Ok
time for the fun stuff!
As far as the contest goes nothing is official until the winner is announced on the radio tomorrow, but Im pretty sure we got this.
I promised y'all an update on the craziness of this weekend so here goes. Also gaf:
PLEASE DO NOT GO ON THE THINK KITCHENS PAGE OR THE 2ND PLACE PEOPLES WALL AND START POSTING COMMENTS REGARDING WHAT IM ABOUT TO DISCLOSE TO YOU. K? We are trying to keep things classy and we dont want to look like assholes in victory. Thanks, appreciate it.
I don't even fucking know where to begin, and I know this post will probably be a big sloppy mess. Ive been up for the past 72 hours straight living off adrenaline, coffee and cigarettes, so let's just start with some screenshots and go from there. This is going to be a long post, so the didn'treadlol crowd might want to beat it now.
Now take a look at these facebook profiles and tell me if you don't notice anything funny.
Pay particular attention to the profile pics, and the activity: HINT- the pages that these profiles liked as well as the exact time that they liked these pages.
Benny Bradley:
http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?
id=100003474301580&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970
Spencer Hudson :
http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003456473169&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970
Cecile Uragafb:
http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003391202255&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970
Juanita Schmidt:
http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003457161419&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970
Edward George:
http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003320771501&ref=pb&__user=100003766313111
Christopher Joseph:
http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003333040748&ref=pb&__user=100003766313111
Etc. etc. etc.
Since this past Friday night I documented and archived over 550 facebook accounts just like these, that voted for the Williams kitchen just over this past weekend.
Here is how it all went down.
On Friday morning I woke up and checked the status of the contest. The Williams had 908 votes and we had 1,558. We were leading by almost 650 votes with only 3 days left to go.
We figured that we pretty much had it in the bag and that we could just coast until the end of the contest. I mean, it's pretty much impossible to get 650 people to legitimately vote for you over a weekend after you've already exhausted your family, friends, friends of friends, etc. Right?
But something very odd was posted that caught my attention.
I was reading the comments on the Williams' photo on Friday and noticed that she posted "we were in the lead forever but it's been a struggle to keep up. Keep your fingers crossed
"
Kind of an odd comment for someone facing an insurmountable deficit with a very short time left to go, no? This struck me as suspicious and led me to believe that she was up to something, so I started obsessively monitoring the activity on their photo.
So Friday night rolls around and I'm out with some bros. I am checking the Williams' votes in a very OCD manner, refreshing like every 5 or 10 minutes on my iphone. Here's where shit got cray.
I check at 1:40am and they are still at 908. I refresh the page at 1:45am and my jaw dropped when I saw that they jumped from 908 to 1,081 in the 5 minutes since I last refreshed.
A jump of 173 votes in a 5 minute timespan? Oh fuck no.
I immediately rushed home and got right on the computer, and started looking into who these 173 mystery voters were. I uncovered a gold mine.
Not only did I find several accounts with identical profile pictures but different names and locations,
but here was the real kicker: every single one of these 173 voters liked Think Kitchens, the Williams Kitchen and the same 5 or so other pages at the exact same time, precisely to the minute at 1:42am
It would be literally impossible for 173 microworkers to like 5 pages all at exactly the same time.
This could only mean one thing: these likes were all computer generated!
I spent the entire night copying and pasting the links to these profiles and screenshotting each one just in case tracks were going to be covered.
This happened several more times over the weekend. Here is a Timeline:
Friday night/Saturday morning at 1:42am: Jump from 908 to 1081
a leap of 173 votes in a 1-2 minute timespan.
Saturday morning at 8:45am: Jump from 1,081 to 1,187
a leap of 106 votes in a 1-2 minute timespan
Saturday night/Sunday Morning at 1:41am: Jump from 1,187 to 1,362
a leap of 175 votes in a 1-2 minute timespan
By Sunday morning, that 650 vote lead that we started the weekend with, had been reduced to less than 200. A couple of more attacks from that computer vote-spammer and we would lose.
I spent the entire weekend frantically documenting all of the evidence. Copying the links to the profiles, organizing profiles with identical photos, screen-shotting profiles and so on. Didnt eat, didnt sleep, just archived evidence.
By Sunday morning I had recorded over 550 fake computer generated facebook accounts, links and screenshots that had voted for the Williams at exactly the same time depending on the batch.
I decided to go a step further in my evidence gathering, and managed to discover the specific company that they bought likes from.
I did this by clicking on the facebook page of one of the artists that these computer-generated spam votes were liking and contacting the owner of the page. I made up a contrived story about how I am starting a business in Canada and asked if he could share a link to the company that he bought likes from. Have a look below:
I then contacted Turia Media trying to get direct confirmation from them that the Williams did indeed buy likes from their company. I was emailed back and the person didnt deny it, but made some sort of vague statement saying Could you please send me a link to the specific one youre referring to? We work with a very large amount of people, so I dont remember every individual one!
I sent him the link and he never replied back after that (still hasn't). Shortly after, I noticed that clicking on the links of a few of the fake profiles that were working perfectly fine before; would start re-directing to weird places and couple even re-directed to a photo of our kitchen! What the fucking fuck?
Once I had gathered overwhelming and crushing evidence, certain people were contacted and certain events transpired which I wont discuss since this forum is open to the public, but lets just say it doesnt matter at this point anyways because we ended up with the most votes when the contest ended anyways xD
Alright I'm about to go fuck off and celebrate, maybe catch some much needed sleep. Talk to y'all tomorrow.