Despite the best intentions behind it, it's seemed from the beginning like Podcast Alley was doomed to be a festering pit of corruption. At its best, it was impossible to tell between true popularity and differentials in willingness to campaign. I went out of my way not to worry about it for a long time, until a few things happened:

1. USA Today and other publications started treating it as a canonical authority
2. I was in danger of dropping out of the top 50
3. I fell below the guy who talks about his own poop - that one hurt

Now, here is a further example of Podcast Alley corruption and all-around uncoolness. The current #2 podcast is the libertarian talk show Free Talk Live. Other than their high ranking here, I have never heard of them in the podcast context so why are they so highly rated? Well, they campaign hard and have a built in group of folks to take orders like well bred trout. They are not content with merely doing that but are urging people to vote against Dawn and Drew so they can take the top spot. Seriously! Says they:

While it looks like FTL will need a lot of votes to surpass the #1 show, we'll actually need less than the diffrence between the two shows, because their star rating is lower! If you've listened to their show and don't like it, go ahead and vote them one star. If you like it, maybe you could just leave them a nice comment instead of voting for them. They could use a nice comment.

Campaigning for themselves is not enough, they are urging people to vote Dawn and Drew lower. What a pantsload. I thought libertarians were devout worshippers of the invisible hand of market forces. I guess that only goes until a little market manipulation is strategically advantageous.

Now, I'm not urging anyone to vote for anything. I can say that this act of scumbaggery did incite me to vote but it was not the way the FTL people want. And, I'll keep voting every 24 hours the same way. It might be a minor thing, but I can't say I like the idea of these turds hijacking the pocast community.

Update: Mike Geoghegan (who I forgot to credit as the person making me aware of the above link) emailed me some new doozies. This appears to be the thread where the "vote 1 for people above us" strategy was born. They do say only do that if you don't like the show but the idea of organizing groups of people to vote lower shows above you on the list is so unbelievably uncool and tacky. It's like being at a party that was pleasant and fun when some knuckleheads show up and puke in the punchbowl. FTL and their minions are those guys.