'Turd of the week'
An award a select audience of flash animators and artists strive for.
The award's first purpose was to have the lowest scoring survived submission on show for a week and for the artist to walk a very slow walk of shame over the portal of Newgrounds. The award was created to show Newgrounds the level of flash animation you should learn before you submit any work into the portal, as the award was not something to aim for or be proud of.
In the not too distant past, The award was found as a good way to showcase your work to a very large reviewing audience. Many artists exploited the award to annoy thousands of users and gain a reputation for either themselves or the group they were affiliated with. Since 2004, most of the TOTW's (Turd of the Week's) have been abused and aimed for by certain notorious flash gangs and crews; But before 2004, the first instance of TOTW calamity, was the infamous movie (and the most known turd) "B", by the well-known Newgrounder, StrawberryClock.
Many Newgrounders to this day abuse the system by using the old but effective "HENTAI" in capital letters within the title of the movie after it has passed the under judgement phase. The first impression a normal day-to-day flash portal user will get after reading the title of the flash, is that the movie is either...
1. A real anime movie containing nude or pornographic images or animations.
or
2. Another flash that needs to be "Blammed."
Either way, the Turd-aspiring artist will win as one, the movie will most likely not contain 'hentai,' and two, the movie cannot be blammed and half the flash portal popuation is uneducated in the way the portal works. Many other ways the turd aspiring artist(s) may trick and deceive are the following...
1. Creating a collab with a group of people. - This shows the average Newgrounder that a group of people have made a flash together so it MUST BE GOOD.
2. Co-authoring a popular or well-known user to a flash during the under judgement phase. - This gives an indication to the general portal audience that their vote will count for nothing because 'everyone else' will vote five on the movie; thus making it pass judgement.
3. Fileswitching movies. - This has been more forbidden in this present day, but a movie that is fileswitched (meaning that the movie has been changed from something good to something extremely bad or offensive) just before the under judgement phase is over, can be eligible for the TOTW award. Most cases of this happening though have been deleted and banned.
4. Actionscript timebombing. - A more modern tool used by the more efficent and intelligent flash animators. Actionscript coding that hides the movie underneath another movie until a certain time passes or a number of hits occur. A well known stunt of this happening is the "Hentai Snake." The flash after a certain date turned into the goatse picture.
5. Large filesizes. - Due to lazy people and point-whoring users on the flash portal, animations that are huge in filesize are usually looked over and given the benefit of the doubt. Not so much more the case anymore due to portal fixes and time delays with the voting button.
6. Newgrounds Events. - Events such as "Clockday 2005" are days that any work that enters the portal can get through. Although this is a harder task due to other bad work people have submitted, it lowers the vote count of the movie so a organised group of people can vote it down accordingly.
Another thing you may notice with the TOTW, is that it might be the same group of people or same person winning it over and over again. A good example of this is the Star Syndicate in their early days of arrival as this award was used to advertise their group and make themselves infamous.
It is alot easier to win Turd of the Week than everyone thinks it is. Using the methods above, after the flash has passed judgement, most of the users on Newgrounds will do the dirty work for you. By watching the movie and getting easily irritated and annoyed, they will vote zero and there is not much left for the user to do...
But there are times that users are in dire help in receiving the attention-whore award. With a group of friends and using the "View all flash movies" button down the bottom of the flash portal page, you can sort out which movies need to be voted up (threats) which movies need to be kept an eye on (suspicious) and which movies that pose no threat at all. So by now you are probably thinking, Newgrounds has completely set up the system by itself without WANTING to in the first place!
You are exactly right.
Regular members, you may remember me as _Guardian_, that guy that won 11 Turd of the Weeks on Newgrounds.
If you all remember correctly, I asked for my account deletion. I did not want to have the awards; nor the pathetic attempts of flash still on my worked-on profile. I left Newgrounds to become better at a number of things. One of those things, is flash animation.
I have wrote this so that NG understands what they are creating, and what can happen in the future.
From 'ye olde self proclaimed Turd King," _Guardian_
