Total Film Drops the Ball, Revealed to be Incredibly Self-Serving
I normally don’t give a shit about stuff like this but this cause célèbre is worthy of mention for a few reasons.
Recently, Total Film released their list of nominees for Best Horror Blog. Although featuring some top quality websites, one would be hard pressed to accurately deem any of them blogs. Only one, The Obscure Hollow, has been considered an appropriate entry among the five websites that were chosen, and those who make their principle online home the horror blogosphere snapped back.
Horror bloggers are a tight knit group, and over the past week, they have banded together to cry foul over what many feel is Total Film’s misinterpretation of what a blog really is. All semantics arguments aside, one would not be too far off the mark to deem sites such as Dread Central and Shock Till You Drop news sites before blogs. When taking into consideration the overwhelming number of horror blogs circulating the internet, one has to wonder just what Total Film was thinking. One blogger, The Dive Mistress, took Total Film to task and made an inquiry regarding this whole fiasco. Their response was contradictory, to say the least, and just a little too self-serving to paint them in a respectable light. Several aspects of their e-mail stand out as cringe-worthy:
The motivation behind the awards is to say thank you to the sites we have used over the past year, who may or may not be professional, but are nonetheless passionate, hard working and very good at what they do.
Glad to know you’re being objective.
This reveals that Total Film, in what everyone just hoped was a glaring misinterpretation of what a blog really is, has their lips planted firmly on the posteriors of the nominees. Absolutely no disrespect to Shock Till You Drop, Dread Central, Bloody Disgusting, and for some reason Upcoming Horror Movies, but dismissing the many fine horror blogs floating around in favor of sycophantic posturing is fucking low.
But what of The Obscure Hollow?
In considering nominations we looked not just at sites we have used, but sites our readers are most likely to use.
While I have never personally read Obscure Hollow (shit, I had never even heard of it before this), I find it hard to believe that readers of Total Film will flock in droves to a personal blog about “the love of haunted film decor and more” when they need a news fix. Like the others, I mean no disrespect to the proprietor of Obscure Hollow, but its inclusion among the list of nominees is nothing more than Total Film’s attempt to retain a shred of credibility in what I hope they have since realized is a lack of integrity.
One of the nominees, however grateful they may be, have called Total Film out in their own, less hate-filled way. In response to Total Film’s blunder, Bloody Disgusting and its eponymous founder have decided to create the Bloody Disgusting Horror Blog Awards as a way of giving true thanks to the horror bloggers who spend countless hours writing bullshit only a small handful of people will read (much like this!). From Mr. Disgusting:
As some of you know Total Film nominated Bloody Disgusting for best horror blog. It’s a great honor, but seriously folks, we’re not really a blog — and I think that the hard working horror bloggers out there would agree. So here’s the deal, we’d like to take some time out to recognize the folks who put their heart and soul into helping the horror genre thrive with their own personal blogs. The only rule is that it cannot be an actual full-blown website, it needs to be a personal BLOG that is run by you and maybe a few friends.
Thanks to Corey over at Evil on Two Legs, I was nominated, and people have been nominating blogs left and right since Mr. D brought this to our attention earlier today. Several of my good friends have been nominated, as has Horror Squad, the Cinematical offshoot I call my other home. In the end I don’t care if I win, as the very fact that I was nominated is enough tomake everything I’ve done since I started I Love Horror almost a year and a half ago worthwhile.
Best of luck to everyone who gets nominated.
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Right on Brad. Great post. And congrats on your nomination. How does the nominating process work exactly? Can it be anyone?
Yeah, I guess. Everyone was just nominating people in the comments section of the BD post.
And many thanks for the kind words.
Excellent overview and analysis of this fiasco.
Well, congrats on being nominated. Just getting that alone can be a tough thing with the amount of horror blogs out there which only makes the Total Film list smack of sadness. Oviously the sites they picked are all good sites (I haven’t heard of Obscure Hollow before but the others I have frequented) but why not put the focus on the less known and hard working bloggers out there.
Kudos to BD for putting together a list that will be more appropriate.
I never heard of Obscure Hollow until now. Not sure what that is. A wiki for old classic horror?
Agreed! And may I also say that I think they decided to nominate mega-sites in hope of boosting their traffic. You get much more mileage out of linking to big sites than to blogs.
Zing! Nice post!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO_utxHdDo4
try this boys…i think that it’s very impressionat
Did u guys hear anything about Dead Tone Releasing on DVD feb 19th?
….what?