In the past week or so, I've heard quite a bit about www.votefortheworst.com which is a site devoted to encouraging people to vote for the most terrible person left on American Idol, which they have decided is Sanjaya. (I'd have to agree.) But the question we should be asking is: do they actually make a difference? I've looked, but I can't find anyone willing to make a guess as to how many votes VFTW thinks they're influencing. I believe Ryan mentioned that there were 28,000,000 votes last week. That is, on average, 2.3 million votes per contestant. If you can get more than 2.3 million votes, you have to be safe, because you are above average. Obviously the good ones are going to hog most of those votes, leaving the median lower than 2.3 million, and moving the cut off lower yet.
Just to throw some numbers out there, assume the vote totals from last week (in millions) were: 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0.6, 0.4. If I've done my math right, that does sum to 28. The median is 2 and obviously you need to get about 0.5 to not be eliminated. If VFTW.com is able to influence a few hundred thousand votes, they may very well be able to save someone (Sanjaya) from elimination.
But the only overall effect this will have is to save Sanjaya from elimination for a few weeks. Why? Because each week, VFTW.com would need to influence more and more votes in order to make an effect. Let's assume that voting totals don't decline, but raise slightly as the season goes on. (Once the truly terrible people are gone, people [like me] start to get worried that they're favorite needs the help and start voting more.) So if we fast forward to when there are 6 remaining contestants, and 35 million votes, the average number of votes has risen to nearly 6 million. Let's say the voting breakdown at that point is something like: 11, 9, 6, 4, 3, 2. Now that last place singer needs on the order of a million 'extra' votes to make an effect. In order to have that effect, we'd have to assume that roughly 3% of all votes placed come from VFTW, which I think is highly unlikely.
Conclusion: The American people are numerous enough that it's hard to effect the AI voting process for long. Sanjaya might stick around for another few weeks, but that's what the mute button is for.
1 comment:
VFTW's goal is to prolong the entertainment value connected to watching pathetic performances. IMO, this ceases to have ANY entertainment value when the competition gets real. Right now, there are a few "fluff" contestants left to where people like Sanjaya can get votes, but once people like Chris R, Haley, and Stephanie are gone, VFTW will have lost almost all influence.
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