On Kentucky Fans

The hallmarks of insecurity are overreaction and defensiveness. The UK fans who commented on my entry about them have both of them in spades. But I’m not going to provide any analysis… I’m just going to let their words speak and actions speak for themselves.

The Ladies did a lot of work to put this whole thing together. Having run some polls of varying magnitudes in the past, I know that it wasn’t easy. On top of that, it seemed like half of their favorite bloggers got knocked out early. While it was pretty clear that there was cheating going on, there was no evidence that it was The Ladies who were doing it. Despite that dearth of evidence, here are some comments that were left by UK fans when they found out that their buddy was losing:

• Rigged. Oh well. That’s what you’ve relegated this too. It’s ashame you can’t run a clean program.
• the fact that the margin bewteen the two scores stays exactly bewteen 270-272 makes it pretty apparent that the scores are being manipulated
• You Cheat Says: Well that’s shocking, I just viewed the poll and Matt Jones is losing by 271 votes.
• Defensive much? Stay classy, ladies! I mean, erm, keep rigging!
• It’s obviously fixed, but that’s cool….
• So why even have a contest if you’re just going to rig it the way you want it anyway….
• What’s the point of having a contest….. Says: ….if the results are rigged. . . .Lame
• Cheaters.. Says: You girls are probably all ugly anyway….
• what’s wrong is rigging your own contest
• 53.6 to 46.4 Says: Interesting percentages to choose, ladies - they sound the easiest to believe to you, or did you just throw together a couple of numbers close to 50 and hope no one would notice? Please, rigged to the moon, not like I care about a hot blogger contest, but I’m confused as to why you would rig your own contest?
• It is a sad day when someone has to fix the voting so that the UFS guy can win.
• Hey ladies, does that number sound familiar…You’ve been caught…nice try….but you’ve just tainted your whole contest. Shame, Shame, Shame on you.

Then things got really ugly in the vote. Both camps started mercilessly poll-stuffing. The complaints about Speaker’s “cheating” were responded to with “well, everyone’s cheating… so what?” and that elicited these three responses from UK fans:

• this actually is the first cheating round for uk.
• So, the UK fans cheated, but only when we realized we were being cheated by Up For Sports and Joe.
• Actually this is the first round that UK fans have cheated on.

This is, quite frankly, pretty absurd. I posted this in a comment:

I’m not arguing that Jones couldn’t have won most (or all) of the rounds he’s been in without “cheating”, as he clearly has a lot of readers, but the notion that there hasn’t been ANY vote stuffing from ANYONE in the UK camp yet is pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Go ahead and read that again. Especially this part: “I’m not arguing that Jones couldn’t have won most (or all) of the rounds he’s been in without ‘cheating’”

The fact that the UK folks were so defensive about it that they were arguing to the death about whether or not there was any “cheating” warranted a post of mine. More high-class Kentucky fans came out to play. Let’s have a look at some quotes:

• Your an idiot, quit kissing the ladies asses. Its like you think your gonna get some ass or something the way you continually give them props.
• This site sucks like donkey dic$#@! Yes Pete you are gay.
• I wonder if having your credibility snapped on your own blog is as humiliating as having the entire state of Kentucky laugh at your meritless effort.
• you are a talentless writer that can’t hack it in the mainstream. Not only that, you lie about the truth.

I also want to point out that Jones can’t really control his followers and isn’t responsible for their behavior. That said, it took him until the next day (when things had already calmed down) before he wrote anything about his readers’ treatment of The Ladies, which is a shame. He did encourage these sort of comments with regards to others, though, so he’s clearly not too bothered by it.

Anyway… the next time someone asks you who the classiest or most classless fans are in the SEC, this is a data-point for you to consider.