For the angry fans who want to send a message to Simon Cowell and the X Factor producers, there’s only one tactic that will work – vote for John and Edward. It became clear at the weekend that John and Edward are being kept in the competition to destabilise the other contestants and create publicity for the show. Even Louis Walsh admits they have no hope of winning, so why are they there?

We’ve been inundated with angry commenters who are either planning to boycott the show (I don’t believe them) or stop voting altogether. That won’t work! If you’re angry at the way X Factor has been managed this year, keep watching and voting, but only vote for John and Edward Grimes!

Why vote for John and Edward?

There’s an unspoken truth about X Factor this year: everybody knows it, but not many people are saying it out loud. The contestants this year are pretty dull.

I’m going to make my argument in3 simple bullet points:

• Including John and Edward in the X Factor final 12 was a joke.
• Allowing Lucie Jones to get eliminated made the show a complete joke. The judges vote is there to save credible talent.
• Therefore, taking our cues from Simon Cowell, the X Factor is no longer a singing competition or remotely concerned with talent. It’s about in-fighting between the celebrity judges, tactical voting and tabloid scandals.

I don’t think anybody on X Factor is good enough to be a major star. To compensate for the general lack of talent among the final 12, I think the show has aimed for stunts like Danyl Johnson’s bisexual slur, the shock elimination of Lucie Jones at the weekend and Louis Walsh’s audience-insulting antics.

Angry Fans

A lot of angry fans have left comments here to say that they’re boycotting the show, or refusing to vote in future. We feel your pain. Remember, we’re huge fans of X Factor, and when we criticise the show it’s because nothing less than awesome is good enough. We want X Factor to be brilliant again.

The thing is, this year’s X Factor is already lost. The producers have seen to that. We have a selection of distinctively average singers, and those that had any sort of edge at all were eliminated in the first few weeks. If you’re angry with the X Factor producers, and you want to make a difference, then you definitely need to vote for the worst possible act.

Vote For The Worst?

Vote For The Worst is the website that became popular when they rallied to keep American Idol’s laughable Sanjaya Malakar in the competition in 2007. They claimed that it was clear American Idol had already chosen who they wanted to win that year and were manipulating the competition to create their desired winner. Sound familiar? Is it possible X Factor are hoping for a Danyl Johnson versus Stacey Solomon final this year?

From the Vote For The Worst website:

The show starts out every year encouraging us to point and laugh at all of the bad singers who audition. If American Idol was really a show about finding the next great talent, these bad singers wouldn’t be allowed on the show, let alone allowed to advance through 3 auditions to see Simon and the gang, right? We want this entertainment to continue into the finals, so we choose the contestant that we feel provides the most entertaining performances that annoy the judges and the viewing public and we start voting for them. The show encourages us to vote for whomever we’d like. If the producers and judges put Sanjaya and others through to the semifinals, why do they get so mad when we start voting for the people they picked?

The best way to tell Simon Cowell and his producers that they’ve made X Factor a joke this year is to destroy the game plan. As Pete Waterman said this week, John and Edward are great for publicity for the show, but Simon Cowell will discard them when they’ve served their purpose. So what if John and Edward won?

Anyway, since it’s fairly clear the public is being manipulated for phone vote revenue and that there’s really nobody worth voting for anyway, why not Vote For The Worst? Yes, let’s vote for John and Edward in our droves and get them a £1 Million recording contract.