The .net Magazine Awards 2010 ceremony was held this evening in London, and Smashing Magazine took the prize for Blog of the Year. There’s no better way to say it: What a joke.

Let me recall what I wrote before about the .net Awards:

The .net Awards aren’t paying enough respect to the amazing work of web professionals. What’s interesting is that they could really be celebrating the best of the web, but that task was handed down to us instead — we’re the ones not paying enough respect to ourselves.

And this was my hypothesis on how awards should work:

Restricting the decision of the nominees and winners of any awards to an elite of professionals promotes the respect, honor and recognition of the awards themselves, its nominees and winners, as well as the overall enhancement of the surrounding community.

I was wrong. If our elite of professionals chooses Smashing Magazine over A List Apart, our community shouldn’t have any awards at all. What Oliver Reichenstein tweeted at Jeffrey Zeldman summarizes my feelings about this:

Just so you know: I don’t think you don’t deserve awards, I think awards don’t deserve you.

I guess I’m not alone.