Thursday, March 22, 2018

Shawn Mendes and the current poll



We have to talk about the current poll. Something fishy is going on. It looks like someone is manipulating the poll to make Shawn Mendes win.

After the first couple of days, the Spidey Edition option (Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield) had accumulated a comfortable lead over the other two options (Tom Holland solo, and Shawn Mendes). And then, suddenly, in an overnight miracle, the votes for Shawn Mendes almost quadrupled, pushing him into the lead.

It doesn't take a Special Investigator to figure out that someone interfered in these elections. We'll never find out who did it, but I don't want to let this go by. Stuff like this is ruining the fun for me. And, as you know, I do all of this because of the fun.

I have stopped the poll until I figure out how we go on from here.

(Just for posterity: The poll ended with Spidey Edition: Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield: 167 votes, Tom Holland: 44 votes, Shawn Mendes: 310 votes, total votes: 521)

Right now I'm contemplating two options. I don't think the disqualification of Shawn Mendes is up for debate. Sorry to all the Shawn Mendes fans out there. Somebody ruined this for you.

Option a)
Disqualify Shawn Mendes and start a new poll with the two remaining options, which would be Tom Holland against himself and Andrew Garfield.

Option b)
Disqualify Shawn Mendes and start a new poll with all the options that got 10% or more of the vote in the initial poll.

Any thoughts?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you should keep Shawn

Anonymous said...

From what I've seen almost every poll for these stories in the past has been manipulated, even the original poll for this one to get the final 3 looked to have been manipulated.

Alex said...

Thanks for your comments, guys!

@anonymous (1):
I’m afraid I don‘t think that is an option.

@anonymous (2):
What makes you say that? I‘m genuinely interested because I haven’t seen anything that suggests serious manipulation in that poll. If you have other information please let‘s talk. If you don‘t want to talk publicly just send me an email: alex@ballbustingboys.org

Anonymous said...

I say go with Option A - have the choices be Tom Holland, and Tom Holland vs. Andrew Garfield, since it was already narrowed down to them!

Anonymous said...

I'd say out of all of the options, A is better. I suppose if you tried the poll again with the three there's a risk of it being rigged with more subtlety; it’s a shame.

Daniel

Anonymous said...

I'd go with option A I think. It's tempting to see what the whole process would have looked like without meddling, but then someone might just choose a new champion for their manipulation.

Anonymous said...

@Alex Just in general concerning the polls in the past, options have gained 100s of votes in a short span on both the first and seconds polls (Not just this batch). Sometimes it has been more subtle and other times it has been as blatant as this time. Don't have any proof, but it's been something I've heavily wondered about since these stories have started. Anyway not much that can be done other than chancing the polling system I guess.

Anonymous said...

Option A. Glad you’ve noticed it too.

ScotLad

Anonymous said...

All polls have been manipulated on these story polls as far as i can tell that's why they get so many more votes, it was just more subtle than whoever did this with shawn. That's why i ignore these polls and usually hate whoever this person's preference is. I honestly thought his preference was going to be Tom Holland lol. Nick Jonas, Justin Bieber and Cody christian won last time and those were definitely manipulated. and tom holland during previous poll and the beginning of this poll was manipulated too, just not to the degree of shawn mendes during whenever it happened. All it takes is starting private browsers on firefox and you can vote multiple times.

Anonymous said...

Hey I’m rather new around here, but I’d love to read all the other special guest star series, but it doesn’t seem to have its own section... if someone could hook me up it would be much appreciated!

Anonymous said...

If you're on the desktop site, there's a tab at the top for "Stories A-Z", and if you're on mobile it's a drop-down menu, with home as the default selection. Once there, you should be able to find a list of Special Guest posts.

Anonymous said...

I think it’s Putin!
He seems to be rigging votes all over the place, maybe he’s also an avid follower of your site ;)
SL

Yannis said...

I think you should handle it the same way you did with Alexander Ludwig manipulation in the votes. But yeah both options have its merits. I suggest option A. Even though that one can get rigged as well.

Anonymous said...

Seems like we have spider-man fans. How bout you make an option C be just "spider-man" or heck throw in toby mguire into the mix.

Anonymous said...

I vote for Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield, hope they'll get into a long and MUTUAL ballbusting match!

Alex said...

Thanks for your comments, guys! I have made up my mind and put up a new poll.

http://ballbustingboys.blogspot.com/2018/03/very-final-poll-special-guest-star-7.html