For those that don't know, a twihard is someone with love for all things Twilight. They love it. They love it hard. Some might say too hard, but I'm not here to judge. I'll let the twihards speak for themselves (below). I just run a movie website. Hopefully it attracts movie fans who like to talk, think and perhaps even over-analyze films.
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My love for films is showcased every year with The Scorecard Review Movie Awards. It gives you a chance to rate/score every film you've seen (that matters) in the past year. Yes, my team of writers and a couple of friends come up with every nomination. They're my awards, I nominate the characters, actors and films that make the most sense. Then I let my readers decide.
There is one problem. Honesty. It's expected. Trusting an individual is pretty easy. Trusting a group of twihards is apparently asking too much. Let me make this point clear ... it's any fan group that becomes the issue. This easily could have happened with an Avatar fan page, or maybe even the Potter clan, but it didn't. It happened because of the damn twihards.
A former coworker and wonderful person named Sara runs Novel Novice and Twilight Novel Novice. She made this banner for the awards for me.
Nice. Perfect. Sara also thought other Twilight fans would like to vote for the TSR Movie Awards. You see, I also nominated Twilight: New Moon for some awards. Specifically ...
"Best Blockbuster," "Best Music," "Best Action Hero" (for both "Jacob Black" and "Edward Cullen"), "Best Ending," "Best Visual Special Effects," "Best Screenplay (Adapted)," "Best Actress - Kristen Stewart," and "Actress of the Year - Kristen Stewart."
You might be thinking ... but The Twilight Saga: New Moon shouldn't win any of those categories. You're (probably) right. But that's not the only point to the TSR Movie Awards. I like knowing who gets second, third ... even last. Plus, the film made a bunch of money. People saw it. Why shouldn't they be allowed to have an opinion on it?
Last year, 823 people voted. It was a record. No problems. This thing started 8 years ago, with me emailing an excel spreadsheet off to my friends and family. I think we had 34 the first year. I was hoping this would be the year we hit four digits.
After just a few days, we have about 150 voters. Well on our way to a record year. Then it happened. The votes starting pouring in.
February 16, a date that will live in infamy to ... well, me. I was tracking my stats, and noticed people finding the TSR Movie Awards from
http://www.examiner.com/x-4908-Twilight-Examiner http://www.twilightlexicon.com http://www.newmoonmovie.org http://cullenboysanonymous.com Beyond those, it hit Twilight fan sites in the UK, Indonesia and many, many in Spanish.
On February 16, I had over 2,000 voters. Then I looked at the results. Everything Twilight was nominated for, was destroying the competition. Destroying. Something had to be done. It was a hostile takeover. I ran some filters and noticed a couple of things.
1. A number of voters were only voting for Twilight and nothing else. Well, that's not entirely true. Anna Kendrick from Up in the Air for Best Supporting Actress was getting a perfect 10 as well. Yet these voters weren't voting for Up in the Air for anything else. Not even Vera Farmiga was getting votes.
2. A large number of voters were giving everything Twilight a 10 and everything else a 1. I even created a couple of fake movies, such as Not In This Room for Funniest. And since my dog's name is Austin, I figured Austin Comes Home for Best Music fit just fine. I was wrong. These people hated these movies.
3. Moon was crushing everything else for Best Ending. Keep in mind this is a film barely anyone saw, yet hundreds were voting for it. I think it did $1.5 million at the box office. My best guess as to why this was happening ... Remember when I said the awards appeared on many Spanish websites? I think they recognized the word Moon and decided that must be The Twilight Saga: New Moon. When Moon was the ONLY film hundreds voted on for Best Ending, it's the most reasonable explanation.
If 2000 twihards vote, along with 200 movie fans ... that sucks, but that's life. If twihards attack, killing all other film's chances I have to do something.
I decided to quickly remove all Twilight nominees.
That's when the hate started coming. I actually had Twilight Examiner (Amanda Bell) contact me for an official statement.
Here's what I said --
"I run The Scorecard Review … Unfortunately, I had to remove 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' choices. Too many twihards were giving everything Twilight a 10, and every other film a 1, trying to manipulate the results.
I love movies, movie fans and I have no problem with people loving Twilight, but trying to kill other movies is not the point of these awards. It was a difficult choice, as I love the attention the TSR Movie Awards have already received, but here is an example of what was happening ...
In the BEST MUSIC category, Twilight had a 9.3 score. The next highest was Crazy Heart with a 3.8. That was the next highest! In other words, there were hundreds of twihards who decided the best way for Twilight to win was to give the other nominees a 1.
I apologize to all the Twilight fans who took time, and now don't have the opportunity to vote for the film they love.
Here's a side note … Edward was beating Jacob in BEST ACTION HERO/VILLAIN/SUPERHUMAN. It's pretty funny actually. Edward had the most first place and last place votes. But officially, Team Edward was in the lead."
Then, Bell decided to add some commentary of her own - "In my opinion, the decision was strange." That's it. The hate mail starting coming after that.
Here's a couple of my favorites ...
From Raquel - Lamentablemente sus sistema de valoración es subjetiva por lo que RESULTA UNA VOTACIÓN NO CONFIABLE, NINGÚN GANADOR SERA REAL, debido a una sola razón LOS VOTANTES SON FANS, NO CRÍTICOS DE CINE, por lo tanto LA DESCALIFICACION ES ABSURDA E INVALIDA. LA CONFIABILIDAD DE SU PREMIACIÓN HA SIDO PUESTA EN DUDA DEBIDO A SU FALSA E INCOHERENTE DECISIÓN DE SACAR A TODO LO QUE TIENE QUE VER CON NEW MOON Y AL PROCESO DE VOTACIÓN MAL DISEÑADO. NO HAY SUSTENTO EN SU RAZONES
I, um ... Yeah, I don't speak Spanish.
