What do you mean, you’re shocked to hear that The Reprobate has been nominated for a health and wellness award?
Exciting news everyone – we’ve been nominated for another award! Regular readers will recall how the Scarab Film Festival used to regularly tell us that our short film was a shoo-in for an award at the festival alongside fast-track entry, an impressive feat given that we haven’t even made a short film. If this is what we get for a film that doesn’t even exist, then surely an Oscar would be assured if we got around to shooting something. I filmed our cat watching a squirrel through the window and I’m sure that this has all the drama, tension and action-packed finale that people want these days. I might submit it.
But in the meantime, LUXlife has emailed to inform me that we’ve been selected for the even more prestigious Health, Beauty & Wellness Awards 2024! I know that the awards are prestigious because the email – that somehow ended up in our spam folder – tells me so, and who am I to argue? Certainly, they know their stuff – The Reprobate’s dedication to health, beauty and woo-woo bullshit is well known. Why, just look at how many glowing articles we have written about the amazing powers of reiki and arnika. Only Covid stopped us from exploring the world of the Goop pop-up store in Notting Hill and I’m sure that we would’ve been left agog and amazed at what we found there. And well done to the awards judges for working out (perhaps after consulting the tea leaves) that yes, we really do have articles about celebrity Wellness gurus in the works – articles that I’m sure will be greeted with much excitement by its adherents.
Nevertheless, the cynic in me has doubts. I know, you’re shocked, right? A bit of online research suggests that these awards might involve paying for nomination, something that is surprisingly common even for more respectable awards where anyone and everyone can be nominated if they cough up the cash, something that supporters of the system claim makes winning all the more legit because if you were willing for shell out a few hundred clams just to be nominated, then you must be the best, right? Not like those awards (or festivals) that actually just look at things for free and then decide which is the best. What sort of system is that?
In this case, the email tells me that “Successful awardees will receive complimentary inclusion in our May online announcements, with extra benefits available to those interested on a purely optional basis, ensuring that there are no mandatory expenses at any stage.” Which feels like a long and winding way of saying that everything is free until you want something beyond being named in a long list that no one will ever read. In which case, cough up the dough.
It’s sobering to think that many awards – even the big ones, perhaps especially the big ones – are essentially cash grabs that depend on businesses of creatives who are willing to spend the big bucks to win as a publicity stunt. Is it any surprise then that there are organisations that will send phishing messages to anyone and everyone, no matter how unconnected they might be to the subject at hand, in the hope that they’ll hit a few people who might conceivably have some connection to the award in question and that desperation and ego will overcome any questions about just how many other people are being approached and just how ‘prestigious’ the award might actually be. It might not be a scam – at least not entirely, assuming that the awards do take place digitally (not exactly a difficult thing to promise if all it means is that a list of winner names will be published), although there seems to be some suggestion online that LUXlife is an MLM – which I can’t confirm (and I’m certainly not clicking on any links in the email) but which would certainly make sense. But even giving this more benefit of the doubt than anyone sensible ever should, there is at least no quality control at work if they are approaching me (or, indeed, a poetry magazine that was shortlisted for Best Restaurant in another of what I suspect is an endless number of ‘prestigious’ lifestyle awards) – and if you see anyone boasting of having won one, take that as a warning, not a recommendation.
DAVID FLINT
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