Disclaimer: This may or may not actually be true. So please don’t flame me for dissemination if it ends up being debunked. But I just have to rant, now.
I just heard that the producers of American Idol are getting bodyguards, or at least one, for John Stevens this week, and beyond, however long it takes for him to get voted off. Apparently, the level of hatred has risen to the point where people are threatening to go Jeff Gillooly on his ass.
Can’t they get a fucking grip?! It is a singing competition! A fucking reality TV show! I didn’t even think the Olympics were worth kneecapping somebody, and this sure the fuck isn’t! If you don’t like him, throw darts at his picture or something! But this is getting way out of hand.
What am I saying, “getting”. If it is true, of course. But the fact that people are even talking about someone, sixteen or not, being physically attacked for the crime of not being the world’s best singer, and having a hardcore fan following despite that, is simply fucking disgusting.
Hell, how did Clay Aiken manage to escape this threat?
It’s ridiculous how serious the fans of this show can get. I mean, I like Hobbit-boy, too, and think he should certainly have lasted longer than this love child of Carrot-top and Howdy Doody, but physical threats are way too far.
Well, JPL was one thing. Just as many people were happy to see him go as mourned his departure. And quite a few opined that they didn’t care which of the Jo[h]ns went, as long as one of them did. But this week, people are outraged about the results, and specifically and repeatedly blaming JS for “stealing” the Three Divas’ votes.
Oh, I could go on all day about the politics of it, and who’s supposedly voting for who, and who has to do what to stay in/get voted off. But now I’m getting creeped out. This used to be fun: a game show in which the viewers could participate. Now it’s turned nasty, like being ringside at the Roman Coliseum.
On preview: Tremmie, a lot of people are “powervoting” for JS: hitting redial on his number for the entire two hours that the lines are open. People who like(d) other contestants weren’t motivated to dial as many times (and many of Ms. Hudson’s fans simply couldn’t, this week, due to a tornado-related power outage in Illinois). So JS got a large enough vote total to put him at least in fourth place, even if fewer individual people voted for him.
I said in another thread that when I voted on Tuesday, I honestly thought that I and JS’s other fans had to vote that many times just to keep him out of last place. I truly believed that the other contestants had enough fans, whether or not they were as dedicated as we were, to garner them greater vote totals. (And that’s given rise to a backlash against the backlash, with people saying “Well, if you love [other contestant] as much as we love John, do for them what we do for him! If there are so many more of you!”)
So what we have is six contestants who have large fanbases comprising people who only vote a few times, don’t vote at all, or couldn’t vote because they were in the northwest corner of their basement, versus one contestant who has a small fanbase, but that composed of people who are devoted enough to vote hundreds of times. This may or may not lead to a reworking of the voting system. It may also be a death knell for AmIdol 4.
Apparently some people actually use autodialers so they don’t even have to hit the redial button, just let a machine keep dialing for them. Personally, I think one vote per phone line would at least even things out. It’s not like almost everyone doesn’t have multiple phone lines, between land and cell phones. But it would certainly lessen some of this kind of crap.
Whether he’s sixteen or thirty-six, it’s still wrong. It shouldn’t mean this much to people. I don’t like it when it happens in sports, and I don’t like this.
And I’m not just upset because he’s my favorite. In fact, I think it might hit me harder if it was someone I dislike being threatened, because that would cause me to reexamine my feelings about that contestant. As it is, though, I’m just hoping that some day he’ll be able to look back at this and say, “Man, that was a fucked-up scene!” (If that word’s even in his vocabulary…)
What these people don’t realize is that if the people voted off are that frigging good, they’ll have a record contract next week!
Watching the last Apprentice show I said to my wife, “It doesn’t really matter who gets it, because tomorrow the one that lost will have Fortune 500 CEO’s lined up at his door.” I’ll bet my house that Kwame has an exec level job before May 1st.
Man, that poor kid. I was perturbed about the voting. My favorite singer got the boot and the whole bottom three was wrong but I never had anything against John S. and I definitely never would have thought to blame him for anything. Obviously people like him and if he really has that dedicated a following then AI will have accomplished its goal of finding a “pop idol” if he wins. The goal is to eventually sell CDs and if he sells CDs, he’s a pop star.
Anyone who would threaten this kid over something like this is a complete psycho tool and the hostility itself makes me want to pull for him even though I don’t think he’s performed well on the show. (I like his voice and I like him, I just think he needs more seasoning and a couple of more years to be a professional level performer).
You know, when I started this thread, I was under the impression that the “threats” were along the lines of throwing eggs or something. But now it’s gotten to where, even if the comment quoted below was made in jest, it is a very sick joke. This needs to fucking stop.
:smack: :mad: