Just call it Meme Madness.
Reddit’s Tournament of Memes is the social news site’s version of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, AKA March Madness. Located at r/Tournament of Memes, 64 image macros battle for superiority over a month of bracketed matches.
On Saturday, the tournament initiated the first match of its second year. User-voted participants like Ridiculously Photogenic Guy and Pickup Line Panda will duke it out by competing for karma.
Voters help the macros “battle” by choosing their favorite macro comics and upvoting them. The moderators will tally up the three comics with the most upvotes to pick the round’s winner. For example, Pickup Line Panda is beating Condescending Fox right now because a PLP image macro has the highest number of upvotes.
Tournament of Memes is enjoying a surge of popularity during the onset of its second year thanks to being featured Saturday on Subreddit of the Day. On Monday, the year-old community was the day’s hottest subreddit.
Last year’s tournament adhered more to its March Madness roots, spanning from March 13 to April 16, 2011. This year, the tournament is off to a late start due to new management.
“I thought that [last year’s tournament] was cool, but it didn’t look like there would be a tournament this year,” brody10123 told Subreddit of the Day. “I decided to start a new subreddit from scratch for the tournament, r/tournamentofmemes2. I asked Craysh, who ran the tournament last year for advice, and he made me a mod of the main sub.”
Despite a new crop of moderators, brody10123 said there will only be a few changes to the way the tournament is run this year. There will now be a betting pool for redditors to gamble on who will be this year’s winner, with prizes offered by nobody less than Reddit’s General Manager, Erik Martin AKA hueypriest:
“Long story short, whoever wins the betting pool … gets 12 months of Reddit Gold (that wasn’t a typo) and a Reddit sweatshirt,” brody10123 wrote. “All of that, just for winning an Internet gambling game! What a country!”
The other new adjustment—a final, extra challenge for the 2012 winner.
“The winner of this tournament will face [2011 winner] Forever Alone to see which is the ultimate meme,” brody10123 wrote.
Round 1 ends Friday, so there’s still plenty of time to join in on voting and betting. Who will be this year’s champion?
Photo via r/TournamentOfMemes
