MCYTBLR Sexyman Poll

Event
Event:	Mcytblr Sexyman Polls
Participants:	TheMinecraftBee, Antimony_Medusa, and others.
Date(s):	February 2, 2023 - February 16, 2023
Type:	Bracketed Contest
Fandom:	MCYT
URL:	Tumblr
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The MCYTblr Sexyman Poll was a seeded bracket meant to determine which Minecraft YouTuber (MCYT) should be considered the ultimate Tumblr Sexyman for the MCYT fandom. It was inspired by the popularity of the "Tumblr Sexyman" trope and by the then-recent addition of polls on tumblr.

General Timeline and Format

The MCYTblr Sexyman Poll was held by Antimony_Medusa and Second TheMinecraftBee among others. Medusa had previously been responsible for leading the MCYTBLR Holidays Exchange. There was a large moderator team, including FlowerOfLaurelin as a mod and an official artist for the bracket.

It was explicitly character focused rather than content creator (CC) focused in order to differentiate from Real Person Fiction (RPF). However, in order to combat the large variety of submissions, all characters of a specific creator were consolidated into one instance on the bracket.

The polls began as a request for people to submit nominations via a google form. These nominations were then sorted and collated, and then the numbers for each nominee were compared. In the end there were around 600-700 different characters nominated from 75+ different groups, projects, or SMP servers. There was a variety of character types--most were popular, standard characters played by known content creators, and others ranged from lesser known content creator characters, NPC characters, notable buildings or events in roleplays, or characters from general Minecraft lore. There was a variety of seriousness to nominations, with some being explained to be joke nominations.

A 64 character bracket was initially planned, but ultimately a 96 character bracket was decided upon due to the sheer amount of nominations. The bracket was set up using standard "seeding" algorithms, referencing the character's rank by number of nominations and using math programs to pair them in relatively even matches. The top 32 ranked characters were placed further in the bracket to start, giving less popular characters a chance to have the spotlight during the poll's first round.

Breaking Containment, Responses, and Other Sites

The polls did "break containment" (a term for when that is used to mean when a Tumblr thing has come to the attention of the creators it is based off of - or rather when there is acknowledgement that they have seen it), around the time of the start of the first round of polls. This was first (and mainly thereafter) by Zombie Cleo and BDoubleO100, who have connections with tumblr and are known to look through the tags at times, as well as being Youtube video creators in Hermitcraft SMP and the 3rd Life SMP Series. They both commented on the polls on twitter, the tone being overall humorous.

Other people that were on the list, that have made some acknowledgement of it so far, understanding that some may have seen and made no public post andywhere (incomplete):

Zombie Cleo, BDoubleO100, JoeHills, Ethoslab, DocM77, Scott SMajor, "Jimmy" SolidarityGaming, CaptainSparklez, Technoblade's Dad (Technodad) (Technoblade having passed away a year before), Philza, Aimsey, Ranboo, Quackity, ZloyXP, Keralis, SaintStarling, Clownpierce, Reddoons, Ashswag, VikingPilot and Legundo

Any information about "contaiment breaches" and such, submitted to the tumblr blog is tagged under "nominee updates".

Note that some of them, though not most, are quite "small" and some of them, small or large, are on tumblr themselves.

Responses varied from momentary discomfort in a few cases, to a lot of indifference, to active interest and "campaigning" on their own behalf. Often with a humorous tone.

Besides all this, the poll ended up discussed on Twitter and Reddit. Since a tumblr account is necessary to vote in tumblr polls some people made new accounts or used and opened old ones. Being seen at least on the reddits for r/technoblade, r/dreamteam2, and r/connoreatspants.

Unofficial Poll Counting

A site was also set up by glittering-world on tumblr to automatically get the data from the latest round of polls and display it on a different site in a way that was easier to read, with percentages, exact numbers of votes, and colored bars. This was found useful by many.

Alliances and Interactions

Particularly early on in the polls, in the earlier rounds that held more characters from "small" creators and servers - there was a fair amount of interaction or research and discovering new things. There were also sometimes discussion, trying out new forms of interacting, and collaboration or alliances forming. For instance, it became a thing to converse or create "propaganda" in the form of powerpoints or especially fanart.

And there were also alliances made. For example, one example was the Dominion - Lifesteal Alliance. It began to form between fans of Lifesteal SMP and Dominion SMP each of which had a few characters low on the brackets in the first round. An alliance started over a series of conversations on tumblr, and people from both fandoms agreed to coordinate their votes. We don't know how much of the overall fandoms, because the nature of tumblr makes knowing what's out there difficult. However, large chunks of both fandoms began to coordinate votes to vote for both fandoms. There began to be some fanfic and art made about this process. Because Branzy (from Lifesteal SMP) was up against VikingPilot (Dominion SMP) it was decided that VikingPilot "should" be voted for and against Branzy, to make the numbers and alliance work out. Fan art was made about that too. Including at least one collage of events from Branzy's canon in the Lifesteal SMP showing how he had experienced alliances, betrayal, and sacrifice, and making up a story of how he might have seen the events of the poll and his "sacrifice". People also began offering fan art or short fanfic to people from the other fandom in exchange for coordinating their votes.

