American Idol 4: Voting for the Worst Just Doesn’t Work

When Constantine was sent packing a few weeks ago, there was an uproar. Message board participants and eventually the national media picked up on the idea that he was sent home because of the efforts of websites that called on people to vote for the worst contestant.

Mind you, by blaming that site they had to ignore the fact that Constantine was not only beaten by Scott, but by every other contestant as well. But that was apparently beside the point as far as they were concerned. It was much more interesting to talk about how much influence these anti-Idol websites supposedly had.

I have already addressed why Constantine’s loss was not shocking, but still some people blame these websites. It’s time to look at some reality, though.

The main website in question was pretty obscure as far as the average Idol viewer was concerned. Remember that those people who read about Idol on the Web is a small percentage of overall viewers; those who participate in message boards is an even smaller percentage of that group; those who knew about that site is a smaller percentage still.

After Constantine lost, all the articles in the media blaming, or at least referencing, that site drew more attention for them than they had ever had. In fact, it brought so many people that the site temporarily went down due to a traffic overload!

And what happened the following week? Scott lost. Yes, Scott, who this site had been promoting, received the fewest votes. So if this site was so responsible for keeping Scott around while Constantine left, how did they lose their magic powers when they had a much bigger audience than ever before?!

After Scott left, the site picked a new “worst” and encouraged people to vote for him. That person was Anthony. What happened the following week? Anthony was sent home.

So the site that so many people thought had so much power has been 0 for 2 since getting a big media boost and expanding their audience by several orders of magnitude.

And some people wonder why I never gave them any “credit” to begin with.