Voted Off the Internet

By Marisa Meltzer, AlterNet. Posted June 4, 2005.

Mimi, a British-born 26-year-old, is an illegal alien living in Brooklyn who writes a blog about New York's immigrant community -- and about her day job giving lapdances to Wall Street execs. Since she spends her days lying about her true status -- whether it be for her visa or her real name -- her blog has become "the only place I could actually stop lying."

Mimi has just the kind of off-kilter story that's ripe for a fleeting brush with Internet fame. And she's ready to cash in on it: she already has a literary agent, a column in the Village Voice, and an online stalker.

Now she has one more ambition: to become the Ultimate Blogger.

The Ultimate Blogger is a reality TV-style competition that began in early May and concludes June 6. The game, on the surface, sounds familiar enough: 12 people compete to be the best blogger in order to win a $500 dollar prize package. Each week consists of two challenges and two eliminations.

The winner of the challenge is determined by the game hosts and guest judges, and the winner is granted immunity for that round, noted by the "Spiritual Beard and Third Eye of Immunity" or the "Not Depressing At All Immunity Orthodontic Headgear and Braces" photoshopped onto their headshots. Then players vote off one blogger, whose headshot is put through a shredder and is asked to "leave the Internet immediately."

Until just one Ultimate Blogger remains.

And why not make a contest of it? CNN has hired two hot chicks to read from blogs on air and Publisher's Weekly regularly announces the latest blogger to land a six-figure book deal. This game is simply another sign that blogs are not just becoming an established part of the media's mainstream, but they're also succumbing to "reality," one of the most celebrated and criticized trends in mainstream culture.

The creators behind Ultimate Blogger see it as filling a void: "Blogs are very good at showing what is wrong with something, but they aren't very good at original content yet -- which is where Ultimate Blogger fits in," says Mike Merrill, one of the co-creators (along with Steve Schroeder and Jona Bechtolt) of the Ultimate Blogger.

The three former roommates are also co-founders of the Portland, Oregon-based UrbanHonking, which hosts and sponsors the contest. The site began as an online magazine in 2001 but has evolved into a blog collective. The blogs, which are given on a referral basis, include everything from a few names well known in indie circles (filmmaker Miranda July, rock critic Julianne Shepherd, performance artist Andrew Dickson) to journals written by medical students. They maintain a wait-list that sometimes spans eight months, so getting a blog on UrbanHonking can feel, as one blogger put it, like scoring a Birkin bag.

"Mike and I have always been very fond of created drama in a social setting, like staging drama between ourselves just to see how other people react," says Schroeder. Merrill interjects," In the context of a game, it doesn't have to be awkward or negative -- trashtalking is fun!"

Inspired equally by Survivor creator Mark Burnett and World Wrestling Entertainment's (formerly the World Wrestling Federation) Vince McMahon (whom they call "guiding spiritual forces"), their goal was to produce a game that could give both the viewers and contestants a health dose of interpersonal drama.

In late April they posted a call for submissions and before the week-long application window was out, they had received, much to their amazement, hundreds of applications. Initially they thought the game would consist mostly of UrbanHonking bloggers and their extended network of friends. But with applicants from all over the world, they realized the game's potential was much larger than they had imagined--and that their finalists would have to rethink their casting process. With what little info they had from the applications (sample questions: "Cats or Dogs?," "Have you ever been in a fist-fight?," "What music is playing in your own personal hell?") they looked for strong and diverse personalities.

Marisa Meltzer is a freelance writer in New York City. She is currently co-writing a book about Sassy magazine for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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