It has come to the Mercury‘s attention that someone has been stuffing the ballot box in the most recent round of our Cutest Pet Photo Contest. That’s right: Louie, the dog who looks like David Lynch, received a suspicious number of votes from the same IP address. Here’s what our tech support folks had to say about that:
Yeah, there is no way for us to know 100% for sure if it’s cheating, but there are a bunch of votes (~1000) coming from the same IP Address, which is definitely suspicious, but it could be someone who sharing a link around their office. We can exclude those votes if you think it’s appropriate.
We think it’s MORE THAN appropriate. We think it’s necessary! So, to be on the safe side, and to honor the honest participating pets, we are disqualifying Louie from further competition. His competitor, Chauncey, will advance to the next round by default.
This is not the first time concerns of this nature have been brought to our attention. The specter of cheating was mentioned last week, but our investigations at that point didn’t turn up any evidence of foul play.
We take cheating very seriously here at the Mercury, and future attempts to rig our competition will not be tolerated. Also, this is way more effort than we’d planned to put into a goddamn CUTE PET PHOTO COMPETITION, and also why we can’t have nice things.
You guys are being complete a-holes about this pet photo contest and Louie getting so many votes. His owner has A LOT of friends and family and we’ve shared the link over and over again to get votes. I guess the competitors cant take any other pet being cuter than theirs.. You’ve turned this cute little stupid pet photo contest into a bad horrible scandal just to cause drama and get more readers as the media usually does. You’ve publicly embarrassed his owner who has nothing but good intentions. You have no proof of cheating as you’ve mentioned. Also where exactly does it say in the voting page that no more than one vote per person??? Did you even talk to his owner? No you didn’t! You’ve made a mockery of this contest and your company and you should be ashamed of yourselves. All those votes he got are readers that you have now lost.
Reagan, with everything else in the world going swimmingly, I can see why you have decided to spend your time and outrage on a perceived injustice in a cute pet contest. Your sense of priorities is excellent.
It took me just as long as it did you to read my comment and write your own 👍 I have plenty of time for many priorities.
From the same IP address, though? Was there some super cool Louie voting party that I wasn’t invited to?