Michael Maggiacomo

Staff Writer

Last week, after completely botching the LeakyStars 2013 voting tabulation, mis-announcing the winners multiple times, mis-extending the voting and turning a blind eye to many very irritated participants, many of whom had waited many weeks for the voting process and tabulation, LeakyCon finally announced that they would allow all 6 (SIX) LeakyCon Portland contestants the chance to compete in June; not before doing their best to stifle irate contestants and their supporters by deleting and shutting down commenters on their official pages, etc. When attempting to leave a comment on relevant pages, protesters were met with the following:

The error was initially pointed out by last year’s LeakyStars winner, Kirstyn Hippe.  Hippe went on to voice further frustration, but later removed the comments.

LeakyCon’s Jordan Edwards issued the following delayed statement hours after the initial error:

Fans and contestants were outraged.  Leaky’s inability to properly tabulate votes was suddenly excused as “uncertain results.”  In response contestants, their fans, and frustrated Leaky goers took to social-media to vent, some going as far to create pages that exclusively dealt with the subject of the botched voting system/aftermath.

Finalist Sarah Wood summed up her frustration with the following: “…I find it INCREDIBLY upsetting that because of LeakyCon’s error, a video that received less than half of the number of my votes is going to be a finalist while I am not.”

LeakyCon “Founder,” Melissa Anelli’s initial reaction was to blame the competitors and the voters, giving the already frustrated protesters an earful regarding her “unofficial” opinion in the matter.

“You can’t tell me we’ve crushed someone’s lifelong dream when the contest itself didn’t exist until last year. Just, take a breath, guys. …Because if that kind of attitude persists we won’t continue the program. If it becomes an exercise in bitter rivalry for votes… it will go away.”

From my perspective it seems highly irresponsible, arrogant and just plain rude for Anelli to discredit the feelings of contestants that have worked extremely hard to not only CREATE original content, but then invested time and energy into promoting LeakyCon in order to get their own audiences to respond by voting.  If you’re going to insist that if people complain about a clearly faulty voting system and a group of LeakyCon staffers that can’t seem to tabulate six simple numbers to come up with winners, as well as doing their best to squash the public frustrations of people that clearly have a right to be frustrated, why not just let Anelli pick her favorite “star,” and do away with the competition altogether? Trying to save face by touting the judges after-the-fact doesn’t really amount to anything if the contestants being judged don’t belong there in the first place. It was only after the repeated backlash on multiple social media platforms that LeakyCon finally relented and decided to do the right thing. To date, no formal apology, official or unofficial, has been issued by Anelli or Leaky Inc regarding the mis-tabulation.

Thankfully web guru Keith Kurson created a web script that tabulated the votes at the contest end.

What do you think of this fiasco?  Do you agree with Anelli, or side with frustrated fans/contestants? Stay-tuned to PopWrapped for the still unfolding updates regarding LeakyStars 2013 and more EXCLUSIVE LeakyCon Reveals!

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