Fame, Honor, and Envious Fellow Bloggers
There was a moment—somewhere around 2008, 2009—when the German blogosphere was a real thing. Not in the content creator sense, not an industry or a platform or a brand vertical, just people writing for each other with enough collective identity to disagree loudly about whose blog was best. This journal ran its own annual awards for exactly that reason: to push back against the recurring funeral coverage and put something specific in the spotlight instead of arguing abstractly about whether any of it still mattered.
The categories were a mix of earnest and deliberately stupid, which felt right. Man of the Year, Girl of the Year, the Big Mouth Award, Sex Sells, Best Unique Design, Sweet ’n’ Cute, a newcomer prize for blogs under six months old, and two new additions that year—Best Fashion and Best Picture. Any blog qualified, German or English, WordPress or Tumblr or Blogspot. The only requirements were a post explaining why you deserved to win in at least one category and a trackback by December 13th.
The ceremony was December 20th. The prize was fame, honor, and envious fellow bloggers. That was genuinely all. It was enough.