Blog Awards?!

I appreciate those of you who read my thoughts on this blog. But please don't nominate this blog for the "Catholic Blog Awards". As I said last year, I'm not in competition with anyone. I don't blog for ratings or awards, and I don't need an award to know that some readers enjoy reading me and other readers don't.

I know the creators and participants are sincere and don't mean harm, but I believe the blog awards are meaningless. Blogs reflect the personalities of those who write for them, and they're all pretty different; folks have different reasons for reading them. Why must one be better (or "best") than another blog?

I can't let this go without a little social analysis. In my mind, this is only a reflection of the American "award culture" craze, where we feel we have to compete to earn recognition to give some extra value to our work. Is there no value in doing something just for the sake of doing it? And so these awards end up being little more than mere popularity contests. Perhaps it won't be long before there are awards for whomever has the most awards (or like the Awardies). I guess I'm in the minority, but I'll continue to read plenty awardless blogs. In fact, I get rather tired of all of the campaigning some blogs due to win favor.