By Chris Ryall
April 11, 2005
An odd thing happened this past week. I was running a contest here, for a fun movie-related book called BASED ON A TRUE STORY, a book that looked at the reality behind movies based on real events. Our contests here usually get a solid response, especially the ones that give away DVDs of books. But this one... this one was a different stratosphere.
For a week straight, not a day went by that I didn't have over a hundred, and sometimes double that, entries in my inbox. Now, in all fairness to entrants, it was easier than most of our contests--I usually require some sort of effort beyond just sending an e-mail. In this case, here are the specifics of the contest itself:
The question: WHICH ONE OF THESE STORY POINTS FROM THE MOVIE "BRAVEHEART" IS ACTUALLY TRUE?
A. The British really did invoke the policy of Prima Nocte, giving them authority to rape Scottish brides on their wedding day
B. The French-born Isabella, Princess of Wales, really did enter into a torrid affair with William Wallace
C. William Wallace was really disembowled and beheaded in front of cheering crowds
All you had to do was enter was send me the correct response in the body of an e-mail. Which meant sending an e-mail with nothing more than the letter "C" typed into the message. So it wasn't the most taxing of contests, which usually ensures even more respondents. But still, the thousand-plus entries were notable for more than just the sheer number.
I noticed this maybe Tuesday--the contest went live last Monday--and what I saw was that the women entrants far outnumbered the guys. At first, I was pretty happy to see this--normally, the split is maybe 90/10 in guys' favor. But then on Wednesday, when the percentage stayed the same--20 entries from a female for every one from a male--I started to wonder what else was going on.
Nearly all of these female entries were from people whose names I didn't recognize, another fact that got me wondering. It's possible that this site suddenly picked up hundreds and hundreds of new female readers (most of whose entries were all in a pink script font), but not bloody likely. I mean, we gave away THE INCREDIBLES on DVD the week prior, and that one, which is potentially more appealing to everyone, wasn't this well-attended. So... what was up?
I did some poking around, and found that almost all of these female entries, the pink-font ones, came through a couple different online sweepstakes sites. Places that just post various site contests and their ending date.
By Sunday last week, I was thoroughly annoyed with all these entries. I'm all for contests being open to everyone, but I felt like the chances for longtime or loyal readers, people who actually like this site and don't just troll it for free swag, to win were decreasing exponentially with all of these sweepstakes entries. I was actually sitting and watching the entries come in fast and furious on Sunday night, up to like 11:55 PM. I was just waiting for that entry that showed at 12:01 so I could send them a DENIED e-mail in return. It never came--the entries ended at the exact minute that the contest ended. Crazy. So I'm not sure how this one got posted at these other sites as it is, but I suppose that's something else to deal with as we do more of these. I suppose I'll just have to make sure the contests require more than just a single typed letter to enter.
Speaking of that letter, I probabl trashed three dozen or more entries that just sent along their name only, but not their guess as to the contest specifics. I made this one pretty easy, but evidently not everyone actually read the entire thing. Ah, well. That's where we'reat. The even weirder part of all of this is that the winners, chosen completely at random, seemed to all be regular readers of the site. Weird how that worked. The winners for this one were:
THE WINNERS:
Robert Meeker, Warren, OH
Jennifer Hunter, Evans, CO
Jason Brown, Cross Lanes, WV
Bryan K. Ward, Pittsburgh, PA
Vikram Weet, Los Angeles, CA
As we approach our three-year anniversary at the site (June 17), I've been really happy that our content has gone unchanged for so long, that the contributors have all been here for the long haul and really offered such constant, solid contributions every week.
But the nature of these sites is change, and finding ways to stay fresh. One way we're going to do that is through a new weekly comic strip that's starting this week.
Maybe you've seen the little image in the sidebar. But starting this Thursday is a new strip called ENCHANTED MAYHEM, by writer P.D. DeBerry and artist J.D. Cunard.
The strip fits in nicely alongside things like Jeff Stevenson and Seth Damoose's Tuesday strip, BRAT-HALLA. In fact, it's a nice sort of "sister strip" to that comic about the Norse gods as schoolkids.
ENCHANTED MAYHEM is the story of an evil witch named Kalico, who was feared by all throughout the land. Until the one day when the equally powerful Princess Moog ruined it all by turning her into a 13-year-old. Now she has the same problems all 13-year-olds have--she gets no respect from adults. With the help of catnip-addicted cat named Tofer, Kali goes looking for respect... and a chance to get back at Moog for turning her into a bratty kid. Hope you like!
I also hope you've noticed the return of Derek Miner's CRITICAL MESS, too. The place just didn't feel the same without him. Just click on the poster image in the sidebar each week for the latest in real reviewer quotes that might not quite make it into newspaper ads.
There's another new image in the sidebar, too, a book called SUPERHEROES AND PHILOSOPHY, which has names of comic pros like Mark Waid, Jeph Loeb and Denny O'Neil on it, along with myself and COMICS 101's Scott Tipton. But I'll tell you a bit more about that one next week...
/chris
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