Have you heard of this blog Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui before?
Overall Winner of the China Blog Awards
Chinalyst just announced the winners in their annual popularity contest, China Blog Awards, 2008. The overall winner is a blog called: Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui. You can find the blog at mylaowai.com:
The blog was tagged: blog, censorship, china, chinadaily, education, expat, Falling Cow, General Blog, humour, military, news, Tibet, and Wet Pussy. A few of these tags were…er…unusual…so I was intrigued.
1. So how did they win the contest? Answer: use a humorous campaign involving animal cruelty!
I had never heard of this blog before this contest. But apparently their campaign for votes “or else the Panda gets it” seems to have yielded them the requisite 508 votes to win the award. In case you want to win this award next year, you may want to study this blog’s methods:
Confession #1: CN Reviews’ secret plan for world domination in 2009: threaten to turn 508 cats into food
source: chinaSMACK
My secret plan for world domination will be to sincerely flatter Wo Shi Laowai by imitating this promotion. Next year, if you don’t vote for CN Reviews, I’m going to ship 508 cats to Guangdong to be eaten. Then we gonna change our name to Wo Shi Guangdong Ren – Wo Homeboyz Chi Mao. (Actually, I really am Cantonese and I really don’t have any problem with my people eating cats, dogs, civets, crocodiles or anything else they want to eat.)
2. Top Posts on Wo Shi Laowai: Falling Cow and Wet Pussy
To get to know this blog, you may want to check out their top posts:
Holy (Falling) Cow Batman is actually a review of the Nanjing Museum, which I found interesting and humorous. Great voice, great story, great pictures. A great blog post.
The periodic Wet Pussy awards appear to be targeted at foreigners who are anti-Tibetan independence. One winner, David Wu, appears to have won by merely being annoying and non-humorous to the writer.
August Wet Pussy – the Western Media for not standing up to China
April Wet Pussy – New Zealand Australian ex-politician Kim Beasley who accepts that Tibet is part of China.
February Wet Pussy – David Wu, for his annoying (and putatively humorous) style of English instruction in Shanghai.
March Wet Pussy – Ian Morrison, senior copy editor with ChinaDaily (Wo Shi Laowai says: “which in and of itself is reason enough to hang him from the nearest tree by his dangly bits.”)
Here’s the Wet Pussy award image from Wo Shi Laowai:
Confession #3 – CN Reviews was a “wet pussy” virgin – the term “wet pussy” has never graced the edifying pages of CN Reviews, and I confess it was a bit fun and naughty to find an excuse to add such a loaded term that some would say has misogynistic overtones.
3. Democracy vs. a Centrally Planned approach to Blog Recommendations
If you don’t feel the China-related English-language blogosphere is ready for direct diplomacy, perhaps a centrally planned approach is more to your taste. I refer you to the non-democratic Danwei Olympic Model Worker Awards benevolently selected by the Danwei Central Committee, who appears to be led by Jeremy Goldkorn, but who really knows with that opaque organization? Perhaps the Danwei-ologists among our readers know.
Interestingly enough, their Model Worker Awards appear to have created some minor blogospheric protests and petitions that were not reported about anywhere but Danwei….hmmm. In response to the input from the blogosphere, they responded with an Olympic Model Worker updates post which added in James Fallows, Andrew Lih, This is China, CN Reviews, chinaSMACK and others.
Honestly, if I were China Blog Emperor, I wouldn’t have selected Wo Shi Laowai. I would have selected chinaSMACK. But in democracy, I’m only one vote, and 508 other people out there can’t be wrong. Right?
Congratulations to the entire China-related blogosphere for making a fool of ourselves with this awards program!
All material from Wo Shi Laowai, including Panda and Wet Pussy image, courtesy of their site and licensed under CC by-3.0.
-
Fellow bloggers: how do you measure success with your blog? Bloggers and metrics: I’ll show my stats if you show me yours. Some of my most fun meetups in...
-
Enter NOW to win a FREE trip to blog from China! (or read below if you are interested in the back story) During a trip to China in May, Christine Lu of The China...
-
Almost missed it this year, were it not for the nice mention by Duncan Riley of Inquisitr in his Blog Day 2008 list. Blog Day is a meme that seeks to introduce...
Blog statistics for CN Reviews: reviewing the first half of 2008 
The cat on your Confession #1 is already dead. You’ll need to take another hostage.
LOL. I’ll buy the cats “just in time.” Note that I didn’t say that I would personally eat any cat, and in fact I am allergic to cats.
“April Wet Pussy”: Kim Beasley is an Australian (ex)politician). Somewhat pedantically, I insist.
Sorry, my mistake, will correct. Thanks for dropping by!
I like cats. Preferably smeared with sheep fat, to get the taste right.
Stop by for a martini some time.
Ouch. That stings.
I have yet to find a truly acceptable approach to blog rating besides the old-fashioned “Links Page”. Even the China Blog List does little to represent the best of the China blog scene.
That said I think the objective of the awards, as far as I understand them, was accomplished through most of the participants, with this “mylaowai” as an exception. Is it embarrassing that such an awards program was “won” by this site? Of course. Does this then make the entire awards program and China blogosphere foolish? I would hope not.
