Those of you who were around 12 months ago may remember the fun and games that happened during the Shorty Awards. Those of you who weren’t around or don’t remember, I’ll cover that below.
The Shorty’s are only a few weeks away from opening up for nominations, and I’d like to get a jump on that quacks this year so lets start spreading the message already. If you’re interested in helping out Science and Skepticism defeat the quacks, willingly ignorant and blatantly deceptive then please create a Twitter account (if you don’t have one already), get at least a few tweets out there and watch this space ready for the nominations and voting to commence.
What we need you to do:
There’s a few things you need to keep in mind so I’d like to spell them out nice and early if I could.
- Your twitter account MUST be an active one. Any accounts with zero tweets will not be counted, and if too many such accounts are seen voting for someone, that person could end up being disqualified so do NOT create dummy or bot accounts.
- Your nomination/vote MUST have a reason included. Any nominations or votes without a reason will not be counted.
- Create a twitter account and post a few tweets on it. If you’re not sure how to use twitter then following Lucas Randall’s #TAMOz list may be a good place to start.
- Get involved, reply to people, have a conversation.
- From the first few weeks of January through to February, nominate @DrRachie by tweeting “I nominate @DrRachie for a Shorty Award in #health because (add reason here)”
- During that same period, nominate me by tweeting “I nominate @BastardSheep for a Shorty Award in #nopants because (add reason here)”
- And of course, spread the word on twitter, facebook, blogs, and any other method available to you (even real life!).
You can keep an eye on how things are going here.
The history:
Last year we weren’t actually sure what the Shorty’s were, just a lot of people nominating and doing strange tweets. Then, someone pointed out that the top 3 people in the #health category were some of the most vile, openly deceptive alternative medicine and quackery pushers on the internet. A grassroots campaign was started to get some real science and health votes in there, and @DrRachie became the nomination of choice.
Blog posts were made, twitter requests came out and suddenly Dr Rachie found herself in the #1 position. All this without once asking or putting herself forward, this was done entirely by other twitter users. A few days later though, the quacks had taken over again and were a LONG way ahead.
A quick glance showed that the majority of votes were by brand new accounts that didn’t have any tweets to their names. Bots. A clear violation of the rules. Mike Adams, the person furthest in the lead was disqualified and decided to have a MASSIVE sook that couldn’t possibly make himself look more pathetic.
The bots then joined on to fellow quack Joseph Mercola’s account, but they were not as aggressive. He got his lead to over double Dr Rachie, only for the people behind the Shorty’s to run an audit and remove all unqualifying votes. This took him from double what Dr Rachie had, to 1/4 of what she had. He too had a sook and called her names as any “mature” and “friendly” service provider would.
In the end, @DrRachie won out, only commenting on the whole thing for the first time after all votes were closed. She handled everything with style and grace, completely the opposite way to the snakeoil salesmen that are Mercola and Adams did.
Due to their cheating and sooking, I’d like us to have a head start this year. Lets give @DrRachie a bigger and better win then last year. You never know, they may actually spell her name correctly on the award this time!
Bastard Sheep 
The Mercolaquack’s first name is Joseph, or “Joe” to his friend. Just so no innocent David Mercola somewhere in the world gets tarred with the same brush.
I would also say
I nominate @HealthDanger for the Shorty Award in #health because nobody raps like him.
I know it’s Joseph, so I have absolutely no idea why I typed David. Thanks for pointing that out, it’s now fixed.
I was thinking we should get behind Elyse Anders for her efforts in getting the antivax PSA of the screens in USA.
Yes! Let’s get Elyse a Shorty by grassroots voting!
^– I like this. I’m not sure there’s as broad a support base immediately to hand, but I like it.
It’s no slight on Dr Rachie to choose another skeptical icon to get behind as well. You can vote for more than one person.
But only one person per category isn’t it?
You might be right. Checking right now.
Hey, it’s been nearly a year. My memory’s not what is once…. whut… lost my train of thought there
•To vote, send a tweet like this: I nominate @TwitterUser for a Shorty Award in #category because… (add reason here)
•You can also tweet shorter votes like this: #shortyawards @username #category (add quick reason here). This shorter format is helpful if you want to vote from a party, on the road, in a meeting, or on a boat
•Be as creative as you want with the reason
•A tweet that does not give a reason for the nomination will not be counted
•The nomination should be relevant to the category
•Vote for as many different people as you want in as many categories as you want, as often as you want
•Only one person and one category per tweet
•Voting for the same person in the same category more than once just replaces the text of your original vote
•You can vote in any of the Official Categories or make up a category of your own. If a new category becomes popular, it might be turned into an Official Category with an award presented at the ceremony in March
Aha, it would appear you are right. Multiple people in a single category is ok. Awesome.
Now I have to work out how to do Twitter. I didn’t quite realise how big it was until TAM. I guess it’s time to get with the program
Which is exactly why I posted this 2-3 weeks ahead of it opening, to give people an opportunity to create accounts prior to nominations opening so they can make valid votes.