NPF: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT

Posted on | by Ed

The Internet has been a part of our culture for long enough and is sufficiently well-understood that I no longer feel any sympathy for people who violate its most basic rules or social dynamics and end up being embarrassed. It is 2016. Everyone knows that if you let people vote for something online, especially in an open ended fashion, people on the internet are going to identify quickly the most ridiculous possible outcome and swarm to it. The NHL just learned this the hard way when its online voting for the All-Star game resulted in a 6'9" oaf-pugilist-Ent named John Scott, a man who has played on every team in organized hockey for about 5 minutes while possessing no skill other than throwing punches at small Canadian men, being voted Captain of the All-Star squad. This embarrassed the league inasmuch as he 1) is terrible, 2) has been cut three times already this season alone, and 3) Scott was not even in the league at the time of the game, having been demoted to his natural environment in the minors.

The same scenario unfolds every time this happens.

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The entity in question refuses to honor the online vote, which inevitably makes them look even worse. Waves of approbation and indignation crash over them until finally they relent, embarrassing themselves yet again by backtracking and attempting to insist that, no, really, we get the joke ha ha ha. (Hockey enthusiasts with a sense of humor shamed the league into letting Scott into the game, in which he played to the great glee of everyone involved and, to rub it in, fans voted him All-Star MVP as a write-in.)

My favorite example of this phenomenon happened a few years ago when the City of Austin allowed internet voting to choose the name of its new solid waste facility. Either they were shocking naive or they were in the mood for comedy, because when you ask the internet to name a building where human feces fills giant tanks and is chemically processed you are just begging for trouble.

The winning entry – Fred Durst Center for the Performing Arts, if I recall – was ultimately vetoed by the city management. Boooooooo.

What are some other good examples?

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56 thoughts on “NPF: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT”

  • HoosierPoli says:

    To be fair, Scott scored two goals in the game, less as a testament to his prowess than as a show of solidarity from the other all-stars who were clearly not pleased with how the league treated him.

  • Talisker says:

    One of my favourites was the attempt by "Shell" to crowdsource slogans for its Arctic drilling initiative. It turned out Shell isn't quite that stupid, and the whole thing was an ingenious hoax by Greenpeace, but a lot of the media were taken in: http://www.businessinsider.com/people-are-relentlessly-mocking-shell-over-this-massive-social-media-fail-2012-6?IR=T

    It violates the spirit of NPF, but the election of Jeremy Corbyn as UK Labour leader is another example, and it included an open online voting process. The reaction of the party establishment to his landslide victory was roughly, "Holy shit, they actually voted for the left-wing joke candidate we nominated as a token gesture! What have we done?"

  • Kyle says:

    Even though he was in the minors at thw time of the game, Scott was in the league when he was voted to the all star game. The leaguest moved him to the minors so that he would be ineligible for the all star game after the vote had already taken place

  • c u n d gulag says:

    Jeez, I don't know…
    I love a good 'Goon makes good,' story, don't you?

    Except in politics, that is.

  • Axe says:

    My favorite example of this predates the internet. I think it was in the '80's when Stanford University decided to change the schools nickname from the "Indians" to something more politically correct. The student body voted overwhelmingly for "The Robber Barons" on account of Leland Stanford's unsavory past as, well, a Robber Baron. The administration vetoed this (of course) and chose "The Cardinal" which refers to the color, not the bird. Somehow they ended up with a pine tree as their mascot.

  • Phil Koop says:

    That time a Facebook campaign succeeded in pushing "Killing in the Name" over the smarmy Simon Cowell's X Factor nomination for Christmas #1.

  • Paul says:

    John Scott is a good guy, though, despite being a cog in a machine that claims to hate face-punching while simultaneously not doing anything to end it. Him getting named to the All-Star game was literally the best thing to happen to the All-Star game. People watched for him, people cheered for him, and he knew exactly what the deal was, so he was completely unvarnished in dunking on Kane and Roenick (so I suppose I can understand your disdain).

