The Unknowable Blog™

posting this kinda late, but happy birthday to arthur and muffy!!🥳🎂

arthur is technically 50 years old this year because marc brown published arthur's nose in 1976. it's wild that he's been around for so long! i haven't posted any fanart in ages, so i made this to celebrate. i probably should've drawn something in february since that's when the book was published, but arthur's birthday works too haha

Look Mum No Computer (UK 2026) made merch honoring the fact that he earned no points from the public at Eurovision. Available on his official merch store is a shirt in the same color pink as his Eurovision costume that reads "look mum no points."

Look Mum No Computer only received one point at Eurovision from the Ukrainian jury.

[Sources]

"LOOK MUM NO POINTS T-SHIRT," lookmumnocomputer.com.

I can give Olly Alexander a pass, that was possibly zero points worthy. But Remember Monday was catchy, smart, and lovable. LMNC was not only an excellent dance track (and dance tracks did well this year otherwise), it was incredibly well staged and just unique enough to be different and memorable.

Long answer:

The UK hasn't always been terrible at Eurovision, up until the early 00s they were one of the biggest contenders for the crown each year, much like Sweden usually is nowadays.

However it should be noted that up until 1999 there was a rule in place that countries HAD to sing in their native language, which led to a lot of bias towards English language songs.

With that rule lifted and the influx of a LOT of new countries between 1994 and 2007 due to the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the UK suddenly had a lot more competition than they had previously.

Plus they also had to contend with the fact that the public could vote for their favourite songs from the late 90s onwards, meaning songs now had two audiences to impress: the national jury and the voting public.

Since then they've struggled to accurately gauge what Eurovision audiences actually want to see, among other things such as poor song promotion, a xenophobic attitude towards their competitors, weak staging concepts and live performances, and a generally snobby, self pitying, "everyone hates us" attitude towards the whole thing certainly haven't helped.

In my own personal opinion, the UK REALLY shoots itself in the foot by composing its songs specifically for Eurovision and not letting the artist pick a preexisting recent song from their own catalogue that meets the criteria. The UK has this preconceived idea of what a "Eurovision song" should be like, and their ideas often result in generally weak songs. There's a reason our most successful song since 1998 was a song the artist had released prior to being approached by the BBC and being asked to compete, and I suspect it's the fact the song was never even intended as a Eurovision song in the first place. I don't know why the BBC hasn't stuck to this formula since, honestly.

How can a country that garners nothing but loud boos and protest every time they’re on screen, whose point announcements were met with a chorus of deep angry shouting, and who is shown pure derision and scorn in most every Eurovision-centric space still be getting such high numbers?

Why is it that every year we don’t root for our favorites, we root for anyone but Israel and we sit not excited for a new winner but terrified that they’ll steal the competition?

The public vote should be changed too, instead of a set amount of votes to give out (which can then be given all to a single song), we should be doing the point system (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,12 points) so that the votes get adjusted to how much people actually like the different songs.

How can a country that garners nothing but loud boos and protest every time they’re on screen, whose point announcements were met with a chorus of deep angry shouting, and who is shown pure derision and scorn in most every Eurovision-centric space still be getting such high numbers?

Why is it that every year we don’t root for our favorites, we root for anyone but Israel and we sit not excited for a new winner but terrified that they’ll steal the competition?

2. A loud angry minority can seem like a majority. But there are a lot of people who like israel, and a lot of people who vote based on the music - y'know, like in a song contest that's about artists... pretty sure that DARA herself said she is there for the music not politics.

3. You literally don't have to do that. That's *your* choice to make yourself miserable and have some bizzare strategy instead of enjoying the contest. Other people vote for whoever they like and enjoy it. You do things that will obviously leave you feeling anxious and then complain when you have the choice to have fun instead. In fact, you have many choices. You don't have to watch it at all if you find the notion of any competitor winning to be distressing to you.

We now have Israel which is doing far worse things, the result is:

More and more Eurovision fans withdrawing from watching the contest and enjoying it because they are allowed to participate

Countries actually leaving the contest! FIVE OF THEM, one of the big 5 too. They didn't just threaten to do it, they actually left

The EBU attempting to contain the fact that Israel is trying everything to win, even cheating (let's not forget all the promo videos made by the Israeli advertising agency, run by the government, which is illegal and against the rules of the contest)

Israel being booed during their song every damn time, and the EBU censoring that last year

The motto of the contest being almost like a mockery and a joke at this point, "united by music" my ass

A contestant, Joost in 2024) being banned from Eurovision for allegations which apparently turned out to be fake, everything caused by the Israeli delegation, which by the way was also accused of harassment by other countries, like Ireland and Greece

Many people "decided" to feel this way and more and more will "take the same decision" next year. People are angry because the EBU did something against Russia but is doing nothing against Israel.

I started watching Eurovision in 2012, I loved the contest, I even met irl people I met online thanks to Eurovision and artists we love and discovered thanks to this event. This is the first year I decided not to watch it because it felt wrong, because I didn't feel the excitement of the contest.

- yes. 5 members left. They didn't get the desired result. We don't know if they'll bother again. Do they plan to do that every year now? Regardless of whether or not there is a war? Sounds weird.

- pretty sure that it's not illegal to make promo videos, other countries did that too. The issue was that they specifically mentioned "vote 10" instead of a general call to "vote". But that would be obvious that whatever country is telling you to vote, hopes that you vote for them... it's been blown entirely out of proportion, like anything regading israel. Israel isn't trying to cheat and isn't "trying everything to win" in some shady conspiracy theory way. There's this trend of painting israel as this shady manipulative force and it's eerily similar to the "shady manipulative jews secretly control the media" trope. When israel got high scores from the juries people complained that it's rigged and unfair and should be more audience votes. Then when audience got more weight people conplained that it's rigged and unfair and demanded more power to the juries... And every year they are so baffled when israel still does well. If israel was placed 17 in the order, you'd say they rigged the competition in their favor, but when it's finland it's all good. Only israel is shady. The rest is just the usual eurovision shenanigans...

- yeah, some people booed israel. So what? Israel can be very polarising. The haters are loud but that doesn't mean other people don't love them, vote for them etc - many people do. Israel has a loyal fan base.

- the motto is the same motto. It's not a joke, it represents what the competition should be about: being united in love for music regardless of where you're from. The fact that so many people have decided to add "unless you're from this one country!" is ironic.

- don't remember what happened with joost (only that he was arrested) but the israeli competitor was literally bullied *by* the other delegations. Someone else (i think it was Baby lasagna) spoke about this at a later point.

No, the issue is not the ads to vote for Israel, because last year I got ads for the UK too on Instagra last year. The issue is that the Advertiser was a government agency. The government was involved in this. As far as we'd like to be a non-political competition, a government agency which creates ads in each language of the countries involved in the competition and literally bombarding YouTube AND the Grand Finale stream? They got called out for aggressive advertising by EBU too which tried to contain the damage this year, in a very poor way I'd say. Besides, last year, the only countries which didn't give any televote points to Israel are the ones where getting a SIM is harder and actually requires some more documents, I wonder why.

I've been watching the contest since 2012, I don't remember Israel getting booed and "hated" as much as it is since 2022. It didn't have any strong reaction in the last 14 years.

The motto SHOULD represent what the competition is about, yeah, that's right. We are not united. Countries left the competition. Some participants last year were harassed by the Israeli delegation. The Israeli broadcaster is mocking directly the other participants. This is not UNITED.

Yeah, it's the mere presence of a state which is doing inimaginable things in Palestine which is causing all these reactions. Israel imposes all of this on use by taking part in international events without any consequences meanwhile Russia was banned, Russian participants were not allowed to participate as Russian, speaking about Russia and everything related was prohibited because Russia is a bad country.

The contest is dying, Bulgaria winning was just another year of "saving" something that is already in agony and if anything doesn't change it will die because the purpose it was born with doesn't exist anymore.