Welcome, folks, to the 2024 Peely Awards for the worst in pop culture! This is our ninth year!
For those unfamiliar, the Peely Awards are the Avocado’s own in-house award show for the year’s most bad, stupid, egregious, infuriating, offensive, incompetent, or just plain goofy art and pop culture We’re like the mean sibling to the Pits and Giftmas, the one who wears The Cure T-shirts and smokes under the bleachers. Everything counts, too, from film to television to advertisement. But the gimmick is that voters don’t just pick the winners; they also help pick the categories themselves. This means that every event feels special!
Let’s break it down. In Round I (that’s this; you’re in Round I), people nominate and argue in favor of categories and vote on them through upvotes. We do have several standard awards, like “Worst Film,” “Worst Television Season,” and “Silliest Title for an Eric Roberts Movie Released this Calendar Year,” but the vast majority are from the comments and are ideally tailored to how the year shook out when it came to pop culture. Poor trends or odd coincidences. Then in Round II, which we split into two separate threads on December 27th, we use those categories as our baseline and vote on nominees. Finally, on January 3rd, we announce the winners.
For now, it’s time for you to suggest a category to use, or several if you’d like. If you’re unsure or want some direction, consider looking at past years to get some ideas. Ideally we’d like all the options to be able to support at least five nominees. And if you see one you like, upvote it! That’s how we treat votes here in Peely Town. In fact, upvote constantly here, even if it’s for something that’s running against your nominee! We relish a surplus of votes and interaction here. On that note, Round I isn’t a purely accurate system—we’ve historically added categories that didn’t do great with the votes but seemed complementary and combined two suggested categories if they work well together. Still, we do pay attention to every suggestion and treat their popularity as a major criterion. Imagination, wit, and a puckish charm are great ways to go, since we do like to be at least somewhat lighthearted about all this. Mean, at times, but not too mean. We’re not the Razzies, for God’s sake.
What this leads to is something exciting, frenetic, community-driven, and… at times a bit overwhelming. The Peely’s have often led to some technical issues due to a wildly high volume of comments, especially in Round II. I am sorry for that. But I think we need this freewheeling structure as it exists because it’s more personal. You’re actually putting a name down in a thread in the hopes that people will laugh at it, and that gives you upvotes and comments and responses. It’s a truly communal event in a way that perfectly embodies this site and its history. So do bear with us over these next two weeks, and if you’ve the time, check in across the week to see how things are shaking out.
Well, let’s get started! You’ve got a week to throw down and come up with stuff. And hey, we’ll try to throw our hat in as well with ideas of our own.