youtube’s 5 star and “Favorites” rating systems.
Larry Sanger, I follow a Youtube channel owned by a user called thunderf00t. He makes educational videos contra to what creationists have to offer. His channel and other channels like his were recently hit by pieces of software called Votebots. They upmod or downmod videos their operators agree or disagree with.
On the left bar of thunderf00t’s channel page he is saying:
Other than that, an opponent filed false DMCAs in the past, but that’s not really related to popularity contests.
Comment by Anonymous — May 31, 2009 @ 12:16 pm