#and if i can do that through a silly little tournament then thats what ill do

[uncharismatic-fauna]

I'm trying very hard to come up with a constructive way to say these polls have been more of a source of frustration and annoyance than fun. It's not that you've done anything wrong, tumblr is just the wrong place for this I think. Tumblr users are ignorant at best of basic geography and biology concepts more often than not. Sitting through a month of confidently incorrect "propaganda" from people has been maddening. Most of these match-ups have had one objectively correct answer and people are still getting it wrong, making it into a popularity contest even though every post has said it's not that. It's become the only thing you post, too, which is upsetting because that's not the content I followed you for. If you do it again maybe make a new sideblog for it?

First of all, thank you. I do appreciate your input! Constructive criticism and suggestions are always welcome here.

I can try running a sideblog for the tournament ext year, although I will say that running this blog (even without the tournament) is already fairly time consuming, especially on top of grad school and a full time job, and I'm not quite sure i could juggle two blogs on my own. I'm sorry if the polls have been a nuisance-- I've tried to keep up with the Uncharismatic Fact of the Day, as I'm aware not everyone wanted to participate. I've also been tagging the polls themselves so that people can blacklist them as they like; unfortunately I can't do much about other people's posts.

I'd disagree that most people are choosing the winner based on popularity; I've seen some rousing arguments in the replies, and most of the tags are full of people reasoning out why they chose who they did. In general I'd say that the winners have been largely consistent with who "should" win (although I'll also say that "should" is subjective; for example, in the official tournament i believe the northern elephant seal should've won, but the simulated competitions bore a different outcome).

Nevertheless, be assured that the tournament is quite literally less than a day from being complete, and then we will return to our regularly scheduling programming.