And they’re off!

The polling booth has been open for almost a week now and surprise surprise, votes have actually been coming in. It seems that people really do want to take advantage of the opportunity to express their dismay with much of the current crop of Aussie comedy. But with our rising fame comes the dark side of success – voting scandals! Yep, a suspicious surge in votes for Lady Julia Morris’s book soon led to this little discovery.

But what to do? There’s no hard-and-fast rule against spruiking for votes – seriously, why would you want to? – but actually wanting to win a Tumblie is the kind of “ironic” appreciation of things that leads to finding much of Chris Lilley’s output funny. Not to mention that, unlike most wacky internet awards ceremonies for lame entertainment, we’re not really the kind of people who secretly enjoy crap or find it amusing in a “so-bad-it’s-good” fashion. Amazingly, we pretty much mean what we say, so all winning a Tumblie earns you is a burst of pointed and often very ugly invective that might not look good in a press release. Especially if we know that a press release is what the winner is hoping to get out of the experience.

Still, it’s early days yet, and a bunch of Wil Anderson haters could still lurch out of the woodwork to snatch Lady Morris’ prize from her grasp. All this year’s nominees would make for worthy winners in our book. Just keep in mind that, as uncool as it might be in yet another age of irony (what is this, the fifth?), these awards operate entirely at face value. So if you’re going to vote, make sure you mean it: ironic or not, shit is still shit.