There were also signs of people from the "ZIT" sub-fandom (Those interested in Zedaph, ImpulseSV, or Tango Tek) coordinating or making alliances with people from both the Dominion SMP fandom and the Lifesteal SMP fandom. Later there was a collaboration between the fans of Etho and Quackity "Ethogirls" and "Quackblr". There were also most likely other alliances, but it is very hard to see them unless you are part of them, or nearby. So any additional information would be welcome.

MCNN

Another group of fans, after the beginning of the polls set up MCNN (Minecraft CNN, riffing off the IRL news tv channel CNN). They set up a "stage" to look like a TV studio in minecraft, and began to film episodes in minecraft, overlayng their voices on top of the footage.

So far they have come up with a short, roughly 5 minute "News" episode for each round of the polls, giving an overview, commenting on fan activites, and commenting on any notable races, especially close races. They've also had interviews with creators who's characters are in the polls at least once, interviewing VikingPilot, and they would like to, and plan to, do more interviews.

They posted the videos first on Tumblr, and then on YouTube when they were able to.

Highest and Lowest Poll Numbers

The second highest two numbers of votes in a single event was the poll in Round 4 between Goodtimeswithscar (aka Scar) and Technoblade (Techno). Both are overall very popular, and Scar (and Grian, often paired with him) appear to generally be overall very popular on Tumblr. They both came within roughly a percentage point of eachother, being nearly 50/50. Scar ended up winning with about 500 extra votes, each received ~ 22,000-23,000 votes, for ~ 45,000 votes total. Later, there was poll between Joe Hills and Quackity that was another 50/50 split and had roughly 60,000 votes total. This was the largest single poll in the matchup. The final 7th round poll that decided the final "Winner" was between Goodtimeswithscar and Joe Hills with another 50/50 split, around 39,000 total votes, and with Joe hills winning with a difference of around ~150 votes. The lowest number of votes in a single event was for Ashswag's character (from Lifesteal SMP), which received just a bit under 1,000 votes. Though to note, to be there he still received enough nominations to make it into the top 96 characters.

(Ashswag made a joke about it later.)

Other Fan Creations and Activities

After the first round or so, people continued to offer small fanarts, short fanfics, or moodboards and image edits, for proof of voting in a way they asked for. It was also allowed to vote from secondary accounts and some did that. There also continued to be conversations, fanart, and powerpoint presentations made as "campaign" materials or "propaganda". People occasionally made fic or art covering the events of the polls as well. For example a set of short stories of each of the pairs of contestants in Round 4 (eight matchups total), meeting eachother.

MCYTblr Sexyman Poll Propaganda Archives

A Tumblr blog by the name of Mcytblr Sexyman Poll Propaganda Archives was set up by Tumblr user purpledragonss in order to record MCYT history through the archival of various forms of MCYTblr Sexyman Poll propaganda. This blog was also set up for the purpose of supporting fandom artists. At the time of writing, this blog has archived 14 forms of propaganda, such as digital art, traditional art and memes, amongst other forms. Over 100 propaganda pieces, supporting 32 contestants in the bracket, from 74 MCYT fans have been archived at the time of writing.

The propaganda was archived through reblogging. Each propaganda piece was tagged with the form of propaganda, for example powerpoints, the character the propaganda is supporting, for example JoeHills, and the fan who created the propaganda.

The blog also archives art that isn't propaganda, but still has to do with the MCYTblr Sexyman Poll.

Continuing Timeframe

The polls have seven rounds. The polls have gone up roughly at a pace of one per day, and on 2/10/2023 the Fourth Round was counted. However the mods have taken hours, and occasionally single days off to rest and recoup, - but at this time it is set to finish on the 16th of February. With the final 7th round poll on the 15th and a wrap up possibly on the 16th.

Demographics

The blog posted a series of demographic surveys polling the participants of the bracket. Most of these questions related to the bracket itself, but a few did focus on who was participating.

Which server do you main?:

• 64.1% said Hermitcraft
• 19.1% said Dream SMP
• 8.8% said Empires SMP
• 4.6% said another fandom
• 1.8% said Lifesteal SMP
• 1.2% said Mianite
• 0.4% said Dominion SMP

Age:

• 22.8% said 18-19
• 19.1% said 20-21
• 19% said 16-17
• 11.6% said 22-23
• 11.4% said they were under 16
• 6.2% said 24-25
• 3.6% said 26-27
• 2.9% said they were over 32
• 2.3% said 28-29
• 1.3% said 30-31

Location:

• 64.1% said North America
• 23% said Europe
• 5.2% said Oceania
• 4.4% said Asia
• 2.4% said South America
• 0.6% said Antarctica or At Sea
• 0.4% said Africa

When did you get into MCYT?:

• 19.4% said 2020
• 14.9% said 2011-2012
• 14.4% said 2013-2014
• 10.2% said 2009-2010
• 9.9% said 2021
• 9.1% said 2015-2016
• 9% said 2019
• 7.8% said 2017-2018
• 4.6% said 2022
• 0.6% said 2023

How much do you participate in MCYT fandom?:

• 38.7% said they were a regular participant but did not create fan content
• 31.2% said they occasionally check up on the fandom
• 18.2% said they are an active participant who creates fan content
• 7% said they were aware of the fandom but did not participate
• 3.2% said they were not a participant of the fandom
• 1.8% said they were a content creator