    The NHL should celebrate these players. Gretzky's name is on the Cup, so is McSorely's. At the very least, the NHL shouldn't try to shame a guy into scurrying under a rock, when that guy worked his ass off to be an NHL player despite being one of the least talented skaters in the league (which still makes him worlds better than any one of us).

    That said, Anyone voting for Fred Durst, even in jest, is a bad person.

  • Carl says:

    Scott had a great piece on the Players Tribune about the lead-up to the All-Star Game. Short version: I know I'm not an All-Star, but when the league tried to push me out and suggested my kids would somehow be ashamed if I played, that pissed me off. I work my ass off to be a pro hockey player, so why not go with it.
    http://www.theplayerstribune.com/a-guy-like-me/

  • Talisker says:

    @Paul: McSorley I'll give you, but Gretzky was one of the least violent players ever. He was just really goddamned good. (I'm an Oilers fan from way back, so I've spent the last decade or so despairing at their performance.)

  • Professor Coldheart says:

    A contest to send Pitbull to perform at the Walmart store whose Facebook page got the most "likes" was hijacked by Internet goons, who voted up the most geographically remote Walmart: Kodiak, Alaska.

    To his credit, Pitbull took it in stride and flew up there to perform. He got a more enthusiastic reception in Kodiak than he probably would have in Bentonville, AR.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/pitbull-performs-kodiak-alaska-exiled-contest-hijacked-internet-prankster-article-1.1125687

  • postcaroline says:

    Harry Baals!!! Also note the brilliant title of this article from 2011:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41480994/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/scratch-harry-baals-list-names-government-center/

    "Harry Baals is the runaway favorite in online voting to name the new building in Fort Wayne, about 120 miles northeast of Indianapolis. But Deputy Mayor Beth Malloy said that probably won't be enough to put the name of the city's longest-tenured mayor on the center.

    The issue is pronunciation. The former mayor pronounced his last name 'balls.' His descendants have since changed it to 'bales.'

  • chopper says:

    Ed, Scott hasn't played for the team you would probably most associate him with but the trade deadline looms and you never know what the Flyers will do…..

  • Jim says:

    I could be off on the details, but I'm pretty sure 4chan voted for Mountain Dew to name their new soda flavor "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong".

  • Skipper says:

    This isn't specifically Internet, but the San Diego Zoo wanted an African sounding name for the railway in its animal park. They circulated a memo, and someone had written "Wgasa" at the bottom. The people at the top loved it and adopted it. The person who wrote it meant it as " Who gives a shit anyway?"

  • Z says:

    Victoria's Secret had an online "nominate your college" (for what exactly it isn't clear) vote, and Harvey Mudd College students, or just someone who liked the name, wrote a voting scrupt and gave the school a runaway victory.

    The far more deserving winner, Bob Jones University, finished 4th, so that those same students could spell out their chosen acronym with the top 7 winners.

    http://cmcforum.com/life/10152009-harvey-mudd-1-victorias-secret-0

  • ronzie says:

    I doubt if the internet played much, if any, of a role since it happened in 1991, but "Atlas Shrugged" was voted number two, behind the Bible, in a "most influential book" poll conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club. That's got to be a joke, right?

  • Anthony Fury says:

    The time Kirk Cameron tried to get people to vote up his shitty Christmas movie on Rotten Tomatoes, only to have it backfire incredibly.

    Incidentally, the graduating class after mine in high school successfully voted for their homecoming dance to be named "A Cheesy Beef Homecoming," only to have it struck down in the end by admin.

  • Rabbit says:

    I am fairly sure that 4chan also worked an online poll so that the top pick for a school where Taylor Swift would perform turned out to be the Horace Mann School for the Deaf.

  • FMguru says:

    Stephen Colbert's old show used to brigade online polls at times. They got a newly-constructed bridge and a part of the International Space Station named after him (as well as hammering away at assorted Wikipedia articles).

    Something Awful came close to getting that site's founder (Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka) to win a few polls (I think he won the online voting for Time's Man of the Year once or twice).

    The Church of the Subgenius pushed it's fictional founder, legendary drilling-equipment salesman and elliptonic sex magician J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, to win Time's "Hoax of the Century" online voting.