Also keep in mind that every computer could register a vote once a day for 31 days (something which mylaowai was fully aware), meaning that all he needed was 8 “friends” with access to two computers voting every day. All systems are vulnerable to foul play, and China’s blogosphere is no different.
Not to say that your blog and many of the other highlighted blogs were worthy of getting more attention. But I wonder if this could be done in some other way. Not sure how. I’d love to get your list of top China blogs and top China Travel blogs. Drop me an email or drop it in comments here?
508 people voted? Or ten people voted 50 times? Or one person voted 508 times?
See above comment from Josh. Each IP could vote 1 time per day.
Personally, I find the argument, that MyLaowai’s win was due to cheating, a typical response of sore losers, and conspiratorial theorists. A speculation which is impossible to prove, or disprove. I amend that: An accusation based on speculation.
If you truly believe that multiple voting explains his win, you must also accept that the same could have been done/attempted by all competitors. So why is it only MyLaowai was cheating now, and not others? Because he won, and because you don’t like the fact?
Maybe the more fruitful path to follow here would be to ask why (not how) he won, no? I must disclose here that I voted for him. I would not always choose same words as he does, but I read what is behind those words. If you cannot do that, an understand, it is your problem, not mine, not MyLaowai’s. It could be that you hear not what he says, but what you think he says.
From his winning the prize, I conclude that many people do understand what he is really about. Don’t sneer at democracy, anyone, just because it may not confirm your own prejudices. It’s a cruel word…
@Neddy,
I never said MyLaowai cheated. You are right that everyone could have had their readers vote every day. So it was a level playing field. MyLaowai just worked the system and others did not (as effectively).
I did study how he won and posted about it–using a humorous contest and keep it in front of your readers.
Point well taken about the “why”. I totally agree that what is popular with readers may not be the erudite matter on Danwei (which I often doze off reading as well).
Yes, I was joking about democracy. Yes of course I respect the value of democracy and (more accurately in this case) popular opinion. Still, the contest has such small voter turnout among blog readers that I hardly think it representative of anything other than 1 blog mobilizing its readers more successfully than others to fill the ballot box with votes!
Well, I agree with you, Elliott, and I was not really shooting at you. Just as you felt obliged to respond to my comment, I made my comment, in the first place, because I thought something needed to be said, something beyond the obvious and predictable crap (pardon my French).
Yes, I said it elsewhere: To win, one needs to have a good blog, and a good campaign. But the former comes first, I insist. Whether it fits in with other people’s world-view, or not!
But you are right about the sample size, how representative it is, etc. Myself, I wonder, why could not Chinalyst do any better, and avoid, at least, this contentious “repeat vote” thing?
Just saying… Cheers.
Oh, and on a lighter note: “Success is having a good blog and a superior campaign”. The campaign only begins with the catchy “…or the panda gets it!” The really important bit is to get your readers mobilise their friends to vote, too. And, perhaps, to get your readers’ friends to ask their friends to go, look, and maybe vote as well. That’s what I call electioneering.
Sounds fishy, I know, but it still does not detract from votes’ validity: You vote only if you agree, if you are willing to. No bloody excuses.
Cheers again…
The real heavyweight China blogs ignored this years competition – China Law Blog and China Briefing didn’t bother to enter, and they were first and second last year. The China blogosphere is pretty poor quality as this result shows.
Strange, I recall CLB asking for votes in posts for this year’s event. You sure they didn’t enter?
No, Dan Harris declined to enter and asked to be removed from the contest because apparently things have gotten nasty between CLB partisans and some other rival factions. This is what I mean — this contest doesn’t have critical mass and isn’t set up to provide any useful data on what is popular and good.
Somehow I sense a lot of sour grapes hanging too high. :)
Chairman Mao’s blog didn’t do nearly as well in voting. There was no threat of animal cruelty, but there was an official demand for votes. Guess people don’t like him as much as they claim.
And I do think MyLaowai is an amusing blog. Distrubing, but amusing nonetheless.
China Law Blog did withdraw its name this year before the competition started and I am so glad we did, not because these competitions are pointless, but because one of the best things they do is expose new blogs to the world.
I used to have a neighbor who had a bumper sticker on his car saying, “Looking for your cat? Check under my tires.” I always found that funny, but the cat lovers in our neighborhood would try to demonize him.
My bad, I mistook the calls for votes for the ABA Bblog Award for the Chinalyst China Blog Awards. I remember you guys saying you won’t enter, but then thought you guys entered anyway and were soliciting votes. Turns out it was just for another competition.
Yes, the awards are pointless.
A case in point. My favorite Danwei award for model bloggers was a few years ago when one was awarded to Joseph Bosco, an American who was teaching English in Beijing, and called himself a professor of media and foreign policy. He referred to himself as an expert on the Chinese media when he could not speak or read a word of Chinese, and had no background or education in China studies.
Mr. Bosco is now teaching English at a medical school somewhere in China, where he probably describes himself as a neurosurgeon.
Well done, Danwei.