MySpace Tom Posted:

I’m not too convinced about the random haters being responsible for most unexpected -5’s. I had a couple enemy ideas this week that I thought were brilliant (for the record, YES WICCAN and Blessed Beyotch) but got axed within the first day. So I tried slight variations on both later in the week and pretty much the same thing happened. I still don’t have a good theory on why I overestimated their chances so poorly, especially since the first still makes me laugh, but I don’t think random downvoting can be blamed. Another enemy submission that I made at the same time as the first two is doing great – and it was the one I thought was going to die quickly and quietly!

In general, I think a useful way to analyze why a submission succeeded or failed is to keep in mind that the vast majority of voters are only giving things at most a few seconds consideration before voting. Any joke that takes more than a few seconds to appreciate is doomed, which means your references need to be very accessible (and you need to know your audience pretty well, of course). I have to admit that I’ve downvoted a couple items that didn’t “click,” only to get them later and wish I could go back and change my vote.

For the record, I upvoted both those names. Log in to see images!

I submitted blessed_bee with that bug picture, DefyingGravity, BloodSugarSexMagick, and HoodooVoodooYouDo almost immediately after the forum went up, and they all got immediately exploded. Now I just wish I hadn’t submitted them in the first place, because now my buildrscore’s gonna go down. Log in to see images! What was so ****ty about those, by the way? I’m agreeing with a bunch of people in this thread that yeah, I dunno how to improve.

Also, if anybody saw that post I submitted for God Hates Facts about telling a kid that since God made [vegetable] and she didn’t think God was gross, she didn’t think [vegetables] were gross- I was curious to see if that’d do well, cause that actually happened to me when I was a wee one.