How to Win Photowow

If anyone here hasn't read my Photowow adventures, click the "story behind SALWG" or whatever it says in the link it my sidebar. (I edited this to add the link here. Decided that was more fun than dishes)

Photowow is a company that runs a baby and dog photo contest and gives the winner a big, brightly colored, Warhol style canvas. It is a cool prize and that is why so many people enter, although I can honestly say after seeing other people's prizes, that it really only fits a very specific kind of decor and is definitely better suited to a great, close up photograph of 1 child.

They have a controversial, and idiotic, way of calculating the votes. There are far easier ways for them to have done it, but those ways wouldn't result in women becoming blood thirsty beasts who would happily drag the babies of other women through the mud for a chance to win the big gaudy prize.

So instead of a normal "whichever baby gets the most votes wins" way of doing things, they do it by average, where you rate each baby on a scale of 1-10. So if your baby gets 10 votes at a 10, they will do better than someone who gets 300 votes for a 10 but 50 at a 2.

Such an obviously stupid way of doing things, but if it was just an out and put popularity contest, birth boarders wouldn't be stalking each other and creating online riots over Photowow's product. Photowow is a household name amongst the online mom sect...although usually more infamous than famous. Almost everyone I know hates all things Photowow.

So the key to winning is really making sure that your child doesn't get low votes. Every child in the top 10 gets low votes. Although they always deny it, the blood thirsty dogs (and I'm not talking about one specific pack, there are many packs like this out there, I don't even know if the original Photowow Mafia is still around but trust me when I tell you that there are others) will low vote your baby and possibly even send your baby's photo out over Myspace with a bulletin to low vote them. Craziness, I know.

So if for some reason you feel compelled to put yourself through the Photowow experience, don't let anyone vote until late Monday night, or better yet on Tuesday morning. Then have everyone vote, putting your baby in the top 10 at the last minute and after all of the other top 10 babies have been low voted all week, pulling their averages down.

I guess Photowow is notorious for ending the contest anywhere from 5-10 minutes early too, even (especially?) when it is heated and neck and neck, so don't count on those last few precious moments either. It ends sometime Tuesday afternoon (maybe 3?) so it would probably be ideal to do it Tuesday morning.

Even easier, enter the dog contest and apply the same theory.

Okey doke, hopefully that will answer the questions of anyone who has googled Photowow or Photowow baby contest or how to win Photowow baby contest or Photowow contest schedule. All keywords I've seen a lot lately.

Better yet, just don't do it. Friends don't let friends do Photowow. I haven't even heard anyone mention this contest in a while because everyone came to hate it so freaking much that it was hard to even ask for votes.

If I'm screwing someone by posting this right now, say you're going next week and you're on one of the many boards I belong to and I should be aware of the plan and follow board etiquette, I swear to you this is not personal. I even went real quick and checked the few boards I belong to, to make sure there was no one who was about to come under friendly fire. Thank the sweet baby Jesus I see no mention of the contest at all, so maybe we've all learned our lesson.

One can only hope.