For the second time in the past week, users of 4chan’s most notorious imageboard have decided to game a public poll for the lulz.
Days after a Kansas City Chiefs football player shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself, 4chan’s /b/ imageboard—a random forum where people often share lewd and violent photos—is making light of the situation by trying to vote him into the Pro Bowl.
Linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25, is currently one of the top 25 linebackers listed in alphabetical order for voting on the NFL’s official 2013 Pro Bowl ballot. The Pro Bowl is an all-star game that pits the best players from each conference against one another.
Belcher “shot and killed himself outside the team’s practice facility Saturday morning, less than an hour after he killed his girlfriend,” the New York Times reported. Belcher reportedly killed himself in front of general manager Scott Pioli and coach Romeo Crennel after speaking with them briefly in the parking lot, the Associated Press reported.
Late Sunday night an anonymous post on /b/ encouraged the community to vote for Belcher to “cheer him up.”
A screengrab of the 4chan post, which has since been deleted, was posted on Reddit’s r/4chan forum, where people continued to make fun of the tragic situation.
“This is just fucked up. Too soon. Voted,” SFW–N commented.
Early last week, /b/ rallied the community together to get North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Time Magazine’s Person of the Year poll. Kim, 29, took over the top spot held by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi over the weekend, with 2.9 million votes.
4chan hopes to spell “KJUGASCHAMBERS” with the first letter of every Time candidate’s name. It references the concentration camp near the border of Russia and China, used by the North Korean government. It is “where thousands of men, women, and children accused of political crimes are held,” the Guardian reported.
Kim will not likely win the coveted magazine cover considering TIME’s editors will choose the Person of the Year. The people’s choice, on the other hand, is still up for grabs “for better or worse,” according to Time. It is also a similar situation over at the NFL, where “fans are only 1/3rd of the vote, players and coaches are the other 2/3rds,” BarackSays wrote on Reddit.
In 2009, 4chan pulled off a similar feat when helped its creator, Christopher “moot” Poole, top Time’s prestigious list. Since then, 4chan has gamed public votes for a new Mountain Dew flavor (one popular entry: “Hitler did nothing wrong”) and a competition to have Taylor Swift perform at a school for free.
Photo via Pixabay/remix by Fernando Alfonso III
