r/eurovision goes into meltdown, temporarily locked, as Israel win public vote and finish second

Eurovision is a European singing contest where people get to vote for their favourite singer. It also, for some reason, has a passionate fanbase that follows it throughout the year, including during selection events.

What do I mean? Well, for example, here in Italy, there is Sanremo , a huge musical festival, the winner of whom can go to Eurovision if they want. If they don’t, it passes on to 2nd and so on. It’s a huge event in Italy, but those on r/eurovision also follow it, and follow similar events in each of the 36 countries. Dedicated watchers.

What the Eurovision sub also is, is pro-Palestine. Israel sent a song which was good to very good. Singing is subjective, so some people may think it was excellent, some may think it was meh.

What no one expected is Israel to win… and here is what happened after:

https://np.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1kp5x5y/reactions_hot_takes_salt_and_venting_thread_esc/

Absolute shit show.

Look,I just don’t get what Israel endgame was. They had such an aggressive campaign. Did they really want to have Eurovision in Israel? Could they guarantee safety of participants and public?

I am baffled.

it’s clear that the orchestrated televoting campaign was not just a one-time thing of last year. one day the juries aren’t going to save the EBU’s ass anymore and i can’t wait for them having to deal with the consequences of their continued support

The EBU should look into their televoting process because these results are sus.

Israel NEEDS to go if this is going to happen every year from now on

Seriously. Even excluding the politics, their voting bloc is obviously manipulating the results every year. They don’t care about the competition, they just want to troll.

We need ranked choice voting or something. Being able to give your entire vote to one country when others are voting honestly and splitting it up is a problem.

Same, the EBU needs to actually do something.

Part of me wishes Israel won just to see how the rest of Europe reacts when this type of shit hits the fan.

All of which led to:

https://np.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1kp6l24/temporary_locking_of_reurovision/

Dear community, Due to the influx of traffic to our subreddit, a significant majority of which is hate speech and strong emotional reactions, we feel it is necessary to temporarily lock down the subreddit so that our team can properly organise, and to hopefully give everyone time to cool off.

We would like to congratulate Austria for winning.

And the subreddit is still locked, as of this post.

For me, it’s not surprising that Israel won the public vote. It was clear 3 years ago with Ukraine as well that a dedicated voting block gets you the win.

Here’s what the “issue” is. Everyone can vote, up to 20 times. If you’re pro-Israel or pro-Ukraine (Or pro any country), you will vote 20 times. Each vote costs between 0,15€-1,5€ (Based on the extreme ranges in the comments so far), so you can imagine the average person will not vote 20 times.

Then there’s the fact that you can be pro-Sweden but not, say, anti-Sweden or something. So, if you manage to vote 20 times, and get about 10% of the vote, you are going to be near the top as each country picks from 25 different countries, so technically you just need to be just over 4% (Though in reality, with some songs being BAD, it’s probably over 8-9%). There are enough dedicated people for that

Still, a hilarious meltdown, and it is continuing on other subs as well.

Edit: Kind of hilarious I’ve got so many PM’s from pro-Palestinian Eurovision watchers threatening me… you do no good for your cause by this lol, I’m not anti-palestine or Pro-Israel, just tried to post it in a neutral wa

Edit 2: Can name-name-4numbers stop messaging me and also stop commenting and accusing me of being a zionist?