It started so innocently. An invitation to enter a contest to win all sorts of goodies to my beloved County Fair (just more 16 days!!!). Answer a question, post it on a website, ask your friends to vote for it (one vote per person), the person with the most votes after a week wins. Simple enough. You’d think. Good grief.
I posted my entry and then asked my Facebook friends to please vote for it. By the end of the first day, I had about ten times as many votes as anyone else and I was trying not to count my elephant ears before they were smothered in buttered cinnamon.
Then a friend…and then another…contacted me privately to tell me there was a way to easily get around the technology that limited the votes to one each. Curious, I tried it. Yep, sure enough – one more vote. Hmmm. Then a friend revealed yet another way to rack up votes. Curious, I tried it. One more vote. I asked the friend if it could be detected, these curious but nonetheless cheater votes. “Probably, but they wouldn’t bother to look unless you got something like 1000 votes all of a sudden.” Interesting information to ponder.
The folks running the contest were alerted by a fellow contestant (Sandy) that there was a glitch that seemed to be preventing votes. I had noticed the same thing. By the end of the second day, the glitch was fixed. And suddenly Sandy burst onto the scene, surpassing my comfy lead. Game on!!
And so I put out another plea on Facebook. More votes came in. I refreshed and refreshed and refreshed the screen. Sandy and I were neck-and-neck! I knew how to bump up my votes, but it wasn’t fair. But I knew how! But I shouldn’t. But I could! But it wasn’t right. But who would know?! But I would. And what sort of win would that be? I kept looking in my mirror, fully expecting to see a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other. The little angel was winning but the little devil kept whispering to me how much I like to win stuff.
Taking a deep breath and distracting myself on the high road, Sandy and I started conversing publicly on the organizer’s website, appreciating each other and the competition. And then around 9:00pm on the fifth night of the contest, Sandy posted to me: “Looks like you need to watch out for [SC]…who gained over 200 votes in a matter of minutes just now…” And again a half-hour later: “Make that 600 votes in 20 minutes…”
With over 1000 votes in a matter of hours, it looked like someone else’s little shoulder devil had won.
Sandy and I continued the public conversation, noting the technological loopholes and our resistance to exploiting them. The organizers joined our conversation with a thank you…both for the information and for the restraint. They promised to look into it.
And just like that, the balloon of fun had burst. The contest had seemingly been hijacked by a Cheater McCheaterpants (or her friends). I figured the organizers would cancel the contest. Game over. So sad. I stopped asking for votes. I stopped staring at the tally. I was proud for resisting the temptation and for knocking the little devil off my shoulder. Sandy didn’t seem to be soliciting any more votes either. Our tallies were mostly stagnant. Even SC’s.
I waited and waited for the organizers to reveal their plans. On Day 7, I sent a note to find out what was going on. It had suddenly occurred to me that instead of ditching the contest, they might just disqualify SC and therefore I might be losing precious time. The organizers got back to me with a “we don’t know yet.”
So with just about 36 hours left, I posted one last plea. I had been absolutely stunned a few days prior when several friends took it upon themselves to post my plea to their friends and ask them to vote for me. Suddenly friends of friends…virtual strangers…all over the country and possibly in two other countries…were casting a vote so that I could get some freebies to a fair they knew nothing about in a place they would struggle to find on a map. Figuring it was my one last honest tactic, I asked my Facebook friends if I could borrow theirs. “Ignore the person with 1000+ votes!” I kept typing. “My real competition is Sandy!” And over night, I was in a double-digit lead over Sandy!
That was the last I would look at the tallies. I had done all I was willing to do. I had bugged my patient friends enough. I had lost enough of my life to this silly thing. I was done. And so I eagerly awaited learning if I had finished first or second. Because, of course, SC would not win. That wouldn't be fair.
And with that foreshadowing, you know of course that SC did win. Or so it seems.
Two days after the end of the contest, I got a note from one of the organizers saying “another person won.” It went on to say that while they were suspicious of the results, they could not prove any wrongdoing. They were sorry, appreciated my participation, and had enjoyed watching me and Sandy duke it out.
I am only left to assume that SC won. Why they didn’t mention her by name, though, strikes me as odd. They mentioned Sandy by name. They also haven’t announced the winner as they promised they would on the entry form. I do hope, though, that if I came in third place, the organizers at least gave Sandy a few consolation goodies. Only seems fair.
It was a fascinating week. A goofy little contest that ended up consuming me. My competitive spirit got a great work-out. And I learned some new things about cookies and browsers. Frankly, I am disappointed that it appears a person (or her friends) cheated and got away with it. I am also disappointed that the organizers didn’t do more to extend some goodwill to both me and Sandy. Between the two of us, there are at least 400 people who now have a “that ain’t right!” story to tell. That’s not the sort of publicity anyone wants. But on the up side, I know I did the right thing. I played fair. I proved to myself that my desire to win is not for sale. And even more than that, I was blown away by the pure excitement, support, vicarious competitiveness, and down-right love my friends and family poured out on my behalf. “Another person won”? I’m not so sure.
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