Teen Choice Awards Not a Teen Choice At All?

YouTube “star” Shane Dawson (Shane DawsonTV with well over six million subscribers) has come out, along with quite a number of others and declared that the Teen Choice Awards is not a teen choice at all, in fact, the whole thing is a con. Dawson says that he knows this is a fact since the YouTube celeb won an award on the show in the past.

Shane Dawson is not the only “celeb” to speak out about the fact that voters who rush to pick their faves have no say in who wins. Vine celebrity Cameron Dallas tweeted that it was interesting how he was informed that he had won six whole days before the process ended.

Both Dallas and Dawson have tweeted about the fact that the entire show is fake. Perez Hilton also mentioned that the teen fans have been fooled into thinking that their votes count. This information has caused Twitter to explode with outraged tweets from teenagers who have flooded the micro-blogging social network with posts hashtagged #TeensDontHaveAChoiceAwards.

Of course not all the tweets are about the mind boggling news that that the votes do not go toward picking the winners, although they do, slightly. A lot of Twitter users have gone on record to complain about including the Vine celebs in the awards process. As one Twitter user stated, “The YouTubers actually have talent…”

The Teen Choice Awards, thus far, have not responded to the allegations that the teens choice does not count at all. While this may be surprising to all those who are upset about the allegations, if the viewers read the “fine print” they would not be so shocked by the news.

Dawson helpfully tweeted a screenshot of the “winner” rules from the show. The information is actually correct, votes are not the deciding factor in who wins an award. As stated in the rules, “…ultimate choice was determined solely by the producers.” In essence, the fact that winners are not picked by the teen voters was “hidden in plain sight.”

The whole thing has kept Twitter pretty busy with hundreds of tweets addressing the issue constantly being added to the trending topic. The furor is calming down as this was the number one trend on the social network and is now steadily dropping on the United States Trends list.

A small minority of teen tweeters have posted that they do not believe that the process is rigged. Others have stated that since the whole thing is an exercise in publicity for both the nominees and the business, as well as the program itself, it does not matter.

Again, referring to YouTube star Shane Dawson, the whole thing is based upon who can actually show up to the awards program. He states, via his Twitter account @shanedawson, that if a nominee cannot make it to the program, they have no chance of winning. Dawson goes on to say it is all a marketing ploy in another tweet.

So the huge amount of excitement for the Teen Choice Awards has shifted from who picked up an award, to teens not having a choice at all. While this is not “technically” true, it is close enough to the truth that this awards show may not maintain its popularity with its teen audience in the future.

By Michael Smith

Sources:

Twitter: #TeensDontHaveAChoiceAwards

IMDb

Teen Choice Awards

dirtyflow.com