Top Left 2023

The famous paper by Justin Kruger and David Dunning called “Unskilled and Unaware of It” describes how unskilled people often overestimate their abilities. This is often called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This chart illustrates the most extreme examples.

The pointy part is where unskilled people think they are highly competent. It’s often referred to as “The Peak of Mt. Stupid”, or “Top Left”. Flat earthers, sovereign citizens, science deniers, and others regularly play “King of the Hill” to compete to sit atop the peak of Mt. Stupid.

The Top Left Competition is to identify the most deserving person to confidently place their rear end on the topmost pointy part of Mt. Stupid.

How it works

Nominations will be during a live stream where nominators briefly present a case supporting their nominee. YouTube/TikTok/Twitter/Myspace/Geocities/Twitch content creators are invited, as well as members of the community. Please contact MCToon if you are interested in participating. People may cast only one nomination each.

Please be aware that cheating and bribery is allowed and encouraged. The officiants will turn a blind eye to anything they feel they want to ignore. Officiants also reserve the right to change rules, invent rules, break rules, ignore rules, or do whatever they want as it suits them. This is a joke, take it seriously at your own peril.

You do not need to be present during the live stream to nominate. If you cannot be present, please forward your nomination to MCToon with a maximum 2-sentence nomination speech. These will be read out during the nomination live stream.

All people nominating a contestant fully commit themselves to assist in creating the voting video. If no voting video is created, the nominee will be removed from consideration and the contestants with fewer votes will be promoted. See voting section below.

Only the top 5 nominees will progress to be contestants. Of course, the officiants will sloppily enforce this rule.

Voting will be during the month of March on videos hosted by FTFE and MCToon, details below.

The final “winner” will be announced live on April 1. April Fools Day, very fitting. The proud winner will be sent a free T-Shirt with commemorative Top Left artwork.

Schedule

  • February 7, 2023 Nomination livestream
  • March 1, 2023 Voting videos are live
  • April 1, 2022 Award announcement livestream

Nominees

  • Flatzoid
    • MCToon
    • Dave McKeegan
    • Prof Phil Bell
    • Kenny Eaton
    • mschedler 49
    • Charlie Welch
    • turingtest2
    • JustA Messenger
    • M2M
    • Mike Bertleson
    • JiffyCones
    • Dick Dawson
    • pronon1990
    • theTTguy
    • Lokifish Marz
    • Pat in the Chat
    • Catz
    • Berzerk
  • Austin Witsit
    • FTFE
    • David Lee
    • skid mark McGee
    • Earth is Life
    • Que Cee
    • Y Kick A Moo Cow
    • Stuart Christmas
    • Hannibal True Silence
  • CC
    • Industrial Nerd
    • Valkyrie Vision
    • Sarah Jones
    • Eddie Reese
    • Delcos
    • CC
    • Sofa-king sleepy
  • Bev
    • Joe Whip
    • turingtest2
    • MrUnite4theChillWind
    • Huigh Jarsz
  • Dare Ik & Kaleb FE
    • Flat Earth is Nonsense
    • Cannibal Lector
    • Globeman
    • Globey McGlobeface
  • not-Dr. Kent Hovind
    • Planarwalk
    • Lord Elumanis Poo
    • BrainlessSteelNL
    • Yanosh Takács
  • jincbr1
    • Paully
    • Brenda
    • ReneeNme
  • Trey Hutchinson
    • [redacted]
    • Bill McGuire
    • Sofa-king sleepy
  • SOM
    • SOM
    • Timbo Turtle
  • Gary Whybenga
    • Gary Whenbenga
    • Tommy Gronvøld
  • Brian Logic/Leake
    • Bob the Science Guy
    • Professor Parks PhD
  • Mikey Smith
    • Bowks1
    • Frank Burns
  • Archimedes Revisited
    • bombmk
  • Dion Smo
    • Bill McGuire
  • Rachie 00000
    • Eric Dubay
    • His mom
  • Terry R Eicher
    • YourPal Al
  • Lindsey Harris
    • Alan Evans
  • SOM
    • Cindy Sue
  • Jason Mathers
    • Kyle Wilson
  • Kyle Adams
    • Lael
  • Ron
    • B Dazzle

Voting

The voting videos will be hosted on FTFE’s and MCToon’s YouTube channels and posted on this page as well as playlists on YouTube. The view count and like count will be hidden until after the winner is announced.

Voting videos will also be hosted on MCTon’s TikTok page.

If someone is nominated more than twice, each additional nomination gets 10 extra votes.

Can I vote more than once? Yes, the videos will be on both MCToon’s and FTFE’s channels. A thumbs up on each counts for 5 votes. Views will be counted as one vote. YouTube limits the number of views per day. So, vote early, vote often, and tell your friends to vote too.

Each nominee needs a video. The group of backers for any particular nominee will create the best, most compelling video for your nominee. Videos should be less than 10 minutes long, though this is not a hard limit. Be certain there is no copyright infringement in the video. Contact MCToon to arrange to use the video. Videos must be received by Sunday, March 26th. Earlier is better.

Votes or views that are from bots or automated systems will not count. These can easily be identified in YouTube’s analytics web portal.

Artwork

The winner will receive a shirt with this artwork by Joel Rube: