Didn't Happen of the Year Awards

Didn't Happen of the Year Awards

Logo for the Didn't Happen of the Year Awards
Type of site	Entertainment
Available in	English
Founded	1 January 2016 (2016-01-01)
Headquarters	Coventry , UK
Owner	Harry Barnes
Current status	Active

Didn't Happen of the Year Awards (DHOTYA) is a social media and entertainment brand based in Coventry, United Kingdom. DHOTYA describes itself as "the people's page" with a focus on viral content to call out fake news or untruths on the internet.

DHOTYA is owned by Harry Barnes, who also acts as the sole content creator for the Social Media brand. Harry was quoted in article in The New Statesman as having taken over DHOTYA in January 2018, from an unnamed founder.. Harry registered the Didn't Happen of the Year Awards for a registered trademark in the U.K.

The winner of DHOTYA 2017 was Green Party Deputy Leader Amelia Womack, with her tweet "My 11 year old nephew just said that he doesn't like James Bond because he saw a cover of a James Bond book with a naked woman on and he doesn't think that women's bodies should be used to sell things #proudauntiemoment".

History

DHOTYA was founded as an independent Twitter account in January 2017, with the Twitter handle "@DHOTYA2017". The concept of the account was very simple, which is to call out fake news and lies on the internet, all for the entertainment of its followers. At the end of the year, a Twitter-poll based awards takes place, with voting from the public, to determine the most untruthful tweet of the year. The 2016 award was given in this method via the Twitter account @WeahsCousin, who is believed to have been the unnamed founder of DHOTYA.

Harry Barnes, a football coach for Coventry United, has admitted in several interviews that he tookover DHOTYA and became its sole content creator in January 2018. Whilst the unnamed founder had produced the content in the lead up to the 2017 awards, in the same interviews Harry has confirmed that the 2017 awards was ran by himself.

The logo for DHOTYA is simplistic, with a plain black background with the word "NOPE" written in bold, block capitals.

"Didn't Happen of the Year Awards" was applied for as a U.K. registered trademark, and has been approved by the Intellectual Property Office in August 2018.

In September 2018, betting company BetVictor announced that they would be offering a betting market on the 2018 awards

Format

The yearly awards are generally hosted at the end of each calendar year via the official DHOTYA Twitter account, in a "World Cup" style Twitter poll format. This is done by selecting the best 32 tweets of the year, and randomly putting these into 8 groups of 4, labelled Group A, Group B, Group C etc. Each one-on-one "match" is a Twitter poll sent out to the public to vote for their favourite in that particular match.

Group Stages: The group stages are voted on by the public, with each member of the public getting 1 vote per group. The two tweets with the highest vote percentage will progress to the "round of 16", the two tweets with the lowest voting percentage will be eliminated from the competition.

Round of 16: The winner of Group A will face a one-on-one vote, or "match", vs the runner up of Group B in this round. The runner-up of Group A will face the winner of Group B, and so forth throughout the progressing tweets from each of the 8 groups. The tweet with the highest percentage of the votes in each match will progress to the quarter finals. The tweet with the lowest percentage of the votes in each match will be eliminated from the competition.

Quarter Finals: The winner of the "Round of 16" match 1 will face the winner of the "Round of 16" match 2 in the first quarter final match. This is then repeated with the winner of "Round of 16" match 3 facing the winner of the "Round of 16" match 4, and so on. The tweet with the highest percentage of the vote in each quarter final match will progress to a semi final, with the tweet with the lowest percentage of the vote in each quarter final match being eliminated from the competition.

Semi Final: The winner of the Quarter Final 1 match will face the winner of the Quarter Final 2 match in the first Semi final match. This is also repeated for the winner of the Quarter Final 3 match facing the winner of the Quarter Final 4 match. The tweet with the highest percentage of the vote in each semi final match will progress to the final, with the tweet with the lowest percentage of the vote in each semi final match progressing to a "Third Place" match.

Third Place Match: The losing semi finalists will face each other in a match to determine who come's third and fourth in the overall awards.

Final: The winning semi finalist will face each other in the final, with the tweet with the highest percentage of the vote in this match being crowned winner of the award for that year. The tweet with the lowest percentage of the vote in this match will be deemed runner-up.

Past Winners

Year	Winner	Runner Up	Third Place	Honorary Member	Winning Tweet	Date of awards
2016	Keith Adams	Phillip Boucher-Hayes	Joleon Lescott	N/A	"Just took 93yr Mum to vote, she's registered blind. In a very loud voice she said, "Which box for out?" A cheer went up from the waiting voters"	30th December 2016
2017	Amelia Womack	Joe Cambo	"Jeff from Target"	Jason Manford	"My 11 year old nephew just said that he doesn't like James Bond because he saw a cover of a James Bond book with a naked woman on and he doesn't think that women's bodies should be used to sell things #proudauntiemoment"	13-14 January 2018
2018	TBC	TBC	TBC	TBC	TBC	28-30 December 2018

Controversy

With its growth in popularity, DHOTYA has been subject to controversy with claims that it is a platform that allows internet trolls to work in groups.

Following her winning the 2017 award, Deputy Leader of the Green Party for England & Wales Amelia Womack didn't take too kindly to being nominated, complaining of internet trolls contacting her via Twitter. Within an interview with journalist Amelia Tait for The New Statesman, Womack acknowledged that DHOTYA voters never spoke poorly of her 11 year old nephew (who was the subject of the winning tweet), but felt concerns that the publicity from DHOTYA could enable people to target her nephew. In the same article, DHOTYA owner Harry Barnes defended this claim, stating that Womack is a politician and a public figure who is also using a public communication method to deliver a message about her 11 year old Nephew, and that Womack should have been mindful of the fact that anybody in the world can see this message and respond.

An article in the Sunday Times, comedian & author David Baddiel talks about how a simple tweet he posted regarding a comment made by his 12 year old son was targeted by "didn't happeners", tagging DHOTYA in his post and calling him a liar. Whilst Baddiel acknowledges in his article that his concerns aren't actually aimed at DHOTYA, he believes that a percentage of the followers are trolls and referred to their behaviour as "something so deeply joy-destroying, so entirely reductive, about someone who sees a personal story being shared and immediately declares it not-true."

References

This article "Didn't Happen of the Year Awards" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Didn't Happen of the Year Awards. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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