HUMOR – I tricked you. As tempting as it was to set my house ablaze this morning instead of washing my laundry, cleaning the breakfast dishes, or making my bed for the 38,000th time, I did not actually burn my house to the ground. But from what I have noticed, the general public is more interested in reading about houses burning to the ground, or the corpse of the Canadian tourist that was found in the water tank of a seedy Los Angeles hotel, than they are in uplifting news stories.
Sensationalism is popular. I am neither sensational nor popular, hence the trickery.
But since I have your attention, you might as well continue reading about Snow Canyon High School special education teacher, Becky Scano, who entered her students in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow video contest. To make a long story short, out of over 1,500 applicants, Scano’s students are among 15 finalists in the running for a $110,000 grant that their school may use for technology, science, math and all of those things that I was terrible at in high school.
Four grand prize winners are to be chosen by a Samsung panel of judges, with a fifth grand prize winner to be chosen the old fashioned way: by popularity contest, er, online voting. As of this writing, our Snow Canyon High School students are in fifth place with 4,421 votes. The current leader is Franklin High School of Los Angeles, Calif. with 32,558 votes. The online voting is as simple as one click and entering your email address. Votes can be placed once a day until March 4.
The Internet has revolutionized popularity contests. Remember when a popularity contest was a matter of which kids had parents who could afford to buy Girbaud jeans for them, or who could get their hair to stick straight in the air like Dylan from “Beverly Hills 90210”? My friend, Audrey, recently won a whole bunch of free pizza from Rigatti’s pizza in an online popularity-slash-recipe contest which she won by having a lot of proactive friends on Facebook. And I do not need to remind anyone of the 2012 presidential election.
There is power in being popular online. Power and prizes.
I want these kids to win this contest without having to resort to sensational tactics or by wearing Girbaud jeans. I wish these contests could be won by other means. Immanuel Kant said, “Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”
I wish that “the testimony of few” could garner a popularity contest win. High school would have been a very different experience for me. Unfortunately, these online contests can only be won one way – by receiving a boatload of votes.
Please vote for Snow Canyon High School and I am sorry for tricking you.
Watch the Snow Canyon High School video entry, then follow the link below to cast your vote
Click to VOTE for Snow Canyon High School: Samsung Solve for Tomorrow
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Elise Haynes chronicles family life in her blog Haynes Family Yard Sale. Any opinions stated in this column are her own and not necessarily those of St. George News.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @STGnews
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2013, all rights reserved.
Mrs. Scano was the main librarian at Bloomington Hills Elementary when I was there in 2004 and 2005. What a blast from the past, I haven’t seen her in years! And such an appropriate name for a librarian Scano is.
I took a crap once that was more impressive than this article.