The Truth Behind CYL Voting (bolded parts are the most important)

When I see people vote for popular characters here, I shake my head. There's no shame in voting your favorite characters whoso happen to be popular, but it's simply a matter of a lack of understanding from you guys. Here's what I mean. (Btw this post is not about Caesar)

I think most of you have heard of the statement "Every vote counts." And that's the logic you go by whilst voting. Now, I've pondered this statement for ages because it just didn't make complete sense to me. Eventually, I came to realize an answer to my doubts.

To put things in the most simplest way possible:

Every vote counts ONLY when it's applied to a large group. Say, if you hear that and apply it only to yourself or a mere select few others, the statement is instead FALSE.

Preach the "Every vote counts" to SEVERAL people and it holds TRUE.

However! There are exceptions. With more popular characters— most notably those in the top 100 from CYL4 (and Gatekeeper + Ashen Wolves)—"Every vote counts" is ONLY TRUE IF the group is large enough. The more popular the character, the larger the group MUST be. And I mean, it has to be UNREASONABLY MASSIVE for those top 100. I have statistics to prove this in the post.

I cannot emphasize these 3 bolded paragraphs enough. You want your votes to matter, gotta follow them. I'm sorry, but that's how it works. This isn't my opinion here, but sheer facts. If you do not care, so be it. Your choice, not mine.

Frankly, none of you nor I have the ability to get anywhere remotely close large of a group to vote for the top 100 for it to matter.

So I hear so many people preaching here to vote Marth. The active on this Amino is around 60 . Maybe even less. Out of those, only a fraction will listen and vote Marth. But let's just say if every active member here voted Marth, how much of a difference will it make? Easy math, 60 × 7 = 420. Pretty big number. However, it is very small in ratio to how many votes Marth will accumulate.

Edelgard got around 72,000 votes last year. I would assume Marth wouldn't do quite as well, but still exceptionally well at around 50,000 votes. In what ratio is 420 to 50,000?

This Amino makes 0.0084% of Marth's votes IF they ALL vote for him.

But as we know, most here won't vote Marth. Spreading the word to people from elsewhere probably won't approach the amount of people in the entire Amino, but that only means there's an even LESSER ratio.

Take another popular character but less than Marth? Well I seen someone doing this for Ashe, who got about 10,000 votes last time. Maybe 3 at most will listen. That's still 0.0021% of his votes! It's an exponential trend, so the less popular you are, the more it will matter BUT as you can see with Ashe, there are definitely bumps in the trend, which makes it all the worse to vote someone like Ashe.

For these reasons, this is why it is not good to vote popular characters. You need to let people from around the world who you don't even know take care of that. Focus on less popular characters if you want your votes to matter.

Consider ing someone's campaign for a less popular character— like Hicks or Caesar whom both have campaigns going on that I know of. Is this just a shameless plug? Sort of. But I sincerely believe this is the best way to go about CYL, or create your own large campaign for a less popular character

Debunking stupid counterarguments

Last year, Seliph and Chrom were a few votes away. Like dang, if I gave the less voted of the two some of my votes it would've made a difference. But not really. Yes, they'd switch places, but what difference does it make? They're still in the top 10 and adjacent spots. IS is aware they were only a few votes away from each other so they definitely neglected the placing difference when considering their placings. They're not blind idiots. And even then, what're the odds of it happening again? It was already unlikely in the first place— wellllll below 1%. I assure you, it will not happen again with anyone in the top 20 and if it does, it won't matter unless it's between the top 2, which has even lesser chances of happening.

This one isn't a necessarily a counterargument, but it's something that will prevent you from accepting this. Basically, humans are stubborn. You could read this all you want and still go gung ho on Marth voting even knowing it doesn't make a difference. I'm sorry to acknowledge most of you will probably end up like this. We all have that natural feel to need to vote popular characters because part of you feels like you need to those characters regardless if it really matters. I used to as well. I did it with Eliwood. All I ask is that you forsake that feeling if you can or do your best to ignore it.

Don't think Gatekeeper will do well enough? Think again! Reinhardt? Yeah, this is Gatekeeper except Gatekeeper is fresher in our memories, beloved by all, and is from a game the bulk as played. I guarantee you he will get 1st or 2nd place. I implore you not to vote for him.

Finally,

I would like to show a sort of tier list of the BEST ways to go about CYL5 to the WORST ways.

Worst - The worst way possible is voting a popular characters. If I preached this to every CYL voter, it would be falsified. However, the fact of the matter is, I'm only preaching it to you guys, so it is indeed true.

Bad - Diversifying your votes to less popular characters is a step in the right direction, however it gives 1 vote to each of those characters that all mean close to nothing. It does mean more than for popular characters however, so it's slightly better.

Middle - A good way to go about CYL is focusing your entire ballot on one specific less popular character. 7 votes can actually make a good difference for them. However it's still pretty mediocre.

Great - Select a less popular character and have your friends in voting them. Makes a solid difference.

Best - Select a less popular character and get as many people as you can to vote for them. Emphasis on as many people because you need a LOT. Not an unreasonable amount unlike with Marth. This way, it will make a HUGE and absolutely MEANINGFUL difference.

Now, I know I touch upon a lot of this in my Caesar Campaign post but most of you did not read it and it was more focused on Caesar. I realize I need to focus it on the CYL5 event itself for it to gain attention. I'm also going into much more detail and adding stuff I hadn't said before. I sincerely believe it is important that everyone read this.

I know we're two days into CYL5, but it's not too late! Don't do it for me, but for yourself and the entirety of the community.

Mind you, I'm not alone here. And this is coming from the leader of the FE Amino; in other words, a person wise enough to rise to leader. And I'm here to enlighten you too on the subject.

Lastly lastly, I know some of you mods are going to get on me about being "pushy" because I decided to use that word in my bio. Let me clear that up. What I meant by that is that I'm going to remind people who decided to vote Caesar, to vote Caesar everyday- something I didn't do last year. I did not mean I'm going to be pushy, I just meant I'm going to be MORE pushy. I'm not really a pushy person, so I'm simply going above that standard. I hope the fact that I decided to apologize beforehand for being pushy goes to show how I am really not like that. And no, this post is not being pushy so please don't think it is and take it down.

#Kiransummonme