Temptation, thy name is TwirlTV. For the last few days I have been wrestling with an ethical dilemma. To force myself to do the right thing I’ll blog about my mildly-evil plan rather than carry it out.

I don’t know what Twirl TV is. Some type of Hulu thing maybe? Who cares? Point is they’re holding a video contest that seems designed to reward cheaters. The idea is that you make a 15 or 30 second promo for, or a 3 minute parody of, your favorite TV show. Then you upload the thing to youtube and forward the link to Twirl TV within 6 hours of the upload time so they can keep track of it.

Now, here’s the BS part: Whichever video has the highest VIEW COUNT by October 16th wins $1,000.

Can you believe that? What is the friggin’ point!? It is so easy to increase your view count on youtube it’s embarrassing. Obviously you can just sit at your computer hitting the play button over and over but with the help of a very basic add-on to your internet browser you can race to the top of any “highest view count wins” contest in no time at all. Because I couldn’t believe the rules of this contest I wrote the organizers. Here is the e-mail I sent them:

“I have a question about the Twirl TV video contest. I wanted to enter but I saw that the winning video will be the one with the highest view count on youtube. Getting a high view count on youtube is very, very easy. You just need to know a few super easy computer tricks and you can automatically rack up views. How are you guys going to ensure that a cheater doesn’t win the contest? I’d hate to spend my time shooting a video only to find out some guy with an auto-refresher won by a landslide.”

And here is the actual response I got from Twirl TV:

“Thank you for you interest in our contest. We understand the possible use of automatic refreshers and developed a judging prize that is equal in value. The judging panel will consist of a TV producer and two of our top two Twirl TV users. We look forward to seeing your video and i will gladly answer any additional questions.”

-contest@twirltv.com

Translation: We know and we don’t care. The people behind this contest understand that this “view count” race is going to be won by a cheater. They’re also giving away a $1,000 video camera to the video they like best so who cares about the view count contest? I do, that’s who. This is just total and complete laziness on the part of the organizers of this contest. Oh, laziness and stupidity.  A “highest view count wins” contest could only be dreamed up by people who have no clue how the internet works these days. These type of people keep hearing about Twitter and yotube and Digg and facebook and they feel the need to jump on the viral video/social networking bandwagon even though they don’t know where the bandwagon is going or why.

At some point, the marketing people who came up with this contest had to explain it to the tech people who were supposed to set it up. I’m a tech guy and I’ve had to deal with marketing people before and some of them can be really thick-headed. They are “idea people” who get tunnel vision when they think they have an ingenious plan. Maybe some IT nerd tried to speak up and suggest how easy it would be for someone to get an artificially high view count. But the marketing people didn’t care. As long as it LOOKED like a lot of people had watched these promos then they could tell their bosses that the contest was a huge success. “We’re happy to report that the video contest entries had a combined view count of over 200,000!” they’ll say. “That means we exposed our brand to 200,000 people and only spent $2,000. Look how awesome at marking we are!”

After I got the e-mail back from Twirl TV I honestly thought good and hard about entering and then doing the things it would take for me to ensure a win. There are still 8 days to go in the contest and right now the most viewed video in the competition only has 1,700 views. Pffffft. I could shoot and upload a video today and have 1,700 “views” by midnight. But I’ve decided that $1,000 just isn’t worth the guilt I’d feel.

However….that guilt wouldn’t extend beyond my own head.  If I were to upload a video for this contest and then auto-refresh myself to a view count victory I would technically not be cheating.  BECAUSE THE RULES OF THE CONTEST DO NOT PROHIBIT SUCH ACTIVITY.  There’s no way that Twirl TV could ever track which IP addresses your video’s views came from but even if they could, replaying your own video over and over is not against the rules.  So if you’re in the mood to make an easy $1,000 go knock your self out.