Controversies in the Internatia Song Contest

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During its history, the Internatia Song Contest has been a subject of various scandals and controversies.

Countries not qualifying by mistake

There were numerous occasions of countries not qualifying by mistake and the ISC players not noticing it until the final results are published, whether that was due to another country's votes counted wrong, a country's set of votes miscounted or the host accidentally counting their votes as a separate juror and not an International Jury voter. This is the list of all such occasions:

There were also cases of those things occuring but fixed at a later time:

  • ISC 20 - the qualifiers announced on show were  Lacrea and  Carpathia but due to the host counting IJ as a separate voter (like it used to be a rule before additional IJ qualification was made as a rule instead), the qualifiers changed to  Kosma and  Eriod. Both came from two different semifinals.
  • ISC 37 - the qualifiers announced on show were  Irdminia and  Tashkveny but due to the host counting IJ as a separate voter, the qualifiers changed to  Bubblique and  Spitzenbergen. Both came from the same semifinal.
  • ISC 63 - the qualifier announced on show was  Kosma but due to the host making an unspecified mistake, the qualifier changed to  Sunetti. The ISC community then had a short voting time to decide whether to let  Kosma join the final as the 28th qualifier or not. The majority voted against it, and therefore the number of finalists was kept as it is.
  • ISC 109 - the qualifier announced on show was  Noxus but due to the host's Excel having added an unnecessary amount of points to all the countries, the qualifier changed to  Pönö. Upon opening the final, the host opted to keep 28 countries in the final despite some people wishing the host to remove false qualifier, but the false qualifier chose to rightfully withdraw from the final because of them knowing they'd be an undeserved qualifier otherwise. Therefore, a 27 song final was eventually reached.
  • ISC 115 - the qualifiers announced on show were  Bubblique and  Koalatopolous but due to an Excel mistake of the queries pointing at the header and not the second row, causing the last country alphabetically of each semi go missing from it, the qualifiers changed to  Uubell and  Zephyrus. Both came from two different semifinals.

Noteable dramas with their separate paragraphs

The host's disappearance

During the final of ISC 10, everything went smooth until it was nearing the deadline day, when people have noticed that the host of the edition, Jeremy (owner of  Bitland at the time), went absent. Many nations' rulers panicked heavily until Shawn, the owner of  Lost Islands, stepped up and offered to finish everything as it is by letting everyone send their votes to him and determine the eventual ISC 10 winner eventually. Everything was resolved in the end that way up until one time, about 2 years later, when a user named Karhu showed up and confessed that he was Jeremy, and posted all the ISC 10 scoreboards, including the ones for the final. Since then the official ISC 10 results have been those that Karhu posted, and the ones presented in  Lost Islands were the official ones for the 2 years period of "Jeremy's" absence.

Not voting for a song one hyped

During ISC 20 semifinal results show  Chruno did not qualify, but ended up being close to it. Sometime after that,  Grolskira's owner posted their non-qualifier votes and then the owner of  Chruno, all bittersweet over their NQ, called out  Grolskira on not voting them despite having hyped the song numerous times and even having included their entry in their previous NFs. They accused them of doing a similar thing to them for the ISC 28 final.

Votes sent to a wrong account

In the middle of the ISC 57 final, the owner of  Gandhara, Browneyed, took off for holidays and appointed another account (Kimmy of  Kimmystan) to collect the final votes for him. He ended up presenting the results as normal until 4 nations ( Keohretcha,  Lost Islands,  Porielana and  Victoria) came forefront about them having voted, but instead having sent votes to Browneyed instead of Kimmy. Since then, a debate occured of whether there's a need to count all of their votes and include them as part of the actual results or not. The majority have voted on the official poll regarding this thing that the ISC 57 results should remain as Kimmy presented them, without all 4 of those nations involved getting a strike.

Though it adds absolutely nothing to the story, at some point during it all it was hinted that  Victoria most likely hadn't sent any votes to any host at all, but had them ready regardless.

Late vote acceptance costing a victory

The host nation of ISC 59,  Kosma, had informed that the deadlines for voting in the edition would be fairly strict. However, at the end of the ISC 59 final voting, the host nation allowed some countries to vote late afterall. After the results show of the edition, the owner of  Lacrea went out to investigate whether the late votes have changed anything based on curiousity, and it have turned out that without the votes of late voters being accepted,  Lacrea would have indeed won the edition, and the initial winner nation  Kaministiquia would have finished 3rd instead. This was made more suspicious when some of the voters for  Lacrea's song said that they couldn't get their votes in. In order to make justice, it was agreed that  Lacrea would join  Kaministiquia as an automatic qualifier for the ISC 61.

Blatant recap-voting

At the beginning of ISC 65, the host nation  Lacrea publicly announced that  Spinachia voted strangely too early than the time for all the songs to be listened to would have taken. Deciding that he wanted to find out why, the host nation's owner Lonter simply asked  Spinachia's owner about it, and she revealed that it was indeed because of her recap-voting, which is one of the worst ways of listening to the songs of a contest and basing your votes on, and that makes player out as a lazy person who can't even bother to listen to full songs and the ISC players would suffer from it without knowing if they'd have received some points had their song been listened to in full and loved that way. The host got outraged about it and publicly shamed  Spinachia's owner PamSwynford for committing such action, as well as ISC players coming in on to mock the situation and the way PamSwynford answered the fatal question by ending her answer with "Problem?", which sounded a bit naively rude in tone. And even when PamSwynford slightly changed the votes, they weren't accepted and  Spinachia was disqualified from the edition, allowing absolutely no one to vote for their entry, which was "Shine" by Years & Years.

Confession of not even listening to full songs

During the JISC 33 show, the host nation  Bubblique revealed that one of the Waiting List members,  Baabutia, has been withdrawn. Later it was revealed that the owner of said country outright told the hosts of JISC 33 that they didn't even listen to full songs, only the snippets of them. With it following almost soon after the  Spinachia ISC 65 scandal, the reasons of the removal were kept quiet about until a herd of concerned ISC/OSC players were begging to know the details. As a result the owner of  Baabutia, Serduchka, has been permanently removed from the Waiting List.

A similar case happened during the OSC 63 semis in which  Polland was disqualified (reducing their entry to a nul pointer) for voting strangely too early. This time, it was revealed that the owner of Polland confessed that he also did listen to snippets. As a result, the OSC mods have decided that  Polland will receive a strike and thus banned from participating in OSC 63 and OSC 64 - when he will be hosting - but for some reason  Polland's hosting rights had to remain. In the end of it all,  Polland's rights of participation in OSC 64 were potentially reinstated, and the country was allowed to reuse their OSC 63 entry as their host entry for OSC 64.

Triple account gate

On the final day of ISC 85 voting, the moderator and the owner of  Territrius, Nicolas, announced publicly that  Alteus,  Auspikitan and  Timivar are banned from ISC and the forum itself due to the fact that the owner of  Alteus has in fact controlled  Auspikitan's and  Timivar's owners' accounts, thus confirming the public suspicion that arose years ago about the possibility of the whole "Alteus clan" being just TheMooCows making different accounts with similar tastes just to vote for himself. It was being debated whether to do something about all the results all those 3 countries contributed to in ISC (including victories of their own) or leave the history as it is, but eventually it was decided that the history stays as it is.

Many ISC players were all up and arms about detecting on similar cases regarding the fact that some new Waiting List members are usually completely new people with their first post immediately being all about wanting to join the Waiting List, particularly members from the real life country Finland (while in reality they probably all come from the same Eurovision fan forum that has possibly collapsed by now). Same about a few of people that are like that joining all at once. But outside of the recent triple account gate, nothing similar has happened before besides the time in ISC 2 where suspicions about Vanessa 99 (owner of  Dulcet Ebullience at the time) and Frank (owner of  Winterlune) came about them being the same account due to them keeping on exchanging high points in a lot of ESCForum contest they've been to together a short period of time. The whole thing has been demasked as rather that both accounts were two different people, but possibly both being used on one computer, which in forum is pretty much illegal. Since then,  Dulcet Ebullience took one edition off and Vanessa 99 kept participating up until her disappearance at the beginning of ISC 40 results show that she had to present as the host of that edition. Afterwards,  Kosma's owner Bryon finished off the result show and Frank came back (with a new account this time) to take over  Dulcet Ebullience after Vanessa 99 somehow left the forum to continue on with everything. In the end it seems that many people have forgiven both of the people involved in that old case.

