History
Originally, Greenpeace had accepted 30 names for voting. Among the more new-age-sounding names was what was probably intended as a joke, "Mr. Splashy Pants". On November 26, 2007, an IP address in Arizona found a way around the one-vote system by disabling cookies, and began clicking at 120 clicks per minute for 38 minutes without pause.
The massive leap in votes for the name attracted the attention of b3ta.com, 4chan /b/, BoingBoing, reddit, Digg, and numerous blogs. Though Greenpeace removed the extra votes from the results, users from the social networking sites flocked to vote for the name, and the percentage moved quickly from 5 percent to 75 percent in less than a day. In response to the spike, Greenpeace decided to hold the competition open for an extra week, until the 7th of December. Reddit took the voting so seriously that they temporarily changed their logo to feature Mr. Splashy Pants. Facebook also began garnering interest, and a Facebook application was created with the tagline "Vote your conscience, vote Splashy Pants." On the 30th, Fark.com posted a thread linking to the voting as well, and for a few days internet traffic on the Greenpeace server spiked to almost untenable levels.
There was some controversy over the naming, with TreeHugger and an associated blog initially claiming that the name was not beautiful enough, and seeking to instigate votes for the other names. According to Greenpeace insider Brian Fitzgerald, the name also was controversial within the organisation.
On December 10, 2007, Mister Splashy Pants was announced the winner of the competition. 150,000 people reportedly voted, and 'Splashy' received 119,367, over 78 percent of the votes. The nearest rival was Humphrey at 4,329 votes, or less than 3 percent. The other top ten names, like Aiko, Libertad, Mira, Kaimana, Aurora, Shanti, Amal and Manami, received less than 1 percent each. Reddit alone was responsible for 20,322 of the votes.
Read more about this topic: Mister Splashy Pants
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