The Mob Vote 2020 was a total mess. Here's why.

Because the mob vote of 2017 was so well received (sarcasm punctuation mark needed), Mojang decided to do another one in the wonderful delightful (s) year of 2020. What could possibly go wrong? (s)

There were so many problems with that mob vote. Where do I even begin?

1. Not Original.

Firstly, none of the three mobs to choose between were original mobs. All of them were ripped taken from Minecraft spin-off games. The Moobloom and the Glow Squid hailing from Minecraft Earth (F in the chat please), and the Iceologer representing Dungeons. All these mobs are pretty simple, so you have to wonder why they're not just going to add all three. All these mobs by design are essentially reskins of pre-existing mobs anyway.

Also, if they were trying to make it seem like the players get to influence the game some, I don't see why they did it this way. Mojang already take in more feedback from the fans than any other game I've ever known. These votes just serve to divide and are asking for backlash and toxicity. The snapshots bring out the best in us (except those spoilt brats who whine at the devs when there's "no snapshot this week"), the mob votes bring out the worst.

2. Not a Fair Fight.

Aside from the fact none of these mobs were original, putting these 3 mobs against each other was incredibly flawed. You put two very similar passive mobs in with a new hostile enemy mob. That in itself is questionable. Surely they should have either had us vote between one of three new passive reskins, or one of three new illager enemies. Why on earth did they put in two passive reskins and one enemy?? How is this fair? All this is going to do is strongly divide people - those who are into adventuring and want a new enemy, and those who want the simpler and more aesthetic mobs. And in the Minecraft community, these groups are of pretty much equal proportion. People are either going to be split between the Moobloom and Glow Squid, or they're going to want the Iceologer and be pissed off if anything BUT the Iceologer wins.

People who want peaceful mobs would have been mad if the Iceologer won, and people who want new enemies would be mad if the Moobloom or Glow Squid wins. Nobody is going to think "Aw man I really wanted Iceologer to win, but I'm fine with Glow Squid", or vice versa.

Moreover, it almost seems like the Moobloom was set up to fail. The Iceologer is a cool new enemy, the Glow Squid looks amazing... what's good about the Moobloom in comparison? Only a small proportion of people actually supported the Moobloom (and when the Moobloom inevitably lost the first round of voting, pretty much all of them would vote Glow Squid and not the Iceologer - another flaw of having two peaceful mobs and one enemy in the same vote).

3. Lack of Information.

The third critical problem I'd like to address is how little information we were given about these mobs. All we got was a short 30 second clip about each mob, most of which was taken up with pointless drivel about boardgame collections. In fact, you could say the Glow Squid was falsely advertised, as they hinted that the Glow Squid would have a hypnotic effect on the player through the video. Turned out later on that it was just a joke and that the glow squid is nothing more than a retextured squid.... that doesn't glow as Minecraft doesn't support dynamic lighting.

The videos were so vague that it was unclear this was just a joke. And the trouble is, ALL the videos got this treatment. All they said is that the Moobloom would have "some interaction with bees", and that the Iceologer would "spawn in the mountains and attack with Ice Clouds". Does the Moobloom help pollenate crops and revolutionise farms? Does the Iceologer drop its staff to allow the player to use as a weapon? Does the Glow Squid drop glow dye??? All these details were omitted!!! How can we make a fair judgement when all we really have to go by is the NAME of the mob and almost nothing else???

4. The Elephant in the Room.

All three of the points I have discussed laid the pavement for a disaster waiting to happen. But really, all that counts is what happens on the day. What happens when these Twitter polls (why are they on Twitter and not on Mojang's website?!) actually open for us, the public, to actually cast our votes?

A certain member of the community, who in the last year, suddenly rose to fame at a rate unparalleled by any other, stepping in to get what he wants.

Before October 3rd 2020, Dream (who had over TEN MILLION stans at this point), had managed to remain largely free of drama and any controversy. Oh how times have changed. And then the mob vote of 2020 happened that would tarnish his near-spotless reputation.

In short, Dream manipulated his huge following in the form of now-deleted tweets to vote for the Glow Squid. He told his fans that he would follow anyone who proved that they voted the Glow Squid. You have to realise that Dream's stans absolutely WORSHIP the man. To them, Dream is something of a GOD. I once joked that Dream only had to sneeze and he'd be trending on Twitter - and that was before he got trending on twitter because he moved one finger in a video. And I am almost certain Dream was aware of this. Aware of how much his fans would brown-nose him. He was almost certainly well aware that doing this would swing the vote in his favour. Nobody could be so short-sighted as to NOT realise this. It was a clear case of manipulation. Not just of his following, but of an actual vote that was meant for the whole community.

Dream actively spat in the face of not only his enormous following, but of the rest of us who essentially had our votes invalidated. I've even spoken to many people who supported the Glow Squid express immense dissatisfaction at the outcome.

I'm not saying Dream should not have a say. It's perfectly fair of him to tweet that he wants the Glow Squid to win. But to tell people that he knows worship him that he is going to follow them if they vote Glow Squid is downright awful.

Do I think the Glow Squid would have won without Dream's influence and manipulation? It's hard to say, due to the other three points I mentioned before, particularly the lack of information we were actually given about any of these mobs. Far too little information to make a fair judgement. Many were worried the Iceologer would turn into another phantom. Many who voted Moobloom would have likely gone on to vote Glow Squid in round 2 of the vote rather than a hostile enemy. However, the vote was extremely close (the final result was 52.7% to Glow Squid and 47.3% to Iceologer), and there is no doubt Dream at least help tip it in favour of the Glow Squid. In the early stages of round 2, before Dream's tweets, the two mobs were practically neck-and-neck.

Final Word.

All in all, the whole mob vote, even without Dream, was extremely flawed. And I have to question why they even did this vote in the first place instead of just adding all three.

What I think they should have done was add the Iceologer anyway due to the 1.17 mountain theme, and had us vote between Glow Squid, Moobloom and Jolly Llama (Reindeer). That would have been far more fair. Also move the vote onto a different platform, such as Minecraft's own website, where big egos have less power to influence the vote through manipulation.