NO COUNTRY FOR NEW MEN ??

Good Morning Dear Readers, 

I'm here to raise a very deep-rooted, inconspicuous but greatly affecting issue in judging criteria for competitions. I better call it out here itself in case you are wondering what this essay is about ? ... 

I've been with indiblogger for quite a while now. And even though I'm not super-active in the community, I keep track of its day-to-day activities. Regardless, I've always been tracking the competitions very closely - the discussions when the contests begin, the excitement and enthu it develops to compel people to write a piece, the innocent but subtle hints people lay out once they've written and submitted them. The yearning for victory, the almost hateful wait. The rainfall of congratulations that come after the results, and the very occasional discussions posing questions on the validity of judging the posts. It's quite easy to look at this myriad dynamics of the day-to-day and be taken away by its beautiful diversity and call it "this is how life is - you win some, you lose some". But instead of taking things for granted, I want to lay out what I've noticed for quite a while now, a definitive pattern of choosing the winner's list. It is almost invisible to the naked eye, but if you have been watching closely, and almost critically, then there be no doubts remaining. 

For starters, the competitions (for-profit ones) exist because companies need promotion of their products. So yes, right from the very moment they say GO, they are checking their meters on how much reach and engagement has their campaign garnered. That is the final (and the only) metric for their bottomline, regardless of what happens in the campaign. So when they, every time, come up with a brand new competition, coaxing you with attractive prizes and lazily throwing around words like CREATIVITY, ORIGINALITY & RELEVANCY,  they only want you to  sprint like a race-horse, rake your brains hard to come up with a piece of writing which is, lets accept it, beautifully unique and humane. They want you to explode with writing prowess and show it around to everyone. They make you believe you are doing all this for your own cause .... so far so good. 

But then again, how do you measure creativity? You can recognize it, but can you relatively scale it and compare it between posts ? If there was a barometer, it would be the intuition, experience and rich-imagination-endowed mind of a creative judge who should be into such things - writing, reading, blogging - a literary artist. But is that who the judges are for the competitions everytime? No. They are simply marketing personnel, most of the times, and the only metric they recognize and can measure is the marketing metrics - reach, engagement, views, impressions, likes, comments etc. This will 9 out of 10 times, end up in picking a winner who is more VISIBLE, who has lot of people talking about his/her blog. Do you see it now? it almost seems right, but it ain't. The problem with this setup, undeniably, is that those who are new to blogging or who are not active bloggers, with little engagement, but immense talent and creative acumen, will not be even noticed. Of course, you could easily solve this by specifying in the rules and regulations, the truth!  - that apart from those three words, ENGAGEMENT also matters. So why arent they?? because that would be wrong.

ENGAGEMENT SHOULD NEVER MATTER DURING JUDGING. This is a community of creatives. people want to read creative posts, NOT read posts that are popular, or from popular bloggers with a lot of engagement. Those who read popular posts, or posts from popular bloggers, do so because that blogger has put several creative posts before, and people HOPE that the latest post is creative too! You see, everythign comes down to creativity at the very end. I hope the subtle difference is evident to you. Popular blogs got popular because of its rich, creative history of publishing, but popularity is no surety for creative posts EVERY TIME. So when judges simply pick popular blogs, because that is easy to sort out, and that has a higher probability of having the BEST CREATIVE CONTENT, it is just a probability, and not a surety. Many amazing posts from obscure blogs, or new bloggers go unrated, un-nominated, un-appreciated, posts that could pose easy victory over those from the visible ones. This is human nature at its very core, people. The one we need to change, the one which is constantly at change, but at a snail-pace. 

It's easy for them, the companies. They make a hasty exit once their purpose is served. and for every indignant criticism, they anyway have a sweeping, and highly unimaginative cover -  "Contest rules/guidelines are liable to change at the discretion of the company"  &  " Decision of the judges/company will be final" . Since the term creativity is highly abstract, they are lazy to come up with a better alternative to judge. And sometimes, at the end of the day, they'd say "why are you so angry ? all you have to do is write one post and you expect such a big prize, for free. dont you think you are freeloading ? ". No sir, we're not moochers. We are doing you a service of promoting your cause, for which you'd be reaping huge profits. you best not make it sound like you are doing a favour to us, while it is the other way round. 

The best way to get rid of a problem is to solve it, not get used to it and call it gist of life. There would be several who would question my intention for raising this issue. "he must be someone who is frustrated for not winning", "he must be new here", "he must be impatient and easily affected by defeat". Well, none of the above. I've won a Samsung Galaxy S4 (worth 30k at that time), Microsoft explorer touch mouse, Hampers from many FMCGs, and countless vouchers, and thats just from IB. And i'm a veteran here as well. In fact, I'd be the last person to be telling you all this if it was motivated by something, because i'm at a good place here, have decent winnings, and enjoy the community to the core. But I'm still going to say it, because I'm the perfect candidate to do so. Because it is the truth and there is a problem that need be fixed. Because change is always constant, but it is constant because someone is always unconventional enough to raise the issues. There have been many changes that have come in IB judging criteria, but we need to understand the root-cause of the problem - difference between a creative post and a popular posts/blog/blogger. otherwise there would be no country for new men. 

views welcomed.