From Aashita
This so not fair... New moon deserves to be in the nominations... u cant just delete them... even though there were ppl who were not voting fairly, there were also ppl who were voting fairly... A lot of twilight fans really wanted to see New Moon win awards and u took that away frm us...
This seems to me the main issue at hand. Twilight fans want to see Twilight win awards. They think that if they control the voting, manipulate the results, and force a win ... they'll feel rewarded. Morons.
From Leticia
Es realmente absurdo defender un ese proceso de votación que no tiene ningún sustento fiable, ¿por que? Es un proceso abierto a una comunidad de internautas que no suman diez personas si no miles o millones. Si se planea de esa forma creo que lo mas COHERENTE es no asignar una puntuación o calificación, las escalas valorativas son mas atinadas para grupos pequeños donde se tiene un mayor control de las puntuaciones y estableciendo criterios de valoración para este tipo de concursos o competencias pienso que si tenían la idea de premiar de esa forma hubieran elegido un jurado de CRÍTICOS DE CINE y ESTABLECIDO CRITERIOS PARECIDOS A LOS DE LOS OSCAR.
Otra opción es el registro como lo hace MTV o los kids choice. (1 VOTO POR REGISTRO) ACA NO SE TRATA DE VALORAR LA MORALIDAD DE LOS FANS. ¿Y QUE HAY DE LOS QUE SIENDO FANS DE OTRAS ESTRELLAS O PELICULAS HICIERON LO MISMO? PERO COMO FUERON MINORIAS NO SE EXPONEN?
ES LAMENTABLE QUE SEA SU OCTAVA PREMIACION Y NO TENGAN LA EXPERIENCIA DE DISEÑAR UN BUEN SISTEMA DE VOTACIÓN Y LO QUE ES PEOR QUE LE HECHEN LA CULPA A CIERTO GRUPO DE FANS PARA NO ASUMIR SU PROPIA RESPONSABILIDAD.
EL PROCESO ESTA DAÑADO DESDE EL PRINCIPIO BASADO EN ESTE SISTEMA QUE ESTABLECIERON NO HABRÁ UN GANADOR REAL EN NINGUNA TERNA, LOS RESULTADOS FINALES NO SERÁN CONFIABLES.
LA DECISIÓN DE SACAR A NEW MOON DE LA COMPETENCIA ES TOTALMENTE ERRADA, RIDÍCULA Y SIN FUNDAMENTO.
SERIA MAS CONFIABLE SI HUBIERAN CAMBIADO EL FORMATO DE VOTACIÓN, AUNQUE LO MEJOR SERIA QUE SIENDO LA EMPRESA QUE ES LO HUBIERAN PUESTO A PRUEBA PRIMERO Y VALORAR LOS PRO Y LOS CONTRA DE SU DISEÑO DE VOTACIÓN Y SE AHORRARÍAN EL ENOJO DE MUCHOS FANS DESPUÉS DE 8 AÑOS DE ANTIGÜEDAD EN ESTO.
Again, what makes you think I know Spanish?
From Stefanie - HOW DARE YOU UN-NOMINATE THE TWILIGHT-SAGA: NEW MOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You guys wouldn't do that to another movie!!! Just because Twilight has A LOT of followers so to speak, it doesn't give you the right to un-nominate the movie! It is a GREAT movie and it DESERVES all the prices it gets!!!!
Yes, it does deserve "prices." Don't you love when a typo negates any possible argument a person tries to make.
From Hannah - hey buddy hows it going? oh me? freaking sucktacular actually! where do you come off removing new moon?? thats just stupid! of course twihards are gonna do that were obsessive! go suck a cow nipple dumbutt!
I have never been told to suck a cow nipple. But I'm now adding it to my lexicon.
From Victoria -
why???? why did u remove new moon? people like it they can give whatever score to others they want!!! you better put it back up or else you'll have a LOT of twihards and fangirls screaming at you and not going on here anymoer!!
Victoria. I implore you to hate my website and never come back. In fact, please spread your gospel as far as your 12-year-old (just a guess) voice will carry.
And my personal favorite ...
From Taynara Segurado
Bloody Hitlers!
U suck! u are Nazis dictating what people should or should not like! i hope your event goes really bad and i hope u have protesters outside it giving u hell!
This is the stupidity I am up against. Taynara and others thought Robert Pattinson would be coming to my house to receive his award. There's no event. There's no big "win" for a film or actor. It's something I do for fun.
Need more insanity? There's more comments here, here and here (the last one has 151 comments).
So what did I do? I sacrificed the original, competent voters and deleted the entire awards. Then I waited for the twihards to lose interest. I thought it might take a couple weeks, since they were so upset on Tuesday and Wednesday. I over-estimated the attention span of twihards. It took three days for them to completely forget about the TSR Movie Awards.
I put the awards back up. Sara (who I hold no ill will toward at all) was nice enough to make another banner for me ...
Notice anything different? Yeah, no more Jacob, Edward and Bella.
We didn't hit four digits this year, but we had a strong showing thanks to ...
Fatboy Roberts Eric D. Snider Erik Childress
They helped spread the love, and were able to get actual movie fans vote. How do I know people took it seriously? Not one person voted for Austin Comes Home. It was a good year. I learned an important lesson. I hate twihards. Especially when they attack.
Want to vote in the TSR Movie Awards next year? Become a FAN on our TSR Facebook Page.