The Teen Choice Awards 2014 was slammed for alleged rigging, said a report from Washington Post. Conspiracy theories have been circulating about the annual fan-votes based awards show, with deleted tweets from nominees and a fine print disclaimer fuelling rumors of cheating.
The event introduced new social media-themed categories this year on top of their usual awards for movies, music, TV, and fashion.
The Teen Choice Awards 2014 rigged rumors started after the award for "Choice Web Star: Male" was given to YouTube personality Tyler Oakley (age 25 with 2.85 million Twitter followers).
Vine sensation Cameron Dallas (age 18 with 3.1 million followers) was named "Choice Viner" earlier in the night, but eventually still lost the "Web Star" category to Tyler Oakley, said Washington Post.
During the show, Cameron Dallas tweeted: "It's funny how they told me I won the viner award 6 days before the voting ended and made the runners up still vote to tweet for them."
Another nominee, Vine star Matt Espinosa (age 16 with 1.91 million followers), expressed his disappointment after Tyler Oakley was pronounced winner. The Internet celebrity alleged that producers encouraged him to tell his fans to vote, but pointed out via his Twitter page: "Basically they picked the people almost 6 days before voting was done and used all of us for promotion".
While he was not nominated, Vine celebrity Carter Reynolds (age 18 with 1.53 million followers) joined Cameron Dallas and Matt Espinosa in calling out the team behind Teen Choice Awards 2014.
"#TCAs is rigged," Carter Reynolds tweeted, adding "#TCAS2014 used all of us for promotion. What a joke." He also used the hashtag "#TeensDontHaveaChoiceAwards," which trended worldwide.
The tweets of Cameron Dallas and Matt Espinosa were eventually deleted, but there were plenty of screengrabs.
Aside from the said Twitter rants of the nominees, a screenshot of the disclaimer shown at the end of the Teen Choice Awards 2014 telecast also added to the rigging allegations. In a report from USA Today, the fine print disclaimer read:
"Winners for the Teen Choice Awards are determined using the votes cast on the Site. Votes are tabulated electronically and winners are determined based on the nominees in each category with the highest number of eligible votes. Teenasaurus Rox reserves the right to choose the winner from the top four vote generators."
As a result, fans of the annual fan-recognition awarding ceremony expressed their disappointment over the Teen Choice Awards 2014.
A user named @stairfish tweeted: "#TeensDontHaveAChoiceAwards well thanks for letting us all vote our asses off and stay awake late/wake up early (timezones) for nothing"
A similar tweet from @tropicsgrier said: "#TeensDontHaveAChoiceAwards well never watching the tcas ever again that's for sure"
Producers of the Teen Choice Awards 2014 have yet to release an official statement about the rigging allegations.
