I was asked to judge an online beauty pageant by Master Diwa, the main organizer of the site. The contestants are all deserving, but we the judges are supposed to choose the ones who best answered the questions, which touched on personal image, message to the community, and overall suggestions on how to further improve the Valkyrie server of Philippine Ragnarok Online.

I emphasize now the importance of the written word in the cultivation of an online image. I mean, what else will the people you are interacting with base their judgment on? Some answered the questions well, some didn’t. I wasn’t a very gentle judge. But I rewarded those who put in effort to make their answers readable with a 100%, and to those who didn’t… I gave a zero.

The Pageant Judge From Hell

My objective was to pull the percentage from the other judges’ votes up or down drastically with my ratings. That way, those I wanted to win will have better chances with a part of the vote showing 100%, and those I deemed to the pits of pageant hell will have their total points weighed down drastically. My favorites (number 6 and number 7) among the girls showed great attitude, great respect for written English and great looks.

Diwa never told me who the crowd favorite was, which made my judgment as fair as the evil inside me will allow. The crowd favorite among the girls was one of those I gave an almost zero score to. She spoke in Taglish (the hybrid language comprising Filipino and murdered English words), and this did not sit well with me. All the other judges were unanimous in favor of this contestant, but as I predicted, my scores radically dictated her fate.

As soon as the votes were cast and a winner was chosen, the voice inside me (which I will now refer to as Ms. Conscience) started acting up. Maybe I based my judgment too shallowly and did not consider how others who directly interacted with these contestants felt about them. Now, I am scared of this Ms. Conscience person. She is mean and badass, and bigger than me, so I did what I could to appease her. Through my friend, Diwa, I asked to talk to the girl so I can apologize for my comments. She didn’t seem to have misgivings but who knows if she hates me secretly? I know I would have.

I was not able to contribute to the winner’s prizes, and so I offered Ella a very nice treat. A blog with her own domain name, paid in full by Woobie. One of the winners’ prizes comprised a blog, but it’s just a subdomain in another site, so I think my ‘consolation prize’ is way better. Visit Ella when you can, and remember that her site is testament to the very rare times when I let myself be b*tch-slapped by my conscience.

Some more malicious-minded people might think that I am building backlinks by buying people domain names, but what the hell do they know?