    And, as mentioned above, the RNC pulled a stunt where people could email their opposition to Obamacare and they'd show a webcam stream of names as a laser printer spat them out, which led to many ridiculous and obscene names being touted for their opposition to Obamacare, the most enduring of course being "Weedlord Bonerhitler"

  • Khaled says:

    Didn't some awful singer who was totally unaware of his awfulness get a record deal out of American Idol? William Hung? A bunch of people "voted" to have him back on the show.

    @Talisker: The Oilers have McDavid, so, whatever. Enjoy a few Cups and hope he doesn't get a concussion like Crosby and so you get to enjoy his prime years.

  • BigHank53 says:

    The University of Colorado let the students pick the name of their new restaurant, giving them the dubious honor of hosting the Alferd Packer Grill. Alferd Packer was, for people who aren't up on obscure nineteenth century Colorado history, a notorious cannibal.

  • Kmtberry says:

    LOL – ing here at "wee lord Bonerhitler"

    Someone out there is an unsung GENIUS!

    Hey- when they put something out there for a vote, they should have to live with it! No taksies -backsies! "The Robber Barons" would be the best name EVER, and now I'll be sad forever that it was junked.

  • EJ says:

    Back in the 1970s the University of California at Santa Cruz didn't have a mascot, since they had no formal sports teams, so their soccer club started playing as the Banana Slugs. (For those who've never seen one, it's a large bright yellow slug that's common in redwood forests such as the ones that occupy much of the UCSC campus).

    For the next ten years the administration and UC Regents insisted the proper mascot was the Sea Lions, which naturally only made the students dig their heels in further in support of the Banana Slug. The administration didn't finally relent until 1986, and by then the students who'd designed the "Fiat Slug" logo had incorporated a company called "Oxford West" and copyrighted it, forcing the Regents into a deal whereby they own the logo but Oxford West has a perpetual license to create merchandise with it.

  • Bitter Scribe says:

    Like EJ's example, this was many years before the Internet, but when Stanford needed a new name for its sports teams (they had been called the Indians, but political correctness—or, as it's more generally called, "common decency"—kicked in), they polled the student body. The winner was "Robber Barons," because university founder Leland Stanford was one of the earliest, and most rapacious, railroad robber barons.

    For some reason, the administration refused to go along. Instead, we got "The Cardinal," the lamest team name in major college sports.

  • Bitter Scribe says:

    Oops. I posted the above before noticing that Axe got there first.

    I will now write 100 times, "Ctrl + F is your friend."

  • Deggjr says:

    Wayne Gretzky (I think) tangent; IIRC he was asked if hockey fights were real. The answer was "I'd be in a lot more of them if they weren't."

  • Emerson Dameron says:

    Back when it was less sincerely far-right and more anarchic and fun, 4chan used to be notorious for this sort of "brigading." Too many examples to list, but there's a great book called Hacker Hoaxer Whistleblower Spy that catalogs its earlier history.

    Reddit used to have a game wherein hundreds of users would flood some nobody's unwatched YouTube video with upvotes, comments, and views. A user broke it when he sent them to a friend's video and pocketed his share of the ad profits.

  • Rick Wayne says:

    Wisconsin held a contest to determine the replacement for "America's Dairyland" on our license plates. The runaway winner was "Eat Cheese or Die".

    Guess what we've got, to this day, on the plates.

    Oh, and the kids who voted to name their school Springfield Elementary.

    (Sorry if dupes but can only see a couple of the comments. Also, hi from my niece Glory, who praises your intellectual talents in terms that should make you blush.)

  • MR Bill says:

    I'm always late to the party, but: back in '79, when I was at Emory Univ. there was a student move to rename the intramural teams from the bland "Emory Eagles" (Emory University "the Harvard of Dekalb Co.", has remained undefeated in football, and indeed all collegiate sports, by not having teams). The student choice, "the Rats" (lab rats, with a little test tube, drawn by David Kurtzman, Harvey Kurtzman of "Little Annie Fannie" fame, who was then in Dental School) was…sandbagged by the Administration of the college…

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