6 Hilarious Cases Of Online Voting Contests Gone Awry
Every now and then, some company decides to put a major marketing campaign in the hands of online voters, because they apparently do not understand that the Internet is populated by people who use the Internet.
Greenpeace Names a Whale
Greenpeace tagged a group of whales in the South Pacific in an attempt to keep them from being poached by the Japanese, because it would appear that Greenpeace tags can deflect harpoon blasts. They then held an online poll to name the animals. The finalist names included Kaimana (Hawaiian for "power of the ocean"), Shanti (Sanskrit for "tranquility"), and for some reason Mr. Splashy Pants, which sounds less like a whale and more like a man shitting himself in an uncontrollable frenzy. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the contest was soon swallowed up by Reddit and Boing Boing, who showered Mr. Splashy Pants with 78 percent of the vote before turning him into a meme, because that's how the Internet works.
Behold, the fruit of human ingenuity.
Walmart Sponsors a Pitbull Concert
When Walmart held a contest to stage a Pitbull concert in the city of the Walmart location that received the most likes on Facebook (because evidently each one is required to maintain a social media presence), the website Something Awful started a campaign encouraging everyone to vote for a Walmart in rural Alaska, which then handily won the contest.
To his credit, Pitbull honored his end of the deal and flew out to Alaska to perform a rap concert in the middle of buttfucking nowhere.
Where he was given a ceremonial baby and made no attempt to blend in.
American Apparel Holds a Contest for Fat Models
Recently, American Apparel began selling some of their clothes in the image-shattering size of XL, a decision that certainly had nothing to do with having narrowly avoided bankruptcy.
To commemorate this historic event, American Apparel launched a contest called "The Next BIG Thing," because "Fatty Patty's Boulder Holders" would've been a little too on-the-nose. Size 12 women (provided they were "booty-ful" and had "full size fannies") were invited to upload photos of themselves for the Internet to rate on a scale from "Not Quite" to "Xlent."
Nancy Upton, taking umbrage at the contest's incredibly offensive verbiage, decided to submit pictures of herself bathing in ranch dressing and chocolate sauce and holding a pie over her vagina.
Hungerotic.
Nancy easily earned the most votes, but American Apparel declined to have her represent their company.
Austin Renames a Garbage Dump
The city of Austin, Texas, decided that "Solid Waste Services Department" wasn't a very attractive name for their garbage dump, because apparently those are things that need to sound appealing. So, a poll was set up on the Austin community forum for residents to suggest new names and vote on their favorite ones. After a tense race, the clear winner that emerged was "The Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts."
"*sniff* ... Wow, you all still know who I am."
Despite getting an endorsement from Durst himself, the city decided on "Austin Resource Recovery," which sounds like a theoretical mining operation.
VH1 Gives a School a Taylor Swift Concert
VH1 held a contest to award the school with the most votes a concert by Taylor Swift. Because the Internet is populated by people who try to convince underage fans of Justin Bieber to mutilate themselves, the Horace Mann School for the Deaf quickly took the lead. And in all fairness, that is pretty clever.
Even though it was removed from the contest, Taylor Swift donated $10,000 to the school and gave every child a ticket to one of her concerts, proving once and for all that she did not understand the joke.
Not the first time that's ever happened.
Mountain Dew Names a New Flavor
When a pizza place created a green apple flavor of Mountain Dew and held an online poll to name it, 4chan stepped in to populate the list of finalists with names like "Diabeetus," "Fapple," and "Sierra Mist." The top suggestion, earning the most votes by a landslide, was "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong."
Four variations of "Ejaculating Grandmother" had a strong showing as well.
Eventually PepsiCo had to step in and shut the contest down, although we feel that the soda would've sold pretty well in certain areas of the country.
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