Talk:Tumblr Bug Race 2023

The poll lasted 24 hours

I don't know if anyone besides me is going to want a citation on that, but here's a screencap proving it: Ask sent by quillmasblog to crankyteapot, ^{Archived version}. -- Quaelegit (talk) 03:18, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Bug Race's popularity due its "narrative"/"framing" as a race

While previous polls were more in line with traditional poll usage of asking a question and receiving answers (think "Which character would win in a fight?"), Bug Race gave Tumblr users specific factions to root for and framed the poll as a race instead, which likely helped with its popularity. The poll amassed almost 170,000 votes before closing, with 🐛 (bug) winning.

This passage, from flyingthesky's edit, seems true to me, but there's more to it. It's hard to reconstruct now almost 5 months later, but while i think most of the inital polls posted in that first day or two of the feature being rolled out were doing the traditional poll thing of getting answers about a question there were a few others that played with the format -- e.g. this one trying to make the result 50-50 split between the two voting otptions, and then later getting into the "boyfriend vs. tsunami" and that one blog that did all the broken polls (I think it was this one but TODO double check). My impression is that Bug Race was one of the first to do clear do something that wasn't a question-answer thing with the format. I think Reilee's guess that the "race" framing helped the popularity too -- there was so much fanart & memes of people casting themselves as audience at a racetrack, or voters in an election, or the winners with gold medals. I speculate that it may have also helped jog the popularity of other "not-question asking polls" (the boyfriend-tsunami, "form an F", more stuff discussed in this Verge article, tbh there's a lot more), although I don't think Bug Race was solely or directly to most of it. Like, people would have been playing with the new feature anyways. Just (maybe) the popularity and excitement around Bug Race made more people want to do more races, games, "story" stuff like that, perhaps? However I think most of htis stuff is outside the purview of the Bug Race article, and probably outside the purview of Fanlore. I'm still working on these thoughts and how to express any of this on the page, but I need to restart my computer so saving this on the talk page for now. -- Quaelegit (talk) 04:14, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

here's another newer one: Let’s make a floor plan for a house! How much space should we dedicate to each room? Vote to make a room larger. by woolandflax on May 27. -- Quaelegit (talk) 07:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

May 1st: first example (that I've seen) of Tumblr polls being used in fandom "incorrect quote" screenshot jokes. -- Quaelegit (talk) 04:19, 16 June 2023 (UTC)