Accusations of "stolen" hosting

After ISC 133 ended,  Grolskira's owner NancyAura went to privately ask  Thorway's owner Robbyg112 about if the latter country will host ISC 135, as they won the edition. Sometime later, NancyAura pitched an idea of double hosting (similar to how ISC 29 was hosted by  Chruno and  Bubblique, and ISC 90 by  Dulcet Ebullience and  Nicolas' Neighbour, the other host getting to host one semifinal and the remaining two shows go to the main host), with a theme planned out, and Robbyg112 ended up handing the hosting to NancyAura in the end. NancyAura then went to announce the news on the forum, making some of the roster members very suspicious and accusing NancyAura of being desperate to host, outright stealing the hosting, and pressuring Robbyg112 into giving up hosting, considering Robbyg112 released a statement about it where he stated that he had to make a "hard decision" and that it "was hard to say no" to NancyAura offering up. Robbyg112 also mentioned that he himself decided to not host due to lack of skills to do a good job, to which others responded that they could offer some help at hosting, because no country is pressured to host ISC with pimped out graphics and such - they could do everything simplistically instead. Later, Robbyg112 wrote to ISC Discord to ask to stop the drama and that he's fine with  Grolskira hosting as they came second, so naturally, they're the second in succession of hosting should the winner decline to do so.

Miscellaneous (smaller dramas)

There's been various other mini and less relevant drama occuring over the years of ISC that included:

  • Various countries allowing themselves to send the same artist on the same edition: Shakira in ISC 6 ( Sibinia and  Anselmsuusonia), Avicii in ISC 13 ( Volnytaria and  Sunetti), Yao Beina/Bella Yao in ISC 32 ( Ruthsina and  Leshia), Lisa Hannigan in ISC 35 ( Pebbleland and  Evergreen Lands), Anne-Marie in ISC 55 ( Haven and  Caprika), RAYE in ISC 56 ( Tashkveny and  Bubblique), Miley Cyrus/Ashley O in ISC 85 ( Kimmystan and  Noxus).
  • Pointwhoring (sending a well-placing contest song a person doesn't like just to gain votes or sending a well-placing contest song in general) accusastions (e.g.:  Ħanei Čaravāz 53 not even being liked by the country's owner apparently and them not giving points to it in OSC 23 when it came 2nd on there for  Kimmystan).
  •  H Kim Jong Il's AD Hangug failing to vote in their ISC 13 semifinal and losing not only their qualification, but also the 1st place in their semi. Similar occasions happened to  Yutuland in ISC 26 and  Tonallán in ISC 61.
  •  Pen Island's late votes for their ISC 19 semi being accepted and thus reportedly costing  Tjärsklanjska and even  Sockistan a qualification.
  •  Pebbleland's owner's meltdown over  Yutuland sending Adelén and them coming 2nd with her in ISC 24.
  •  H Kim Jong Il's AD Hangug accusing  Luzze of stealing their ISC 31 entry for ISC 30 and after that one ended up winning, they sent the song with the exact same lyrics to ISC 32 (which  Luzze hosted) that could almost count as an ineligible entry for the fact that it's the song from the same universe, although it being a song made by the fan of the Hunger Games franchise after its lyrics were supposedly put in one of the books.
  •  Sanlyona's owner Gianluca being permanently banned in the middle of the ISC 41 semifinal period for making less than acceptable comments. He was previously accused of biased voting and voting the Kosmallán clan over everything else (which has been toned down in order to not be accused of bias again).
  •  Pebbleland's owner ragequitting at the end of ISC 49 final voting period and only posting an Excel file of the results, due to all the personal negativity.
  •  Grolskira's owner accidentally spoiling the winner of ISC 51 before the last scoreboard was presented, after having been responsible for the scoreboards of the evening. Also for taking a break to "clean the floor", which has become a meme on the ISC community.
  •  Tonallán complaining that they did not win ISC 56 solely because  Kosma only gave them 8 points.
  • The sluggish speeds of  Grolskira hosting ISC 112 and presenting the final results, for which multiple people expressed impatience.
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