Loveing Something to Death?

[kevin_standlee]

I have contributed articles to The Drink Tank, a Hugo Award-winning fanzine. Heck, I have a Hugo Award trophy (one of two leftovers from ConJosé, engraved for the two co-chairs). Does that make me a "Hugo Award winner?" Of course it does not. When, back in 2002, I brought that display copy up to show to my mother (who is the person who set me to reading SF/F), she said, "My little boy has a Hugo Award!" and I carefully said that having a display trophy and having an actual Hugo Award were not the same things.

So why is it that a bunch of people who contributed toward a Hugo Award-winning related work have taken it into their heads that they — all of them, thousands of them — are all individually "Hugo Award winners?" (And why have several online news sources repeated this assertion when they should know better.) And when the organizers politely pointed that out, some people seem to interpret it as the Big Bad Meanies Want to Spoil Our Fun. It's not like that at all.

For an award like the Hugo Award to have any meaning, it needs to be something that not everyone can have. That means trying to enforce our service mark. We're not trying to be bad guys. It's not like anyone pays those of us doing it. We're just trying to make sure that it's being used legitimately, so that anyone who has legitimately won the Award is entitled to their legitimate honor.

A certain group of people set out to deliberately destroy the Hugo Awards a few years ago, and they didn't succeed in doing so, thank goodness. It would be terribly ironic that people who celebrate and embrace their corner of fandom having won a Hugo Award would, by excessive exuberance, end up undermining the very award they claim to value.

Comments

[history_monk]

I hadn't heard about this. Is it Archive of Our Own?

[jcfiala]

It is, I think. I don't see the harm myself, but I am almost entirely un-associated with any aspect of the Hugo awards aside from occasionally reading novels and once going to a worldcon. :)

Huh. One could argue I've read more hugo award associated text on Archive of Our Own than I have in books.

[kevin_standlee]

What gets dicey is when people start making merchandise that uses WSFS service marks to declare themselves "Hugo Award winner" and such. This undermines the service mark and if left unchallenged would essentially leave the field open for anyone to say they're a Hugo Award winner, which sort of defeats the purpose of the awards, doesn't it?

No, I won't link to the people doing this. They're getting enough oxygen as it is.

[kevin_standlee]

Yes. And various web sites telling people that everyone AO3 contributor is a Hugo Award winner now. And people who have contributed to AO3 creating merchandise labeling themselves Hugo Award winners. And other AO3 contributors saying, "Oh, it's just a joke, can't you take a joke, don't you have a sense of humor?"

It's extremely frustrating when the very people who maintain the infrastructure that these people are climbing on and saying "We own this now" are being lambasted for trying to keep the infrastructure maintained.

[history_monk]

Hopefully it will die down. It seems analogous to every author who'd appeared in a Hugo-winning magazine claiming to be a winner.

[kevin_standlee]

This is exactly what I've been saying, but it really does not help when a bunch of web sites publish stories willfully misunderstanding how the Hugo Awards work and encouraging a bunch of people to declare that they're all winners. And when those people start trading on WSFS's service marks, they're actually hurting the very thing they claim to value.

Now saying things like "AO3: 2019 Hugo Award Winner for Best Dramatic Work" with the Hugo Award logo are okay and actually helps our service mark by using it legitimately, and I expect to see merchandise of that sort from AO3. But individual contributors are, in their zeal to celebrate, harming the Hugo Awards, and essentially are daring the WSFS MPC to be "bad guys," which is very frustrating.