Shit Account Tournament

Overview

The Shit Account Tournament is an annual tournament held on Twitter to determine which is the worst ("shittiest") account on the site.

Format

The tournament is held bracket-style, much like the annual NCAA College Basketball tournament. There are 68 entrants, and the 8 lowest seeded entrants (dubbed the "excrement eight") are included in pre-tournament contests to get the final four spots. There are four divisions which feature contestants loosely grouped together based on their brand. For example, there is generally a sports-related division, a conservative division, a leftist division, and a fourth for conspiracy theorists and other bad accounts. The winner of each division faces off in the "fuccboi four."

Each year, a Twitter account devoted to the tournament (which changes annually) presents voters with a matchup between two accounts. Users vote on which is the shittier account, and the "winner" of the poll moves on in the tournament (ex: shown below).

The creators are unknown. According to one creator, who spoke to New York Magazine^[2] in 2015 on the condition of anonymity, he and seven of his followers ranked their top 25 worst accounts on a biweekly basis. It works exactly as the AP college polls work, with 25 points for first place votes, down to 1 point for a 25th. The seeding is based on these points.

Developments

2014 Tournament

The tournament was first held in 2014. On November 20th, an account called Shit Tourney uploaded a video to Youtube called "Selection Special," shown below. In the video, the creators of the tournament went over the bracket in a style parodying sports commentators.

The winner of the 2014 tournament was conservative blogger Chuck Johnson, who was later banned from Twitter for his abusive behavior.^[1]

2015 Tournament

The 2015 tournament attracted media attention from The Daily Dot and New York Magazine. In the excrement eight round of the tournament, conservative blogger and media personality Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from the tournament for allegedly rigging the results. Milo responded:

"The Shit Account tournament sounds light-hearted, but when you dig in to the Twitter accounts behind the competition, these guys really mean it. They insult and attack people all day, and they’ve been doing it for years. Of course they hate conservatives, and they throw around words like “sexist” and “racist” all day long from behind their pseudonymous nicknames. Some people get upset at being on the receiving end of this kind of trolling. I don’t, because I see it for what it is: an unintentional compliment and an acknowledgement of my influence and popularity."

The winner of the 2015 tournament was the notoriously reviled The Tweet of God, a parody account that supposedly tweeted in the voice of God. The account deactivated the February following the tournament.

2016 Tournament

The bracket for the 2016 tournament was announced on December 1st.^[3] It features former Jeopardy! champion Arthur Chu in the top spot. Other notable entrants include Neil Degrasse Tyson, @dril, Brianna Wu, Sady Doyle, and more.

Kurt Eichenwald Wins 2016 Tournament

On December 23rd, 2016, centrist political commentator won the 2016 Shit Account Tournament, narrowly beating out alt-right author and prominent Pizzagate and #DumpStarWars figurehead Mike Cernovich with 51% of the 8,563 votes cast.

Eichenwald was a relatively unknown journalist and commentator before the tournament. He was a number 12 seed and known mostly for an article in Newsweek^[4] in which he wrote about nearly assaulting a third-party voter. However, his presence during the tournament helped him get to the finals, beating the tournament's favorite, Arthur Chu, in the Fuccboi Four. In the weeks of the tournament, Eichenwald tweeted that he was suing a troll who had allegedly given him a seizure by sending him a flashing GIF.^[5] This caused him to quit Twitter in what the tournament organizers dubbed a "breathtaking" meltdown.^[6] The Daily Dot^[7] covered the finale of the tournament. The organizers of the tournament released a video recapping the year's tournament called "One Shitty Moment," shown below.

2017 Tournament

On November 28th, 2017, the Shit Account Tournament began the year's tournament with it's "shit-in" match-ups, which featured four Twitter polls to decide who would get the final four seeds in the tournament. Of note, Pixelated Boat was included in one of these matchups, but lost to actor Michael Ian Black. Pewdiepie successfully defeated @DanBidondi to enter the tournament. @Laura_Southern defeated Scott Pressler and James Woods defeated @TheTweetofGod.^[8] On December 4th, the runners of the Shit Account Tournament released the year's bracket, while confirming that this would be the last year they ran the tournament (shown below).

Eichenwald returned as the top seed in his bracket. Other notable participants include Brianna Wu, Ian Miles Cheong, Mia Khalifa, Lena Dunham and Paul Joseph Watson.

Laura Loomer Wins 2017 Tournament

On December 22nd, 2017, alt-right political activist Laura Loomer was declared the winner of the final Shit Account Tournament.^[9] She beat Mike Cernovich in the final round, the second year in a row Cernovich made the finals and lost. Loomer is known for interrupting a play of Julius Caesar because the title character resembled Donald Trump. She has also been banned from Uber and Lyft for derogatory comments made about Muslim drivers.

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References